Tag: Larry Ellison

Two weeks after a hopeful sign from ‘60 Minutes,’ Bari Weiss cancels a story and trashes the brand

Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” interviews Marjorie Taylor Greene. Photo via Paramount.

A Dec. 7 “60 Minutes” interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene by veteran correspondent Lesley Stahl raised hopes that new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and her corporate overlords, Larry and David Ellison, wouldn’t destroy the legendary news program. Greene criticized Donald Trump, and Trump in turn complained that “60 Minutes” “has actually gotten WORSE!” since the Ellisons acquired CBS earlier this year, as CNN media reporter Brian Stelter writes.

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Well, hope springs eternal — or, in this case, two weeks. Because now the worst has happened. On Sunday, “60 Minutes” postponed a heavily promoted story about the Trump regime’s cruel practice of sending Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they have reportedly been mistreated and even tortured.

Liam Scott and Scott Nover report for The Washington Post that Weiss decreed that the story be postponed in order to give the White House another opportunity to respond, even though “60 Minutes” had already contacted administration officials in an unsuccessful effort to obtain comment.

CBS News said in a statement that the story “needed additional reporting.” But “60 Minutes” reporter Sharyn Alfonsi said in an internal email that Weiss was giving the White House a “kill switch,” explaining, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.” The Post story continues:

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Weiss, lest you have forgotten, is a right-leaning opinion journalist with no experience in straight-news reporting or in television journalism.

Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum writes that CBS News announced the story would be pulled just three hours before airtime. Grynbaum also reminds us that the Ellisons’ path toward purchasing CBS was greased by the previous owner’s decision to settle a bogus lawsuit brought by Trump over the entirely routine manner in which “60 Minutes” edited an interview with Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election. Trump got $16 million from that corrupt transaction. And how’s this for condescension? Grynbaum writes:

One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.

Now the Ellisons are seeking White House assistance in derailing Netflix’ pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. There are lots of reasons having to do with antitrust law that WBD shouldn’t end up in the hands of either Netflix or Paramount Skydance, as the Ellisons’ company is known. But Netflix, at least, plans to spin off CNN from WBD, giving the news outlet a fighting chance of remaining an independent voice.

An Ellison acquisition, on the other hand, would most likely put Weiss in charge of CNN.

Making sense of The New York Times’ Amazon exposé

2789374419_035708cbfd_oBecause I’m working on a book that deals in part with how Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos is transforming The Washington Post, I read The New York Times’ account of Amazon’s brutal workplace environment with great interest.

Reporters Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld portray a company in which high-ranking employees are regularly reduced to tears, in which everyone is encouraged to drop anonymous dimes on one another, and in which a culture of 80-hour-plus work weeks is so ingrained that nothing — not even serious health problems — must be allowed to interfere.

This story is still playing out, but I have a few preliminary observations.

First, very little in the Times story will surprise anyone who read Brad Stone’s 2013 book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.” Stone goes into great detail about what a difficult place Amazon is to work. A key difference is that Stone, unlike Kantor and Streitfeld, is at least somewhat sympathetic to Bezos and understands that he and his team have built something truly remarkable.

Second, the Times article did not convince me that the culture of Amazon is uniquely awful. If you’ve read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, you know that the upper reaches of Apple could be pretty hellish back when Jobs was ranting and raving. Occasionally you hear stories along similar lines about other tech companies. Would you want to run afoul of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison or Steve Ballmer?  We’re also talking here about a special kind of white-collar, highly educated hell among people who could easily leave and work elsewhere. How about working as a clerk at Wal-Mart? Or as a farm laborer in California?

Third, some of the details in the Times article are being disputed. Nick Ciubotariu, a high-ranking engineer at Amazon, has written a long response to the Times article defending his company. It’s a mixed bag that will provide fodder for Amazon’s critics and defenders alike. Some of it is mind-bending, such as this: “No one is ‘quizzed’ — the quiz is totally, 100% voluntary.” Huh?

Some of it, though, is worth pondering. Ciubotariu, a newish employee (he’s been there 18 months), writes that he has heard the Amazon culture has improved in recent years, and he accuses the Times of relying on old stories from former employees. That has some resonance, as Stone in “The Everything Store” describes Bezos’ halting efforts to curb some of his excesses.

But Ciubotariu also offers specific denials of some of the Times’ assertions, including the most toxic one of all — that a certain number of employees are fired every year as a deliberate management practice. Here’s how the Times puts it: “Losers leave or are fired in annual cullings of the staff — ‘purposeful Darwinism,’ one former Amazon human resources director said.”

Here’s Ciubotariu: “There is no ‘culling of the staff’ annually. That’s just not true. No one would be here if that actually took place and it was a thing.”

At Re/code, Peter Kafka reports that Bezos himself has responded in a memo to his employees, urging them to read both the Times story and Ciubotariu’s response. Bezos writes in part:

The [Times] article goes further than reporting isolated anecdotes. It claims that our intentional approach is to create a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard. Again, I don’t recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don’t, either.

I am sure that we haven’t heard the last word.

Photo (cc) by Luke Dorny and published under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.