{"id":379632,"date":"2025-12-31T10:53:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T10:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379632\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T10:53:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T10:53:14","slug":"george-clooney-says-bari-weiss-is-dismantling-cbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379632\/","title":{"rendered":"George Clooney says Bari Weiss is “dismantling” CBS"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Clooney is a busy man, but amid his Jay Kelly awards chasing and Good Night, And Good Luck<\/a> Broadway boards treading, he\u2019s much more concerned with the state of American journalism than his Oscar chances. Speaking to Variety<\/a>, Clooney decries the \u201cdismantling\u201d of CBS News, an organization he valorized in his stage adaptation of Good Night, And Good Luck, based on his Oscar-nominated film. Currently under the inexperienced stewardship of America\u2019s foremost champion of the ruling class, Bari Weiss, who was installed by Paramount Skydance\u2019s billionaire owner David Ellison to toe the ideological line, CBS News\u2019 reputation has collapsed in recent months. In other words, \u201cBari Weiss is dismantling CBS News as we speak,\u201d Clooney says. That\u2019s a bigger problem to Clooney than the consolidation of movie studios, even as he stars in an awards contender made by the streamer currently trying to consolidate things further. But Clooney chooses country over career. \u201cAm I worried about film studios?\u201d he continues. \u201cSure. It\u2019s my business, but my primary loyalty is to my country. I\u2019m much more worried about how we inform ourselves and how we\u2019re going to discern reality without a functioning press.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clooney believes that without a free press (not to be confused with Weiss\u2019 The Free Press), this country is cooked, especially with the proliferation of AI, which has succeeded at making the misinformation America\u2019s greatest cultural export. \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen when we get an AI-generated video of Putin saying he\u2019s launched the first strike?\u201d Clooney asks. \u201cAnd do we have responsible enough people with their fingers on all the triggers to look at this and separate what\u2019s real from what\u2019s fake? We used to say, don\u2019t believe everything you read, but we always believed what we saw. Now you can\u2019t do that.\u201d It\u2019s incumbent on the fourth estate to make up for the foibles of the three branches of government. But as Clooney rightly notes, many of the pillars of American journalism bent to President Trump\u2019s whims almost immediately and have nothing to show for it except an unchecked authoritarian insurgency. \u201cIf CBS<\/a> and ABC<\/a> had challenged those lawsuits and said, \u2018Go fuck yourself,\u2019 we wouldn\u2019t be where we are in the country.\u201d Unfortunately, CBS and ABC told us to go fuck ourselves and have been used to stifle press freedom. ABC faced a right-wing assault to cancel one of its biggest stars, and CBS canceled an investigation into CECOT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very trying time,\u201d Clooney says. \u201cIt can depress you or make you very angry. But you have to find the most positive way through it. You have to put your head down and keep moving forward because quitting isn\u2019t an option.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Clooney is a busy man, but amid his Jay Kelly awards chasing and Good Night, And Good…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-379632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}