The British socialist newspaper The Guardian is upset that CBS News might become less radical, publishing an article provocatively titled "'Blood in the water': Bari Weiss's chaotic first three months in charge of CBS News."
This spin announces an agenda: Weiss Must Be Stopped! The Left cannot stand any outlet on their side moving two degrees toward the center. Any tiptoe to the middle is "anti-journalism." Any hint at an opposing conservative view is a slippery slope to "misinformation."
Guardian "media & power reporter" Jeremy Barr quoted a pile of anonymous CBS staffers in service to his anti-Weiss agenda. He referred in this story to a previously unreported Nov. 6 "blow-up among staffers about language choices when writing about transgender individuals."
A "prominent correspondent" – which Semafor reporter Maxwell Tani claimed was legal correspondent Jan Crawford – sent an email that said CBS "should refrain from adopting terminology advocated by the movement," referring to guidance from the Trans Journalists Association's stylebook.
A producer responded angrily to the email, writing: "It's a TJA style 'guide' - that's what I'm trying to do. Guide us to better coverage." They define "better" as "accepted by our ideological allies."
Now this is where the rubber meets the road. Wokeness dominates the elitist media. "Style books" are surrender manuals to ideological manipulation of terminology. Facts are shredded in favor of feelings. So you get Orwellian terms like "gender-affirming care" to describe trying to erase your actual gender.
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This is why Barr & Co. hated new CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil's proclamation that "we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you." Transgender ideology is a perfect example. They believe advocates and elites should tell the undereducated "average American" what to think and how to talk.
The Trans Journalism Association demands that "better" coverage means you avoid any reference to actual biological facts in deference to the transgender imagination. Reality is whatever they decide it is; it's "gender-expansive." So you get instructions like these: "Avoid references to being born female or born a girl, etc." That's too factual.
When it comes to removing breasts or penises, "Terms like 'mutilation,' 'sterilization,' and 'social contagion' invoke common misinformation and disinformation." This is because they are the spreaders of the "social contagion," but hate the description. They hate the term "culture war" because they aim to win it without a real battle.
Don't mention biology. "Noun phrases like biological men, biological males, biological women, or biological females are often used by anti-trans groups to invoke a person's assigned sex at birth as their 'real' gender, in contrast to their gender identity." You have to love "real" in quotes.
Don't say the ideologues are ideological. The term "gender ideology" is described as "a charged term commonly deployed by anti-trans commentators and activists that implies trans people, merely by being trans, are participating in a political activity or have a political agenda."
They are. That's obvious. That's why they are intimidating the media into a political lingo.
Then they double down: "There is no such thing as transgenderism any more than there is a 'gay agenda'; the -ism as used in transgenderism implies that a trans person's gender is a political philosophy, not a demographic characteristic."
But it is obviously a philosophy that seeks to dominate by insisting it's not. Their own messaging on Instagram boasts of "shaping journalism into the industry we deserve" and "transforming the journalism industry" and urging people to "Support the Movement." But don't call it ideological!
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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