CBS’s brand new MAGA-curious boss Bari Weiss opened her tenure with a thinly veiled critique of the newsroom she’s inheriting.
Paramount Skydance announced on Monday that it had acquired The Free Press, the digital media outlet Weiss—who calls herself a centrist—founded in 2021 with her wife, journalist Nellie Bowles, and her sister, Suzy Weiss. It grew from a Substack newsletter often critical of progressive orthodoxy, cancel culture, and identity politics to a newsroom of 50 employees working against what Weiss sees as legacy media’s “woke” orthodoxy.
The $150 million cash-and-stock deal places Weiss, 41, at the top of one of America’s most storied news divisions, overseeing hundreds of producers, anchors and reporters around the globe as CBS News’ new editor-in-chief.
Weiss risked rankling her new team on Monday when she sent out a memo that suggested that CBS had not been holding both sides of the political divide to the same standards, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
In the note to staff, Weiss laid out ten “core principles” for the network—including a promise to produce “journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny.”
Weiss, the ex-partner of Saturday Night Live alum Kate McKinnon, in her memo urged CBS journalists to embrace “a wide spectrum of views and voices” and to report “fairly, fearlessly, and factually.”
In an unusual arrangement, Weiss will report directly to CEO David Ellison, not CBS News president Tom Cibrowski or Paramount TV Media chair George Cheeks.
Paramount said Weiss would “partner” with Cibrowski to unify editorial leadership across television, streaming, and digital platforms. Weiss will also oversee a new debate-format show modeled after The Free Press’s live discussions, tackling divisive issues like immigration and bioethics, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“This is an important initiative for our company,” Ellison wrote in his own note to staff, adding that Weiss would help make CBS “the most trusted” name in news.
He said her appointment reflected a belief that “the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based.”
The news comes as the network’s new owner, Paramount Skydance, continues a quiet rightward turn under Ellison.
Last month, CBS appointed Kenneth R. Weinstein, a conservative think tank veteran and donor to pro-Trump causes, as its new ombudsman. In September, the network changed editing rules for Face the Nation after complaints from the Trump administration about an interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
And over the summer, Paramount paid Trump $16 million over the show’s editing of a Kamala Harris interview. The language in Weiss’ memo echoed that of the Trump administration after the settlement.
It approved a merger between Skydance and Paramount on the condition that CBS air a greater “diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.”
Now, the White House is reportedly negotiating a Donald Trump interview on 60 Minutes.
The Free Press built a large following by platforming debate-style coverage and publishing opinionated essays on controversial issues. Its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, consistently sympathetic to Israel, helped fuel rapid audience growth.
Since starting as a newsletter called Common Sense in 2021, it has ballooned in size and amassed 1.5 million subscribers, 175,000 of whom pay for the content.
And while Weiss hasn’t gone full MAGA and endorsed Trump, The Free Press has ingratiated itself with the president’s supporters because of its “anti-woke” output.
However, Weiss has been critical of populism in the past and, in February, penned a scathing review of the ascendant American far-right, seemingly calling out former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in particular.
Weiss worked as an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal from 2013 to 2017 and later as an op-ed editor and writer at The New York Times before starting The Free Press.
She walked out of the Times in 2020, blaming an “illiberal environment.”
Weiss then cozied up to prominent conservatives and became a regular on Fox News. She would later go on to invite a number of prominent conservatives—like Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz—to speak with her on The Free Press podcast and during live events.
