The Bari Weiss era at CBS News has been a controversial one, to say the least. Ever since the former opinion and newsletter writer took over, controversies have followed. From the rocky and maligned start of Tony Dokoupil‘s tenure as CBS Evening News anchor to the shelving of the CECOT story on 60 Minutes, there’ve been a number of negative headlines to come from Weiss’ time at the top of the eye news network, and now The New Yorker has published an exposé on Weiss that details her start — dating all the way back to second grade — in journalism and meteoric rise to the top of the legacy media brand.
The article comes a day after CBS finally released its previously shelved segment about CECOT, the El Salvadorian prison that Donald Trump‘s administration has been deporting Venezuelan migrants to. In it, there are several shocking claims made about Weiss and her time at CBS News.
Weiss had a colorful introduction to the staff
According to The New Yorker, Weiss, a former The New York Times opinion columnist turned The Free Press cofounder, showed up to the CBS News staff offices with a baseball cap and closed the first meeting with “Let’s do the f**king news!” The report also indicates that when she was instructing the news team to cover protests in Iran, she was pointing to videos that were several years old as proof that it “almost look[ed] like a movie scene.”
She reportedly brought bodyguards even inside CBS News offices
The report also details how Weiss surrounded herself with a protection detail, even inside of the workplace. A producer told the publication, “Some would say it’s offensive… The implication was that we’re going to try to kill her.”
Weiss reportedly channeled Elon Musk with a DOGE memo to staffers
One of Elon Musk‘s first acts as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency was to email federal employees with a request to detail their weekly activities in detail. Weiss apparently did something similar. Per the article, she sent a memo to the CBS staff, which read, “By the end of the day Tuesday, I’d like a memo from each person across our news organization… I want to understand how you spend your working hours — and, ideally, what you’ve made (or are making) that you’re most proud of.”
She had big ambitions for her newsletter that didn’t necessarily match her skillset
According to someone who “worked closely” with Weiss, her ambitions for The Free Press were far and wide as she wanted to “eat the world.” However, in their experience, she didn’t know much about the world she wanted to eat. After suggesting she wanted it to be like Fox News, with her as the Rupert Murdoch of it all, the commenter claimed, “Bari had no idea how newsrooms worked, but she knew that she needed to call our operation a newsroom… I don’t think if you sat her down and said, ‘Can you explain the difference between a news story, an investigative story, and an enterprise story?’ she could tell you what it means — and she wasn’t going to let that slow her down.”
The CECOT story shutdown came after pressure from the tippy top
According to The New Yorker, the CECOT segment, which aired Sunday after nearly a month’s delay, was initially kiboshed by Weiss because she wanted to feature on-air comments from a Trump administration official, and she forwarded contact information for officials like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller as options for her team to pursue. However, there was possibly more to it than just a needed voice on the administration’s claims about the Alien Enemies Act allowing the detention of migrants without due process; Skydance CEO David Ellison was pitching a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and would need Trump’s approval. Trump was already unhappy with 60 Minutes for airing a segment with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who criticized Trump over his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Weiss reportedly has her own private reservations about Trump’s administration
Though Weiss’ era atop CBS News has been maligned for being too sympathetic to Trump’s administration, she reportedly has private reservations about what the president and his officials have been doing. However, the source indicated that her top priority is still booking “main players” on air.
Weiss’ wife’s statement speaks volumes in just a few words
Weiss’ wife, Nellie Bowles, with whom she cofounded The Free Press, said only this about her: “All I know is I went to bed with this adorable opinion writer and woke up next to Les Moonves. I’m as shocked as you are.”
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