The Dictatorship
Bari Weiss’ town hall with Erika Kirk wasn’t journalism — it was public relations
Bari Weiss opened the CBS News town hall that aired Saturday — featuring Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, widow of the assassinated MAGA activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk — by directly addressing the audience at home: “If you’re watching this or you’re sitting here in this room with me, you know what I know, which is that we live in a very divided country. A country where many people feel that they can’t speak across the political divide. … And one of the goals of the new CBS News is to change that.”
It was apparently with a “new CBS News” in mind that Weiss last week made “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil the next anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” the first major host elevation since Weiss was hired in the freshly created role of editor-in-chief by CBS’ new corporate parent Paramount Skydance. In a statement, Weiss said Dokoupil is the person to win back the public’s trust in the news media “because he believes in old school journalistic values: asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead and holding power to account.”
By contrast, Weiss’ town hall with Kirk showed little of the “old school journalistic values” she so admires in Dokoupil.
There was no digging beneath the superficial edifice, just generic questions, frequently featuring strawmen bad guys in their premises.
The broadcast was entirely deferential and incurious. Charlie Kirk’s critics were painted in broad strokes as badly motivated. Kirk’s long track record of making statements such as “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America” (which he posted the day before his killing) were ignored, while other harsh statements about marginalized groups were downplayed as “out of context,” and his peddling of conspiracy theories such as Trump’s “big lie” about voter fraud went unmentioned. The event revealed next to nothing about Erika Kirk that we didn’t know before. It wasn’t journalism, it was public relations.
Weiss — whose highly successful anti-“woke” and stridently pro-Benjamin Netanyahu site The Free Press was also acquired by Paramount Skydance for $150 million in October — was clearly impressed by Dokoupil’s aggressive questioning of author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates in October 2024 over Coates’ book “The Message,” which is highly critical of Israel. When CBS later said the interview didn’t meet its standards, The Free Press was all over the storywriting editorials and sharing leaked audio from CBS News staffers to paint Dokoupil as the victim of a woke witch hunt.
I felt the backlash against Dokoupil was overwrought and unnecessary. In his role as a television journalist, he asked a hugely celebrated author — oft-described as one of the most important intellectuals of his generation — pointed, but fair questions about his admittedly provocative book that painted Israel in an entirely unsympathetic light, and which contained zero mentions of words such as “Hamas” or “terrorism” or “Hezbollah.” One can be more sympathetic to Coates’ perspective or to Dokoupil’s skepticism, but it was a civil exchange of disagreement on live television, and Coates handled Dokoupil’s questions just fine.
But that’s not how Weiss handled her subject. There was no digging beneath the superficial edifice, just generic questions, frequently featuring strawmen bad guys in their premises.
When Weiss asked Kirk, “What do you say to the people who justified his death?” she failed to note that almost no one of prominence in politics or culture celebrated or justified Kirk’s killing — even those who correctly noted that Kirk himself had made light of political violence numerous times before. And after reading a few incendiary Charlie Kirk quotes described as “controversial,” which his widow said were taken out of context, Weiss followed up with, “Does it bother you that people are picking out those statements and drawing an entire picture of who he was?”
Weiss didn’t ask anything close to a challenging question of her subject, even when she was handed an easy opportunity by a college student in the audience who asked Kirk if, in the spirit of stopping political violence, would she “hold both parties to the same standard and expectation” and “condemn the violent rhetoric of Donald Trump, the most powerful and influential person on earth?”
Kirk dodged the question, eventually coming around to calling for parents to “step up” and not raise political assassins.
This would have been a perfect moment for Weiss to civilly push Kirk to answer the question asked of her. Instead, Weiss removed the specificity of the president of the United States and went back to generalities, asking, “Do you think our political leaders have a responsibility to turn the temperature down right now?”
Weiss didn’t ask anything close to a challenging question of her subject, even when she was handed an easy opportunity by a college student in the audience.
Kirk responded: “Well, I think everyone has a responsibility to do that and I’m doing my part. I’m not in control of other people.” That was good enough for Weiss, who said, “OK,” then pivoted to a commercial break.
Yes, Erika Kirk is a grieving widow, only three months removed from her husband’s horrific killing. But she is also a political activist and her husband’s successor as CEO of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump organization with close ties to the administration, known for its take-no-prisoners style of activism and its “Professor Watchlist,” which the group says is intended “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” And, to be very clear, Charlie Kirk’s comments often come off even worse when placed in greater context.
It was Weiss’ job as a journalist to interview Kirk with the same level of skepticism and good-faith probing that she seemed to see in Dokoupil’s interrogation of Coates. By failing to do so, Weiss gave a preview of what to expect at the “new CBS News”: Left-wing critics of Israel will be challenged vigorously in pursuit of “truth,” while right-wing activists will be treated with kid gloves in the name of “fairness.” If the town hall is any indication, Weiss’ lofty claims about a new age of “fearless” journalism come off as empty bromides.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW.