After months of waiting, Paramount Skydance made it official Monday in not only purchasing Bari Weiss’s intrepid and thought-provoking site The Free Press, but installing Weiss as CBS News’s editor in chief in hopes of investing in and restoring credibility to an American news brand mired in porous ratings and decades of self-inflicted wounds from ethical scandals and political bias.
“This morning, The Free Press is joining Paramount. This move is a testament to many things: The Free Press team; the vision of Paramount’s new leaders; the luck of starting an independent media company at the right moment; and the courage of my colleagues to leave behind old worlds to build a new one,” Weiss said in an email to Free Press subscribers and a subsequent video on The Free Press’s social media channels.
While also keeping her titles as The Free Press CEO and editor-in-chief, Weiss said her role as EIC at CBS News would be “working with new colleagues on the programs that have impacted American culture for generations...and shaping how millions of Americans read, listen, watch, and, most importantly, understand the news[.]”
Reflecting on both her career since she quit The New York Times in 2020 and the country writ large, Weiss observed the rise in alternative media despite having been “raised to be a believer in the institutions that build America and that made sense of it”:
As the gatekeepers of the mainstream have failed one after another, an explosion took place across the media landscape. Incredible new voices came to the fore. Personalities and influencers have overtaken hundred-year-old journalism brands in only a few years. It’s an exciting, fascinating moment.
Calling out extremes on both sides, she said a majority of Americans are “smart, politically mixed, pragmatic,” and “believe, unapologetically, in the American project” but were “overlooked” for far too long.
She said this and other principles of The Free Press will guide her at CBS News, such as seeking “people who want to face the truth,” “learn,” “logic,” “curiosity,” and “wit, not conspiracy theories and demoralization.”
“What does this mean for CBS News? It means a redoubled commitment to great journalism. It means building on a storied legacy—and bringing that historic newsroom into 2025 and beyond. Most of all, it means working tirelessly to make sure CBS News is the most trusted news organization in the world,” she said.
For his part, Paramount head David Ellison told The Wall Street Journal they “want CBS to speak to that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves at center-left to center-right.” The Journal also said “Weiss will oversee” “a debate-style program” on CBS.
Furthermore, Weiss emailed CBS News employees on Monday morning and included ten core tenets of journalism that should be required reading (click “expand”):
- Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is.
- Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual.
- Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly—wherever it leads.
- Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world.
- Journalism that explains things clearly, without pretension or jargon.
- Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny.
- Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate.
- Journalism that rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their popularity.
- Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era.
- Journalism that understands that the best way to serve America is to endeavor to president the public with facts, first and foremost.
Weiss has a mountain to climb. Along with the rigid, liberal biases entrenched inside their New York City headquarters and major bureaus, Weiss’s chief resistance will sadly be her Jewish heritage and support for Israel’s right to exist.
As we wrote last week, Weiss would do well to cultivate a newsroom with new and old voices that echo NewsNation’s slogan: News for all Americans. Her seventh point echoes that.
To conservatives, CBS will still do stories we don't like and Weiss is never to be confused with being a conservative or MAGA supporter. NewsBusters will chronicle it all.
As for their ratings with their flagship morning (currently CBS Mornings) and evening newscasts (CBS Evening News), CBS has been in third place for decades, so the only way is up.
Finally, Weiss will not be entering a CBS in which she’d have to completely clean house as there are a few on-air talent at CBS News worth keeping around that will match her mission and ten core values.
And, in light of Thursday’s Gallup poll showing trust in the media has plummeted to 28 percent, Weiss’s arrival could not have come at a better time.
