Bari Weiss And The Tyranny Of False Balance
from the that's-not-how-journalism-works dept
Bari Weiss walked into 60 Minutes and asked the staff: “Why does the country think you’re biased?”
The question stunned them into awkward silence. And it should
have—not because it caught them off guard, but because it reveals
everything wrong with what passes for journalistic sophistication in our
moment.
Let’s be precise about what Weiss is doing.
- She’s not asking whether 60 Minutes is
actually biased.
- She’s not evaluating their coverage against standards
of accuracy, fairness, or adherence to facts.
- She’s asking why “the
country” perceives bias—which treats that perception as fact requiring accommodation regardless of whether the perception corresponds to reality.
The sophisticated move that treats “Trump and his allies say you’re
biased” as equivalent evidence to actual journalistic practice. The
epistemic surrender that makes public opinion—shaped by coordinated
disinformation campaigns, algorithmic manipulation, and deliberate
attacks on legitimate journalism—into the arbiter of what counts as fair
coverage.
When the President calls judicial review “insurrection,” when his
advisers threaten to ignore court rulings, when federal agents conduct warrantless mass detentions—60 Minutes covering
these facts isn’t bias. It’s journalism. And when Trump and his allies
attack that coverage as partisan, the proper response isn’t “how do we
address these perceptions?” It’s “we report what’s happening.”
But Weiss has built a career on reframing accommodation as courage.
- Her brand rests on the premise that mainstream journalism, academia, and
cultural institutions have been captured by the left and need
correction toward “balance.”
- This framework treats asymmetric reality as
if it were symmetric controversy—and what the New York Times reports about her first weeks at CBS reveals how this plays out in practice.
She’s reportedly personally booking Netanyahu,
Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff—architects of Trump’s Middle East
policy—while urging executives to identify newsroom leakers. And she’s
asking a newsroom that views itself as nonpartisan to justify why
coordinated attacks on them have gained traction. She’s not asking
whether Netanyahu’s government has committed actions worthy of critical
coverage or whether Trump’s peace plan deserves scrutiny beyond its
architects’ preferred framing—she’s ensuring powerful right-wing figures
get platforms while shifting the burden from those making false claims
to those reporting facts.
This matters because even journalists who genuinely believe they’re
defending fairness can fall into this trap. The frame is seductive:
“Both sides claim bias, therefore the truth must be somewhere in the
middle.” But this only works when both sides operate in good faith. When
one side systematically attacks any accountability journalism as
partisan while the other tries to report accurately, splitting the
difference doesn’t produce balance—it produces capitulation.
The question “why does the country think you’re biased?” does
something structurally insidious regardless of Weiss’s intentions. It
treats coordinated attacks on legitimate journalism as evidence
requiring response rather than as bad-faith manipulation requiring
exposure. It makes perceived bias—manufactured through deliberate
campaigns—into a problem journalism must solve by changing coverage
rather than a weapon journalism must resist by maintaining standards.
The danger isn’t that journalists become propagandists overnight—it’s
that they internalize propaganda’s logic while believing they’re
protecting neutrality.
This is precisely how authoritarian movements capture journalism
without needing to shut it down. You don’t need to close newspapers when
you can convince editors that “balance” means giving equal weight to
demonstrable lies and documented facts. You don’t need to jail
journalists when you can make them internalize the frame that reporting
what’s actually happening is “partisan” if it makes one side look bad.
The 60 Minutes staff should have answered her question
directly: “The country thinks we’re biased because a coordinated
disinformation infrastructure has spent decades attacking any journalism
that holds Republican power accountable as ‘liberal media bias,’ and
you’re now amplifying that frame by treating their attacks as legitimate
concerns requiring our accommodation rather than as bad-faith
manipulation requiring our resistance.”
But they sat in stunned silence instead. Because Weiss is now their
boss. And her early choices clarify what she values: access to powerful
right-wing newsmakers, concern about perceptions shaped by those
attacking journalism, and the sophisticated frame that treats “both
sides say the other is biased” as evidence requiring
split-the-difference coverage.
Not through crude censorship but through
sophisticated editors who convince themselves that accommodation of
authoritarian narratives is “balance,” that platforming power without
sufficient scrutiny is “access,” that treating coordinated attacks as
legitimate criticism is “taking concerns seriously.”
Two plus two equals four.
Federal agents conducting warrantless mass
detentions violates the Fourth Amendment.
- Stephen Miller calling
judicial review “insurrection” is authoritarian rejection of
constitutional governance.
- Covering these facts is journalism.
- Treating
coverage of these facts as evidence of bias is surrender.
Bari Weiss is editor-in-chief of CBS News. And her first
major act was asking the network’s flagship program to justify why
they’re perceived as biased for doing their jobs. That tells you
everything about what she’ll demand they stop doing—and why her version
of “balance” is just authoritarianism with better branding.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Filed Under: bad faith actors, bari weiss, bias, cbs news, false equivalency
Companies: cbs
