In October, the new owners of CBS appointed Bari Weiss to the new position of editor-in-chief, which has made her far more controversial than the actual content of CBS News would suggest. Weiss quickly became a scandalous figure out of all proportion to the actual content of CBS News under her watch. She was tumbling "the dominoes of capitulation," wrote Margaret Sullivan.

It's a little shocking that Weiss felt it necessary to cancel an upcoming lecture at UCLA, the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture, because of the virulence of the expected student protests. The Daily Bruin school newspaper reported a petition calling for the event's cancellation collected "nearly 11,000 signatures."

The petition, sponsored by the radical pro-Hamas leftist group Code Pink, claimed "Weiss has recently aligned herself with the Trump administration by attempting to cover up the fact that ICE agents are sending Venezuelan migrants to a torture center in El Salvador." Weiss delayed the airing of an anti-Trump story, but since then it aired without any word change in Sharyn Alfonsi's slanted leftist report.

It concluded: "Weiss is unpopular with the American people because of her deeply biased and opportunistic reporting, and our academic institutions must stop platforming someone who is a mouthpiece for the White House." None of this seems to reflect the recent on-air content of CBS News in any way, shape or form. It would be easier to conclude that the petitioners don't want her to speak because she's Jewish and supports Israel.

Add to that one Margaret Peters, the associate director of the Burkle Center for International Relations, which hosts the lecture. She said she planned to resign if UCLA followed through with the Weiss event in any capacity (like a Zoom call).

Peters claimed Weiss "used the guise of free speech" to attack people on the Left. "To invite somebody who is working against that mission in highly powerful places just seems like anathema in the university mission," Peters said.

Apparently the "university mission" is wokeness, and anyone seen as skeptical of that mind-numbed state should not be allowed to speak at the university, which formerly vowed to cherish the free expression of ideas.

The CBS security team was not convinced Weiss would be safe on this California campus. They may have in mind what happened to "anti-trans" speaker Riley Gaines in 2023 at San Francisco State University, where she was slapped in the hallway afterward and was trapped for hours by leftist agitators until she could safely exit.

This is especially perverse for a lecture in honor of Daniel Pearl, a Jewish journalist whose throat was slit by al-Qaeda jihadis back in 2003. Loads of "mainstream" journalists from Jake Tapper to Bob Woodward have safely spoken at the annual Pearl event, but that flagrant Zionist Weiss was beyond the "pro-Palestinian" pale.

Many of the most prestigious campuses are puckered with intolerance for opposing points of view, and after Hamas slaughtered hundreds of Jews in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, students and professors who hate Israel have loudly deployed their heckler's veto against people who denounce that genocide. They not only seek to silence their opponents but goad the uncommitted into parroting their radical talking points. Join the Cause, or be punished.

The Weiss cancellation was not considered an outrage anywhere in "mainstream" media, an elite full of Jim Acostas staring at themselves in the mirror and admiring themselves as the guardians of democracy, when they're intolerant of opposing views. Only the Left apparently represents Democracy and Free Speech, and you should probably shut up if you disagree.

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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