It never ceases to amaze how supposedly experienced big-box media types can’t fathom that it isn’t hard to look up receipts. Mary Walsh, a “veteran CBS news producer,” on February 27 announced her resignation after 46 years with the network, citing a pressure to conform to assumed coming conservative political bias under the new Bari Weiss regime as her reason.
As is well known, slanting the news is an abhorrent concept to a dominant media news hawk. Just ask them. “We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that,” Mary Walsh said in a farewell memo to colleagues obtained by UK newspaper The Guardian.
“CBS is now headed by Bari Weiss, a conservative commentator turned media entrepreneur, whose appointment was seen as a fillip to the Trump administration,” the paper notes. Make no bones about it. The notion of favoring one political view over another is anathema to an old-school media head like Walsh.
Or is it?
Let’s Go to the Videotape
It’s the article that writes itself. A quick Google search for “produced by Mary Walsh” comes up with the following sterling examples of a principled establishment media pro’s undaunted commitment to political neutrality:
- “Former aide HR McMaster on how Trump enjoys ‘pitting people against each other’” – CBS Sunday Morning, August 18, 2024
This gushing portrayal of one of the leading inside-the-beltway critics of President Donald Trump was part interview and part glossy feature story touting a new book authored by the former National Security Advisor and “CBS News contributor.” It painted the usual tired image of a tyrannical Trump operating in Napoleon-like fashion inside the White House, as personally witnessed by one of his former aides.
“McMaster never considered Trump ‘dangerous,’ but the president’s affinity for autocrats made him uneasy. ‘President Trump sees in authoritarian leaders the qualities that he wants other people to see in him,’ he said,” the segment detailed.
- “Alexander Vindman on truth and its consequences” – CBS Sunday Morning, August 1, 2021
Same format, different vociferous anti-Trump Swamp critic. Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a leading star of the now thoroughly discredited Russiagate campaign against the president, was the soft-focus subject of this Walsh-produced puff piece.
Here’s how Walsh kicked off the segment:
“‘I was the driving force behind this whole thing,’ said retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. ‘I’m getting some chills talking about it right now.’
“Vindman is talking about the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Resplendent in his Army uniform, he was the star witness against his commander-in-chief.”
Doesn’t it just give you goosebumps to this very day?
The rest of the segment proceeds in a manner more corny than a Hee-Haw farm set from back in the day. Here’s how it closed, as Walsh aimed to tug at America’s heartstrings:
“For much of this country, the impeachment of President Trump was a political circus. For the Vindman family, it was a coming-to-America story like no other.
“Of his sons [Alexander and Eugene], [father] Semyon said, ‘Good boys. I like these boys!’”
- “Extremism in the ranks: Veterans and the insurrection” – CBS Sunday Morning, March 7, 2021
Walsh was a regular producer of the network’s Sunday program, and this segment once again shows how hollow her vows of political neutrality ring. The infamous “insurrection” here is the January 6 unrest at the White House.
Democrat Talking Points at CBS
It’s a bit forgotten now but a key Democrat talking point in the immediate months afterward was the alleged infiltration of the US military by right-wing hate groups. January 6 was used as a major vehicle to promote this narrative. As we can see, CBS and Walsh were happy to play their part.
The feature attempted to portray “rioters” using military maneuver-style tactics to force their way into the Capitol building.
“‘The benefit of the mob is it provides a little bit of cover,’ said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism,” the aired program somberly relates. “He calls the military veterans at the Capitol the tip of the spear: ‘These are the folks that had some level of planning prior to January 6th, right? It wasn’t just a spur of the moment, right? They saw an opportunity and they seized it.’
“They executed what the military would call a multi-pronged attack forcing Capitol police to defend different fronts simultaneously.”
And so it goes.
“These days there’s a lot said about legacy, especially legacy media,” Walsh wrote in her farewell memo to CBS colleagues. “The put-down is that you’re old and out of touch. To me, legacy is the way you will be remembered for generations to come.”
It sounds very much like an epitaph for a generation (or two or three) of big-box journalists who spent decades transmitting political establishment propaganda, with a decidedly left-leaning bent, while clad in a resplendent garment of reputational professional non-bias that they designed for themselves out of whole cloth.
