{"id":34331,"date":"2025-10-06T12:51:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T12:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/david-ellison-is-shaking-up-cbs-news-by-hiring-bari-weiss-heres-what-insiders-are-saying\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T12:51:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T12:51:15","slug":"david-ellison-is-shaking-up-cbs-news-by-hiring-bari-weiss-heres-what-insiders-are-saying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/david-ellison-is-shaking-up-cbs-news-by-hiring-bari-weiss-heres-what-insiders-are-saying\/","title":{"rendered":"David Ellison is shaking up CBS News by hiring Bari Weiss. Here&#8217;s what insiders are saying."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68dd432a1c1f80efbec4afe2?format=jpeg\" alt=\"David Ellison Bari Weiss\"\/><figcaption>David Ellison&#039;s Paramount Skydance is acquiring Bari Weiss&#039; The Free Press.<\/p>\n<p>Charly Triballeau\/AFP via Getty Images; Noam Galai\/Getty Images for The Free Press<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Bari Weiss and The Free Press are now part of David Ellison&#039;s Paramount Skydance.<\/li>\n<li>The acqui-hire shows how Ellison is making his mark on Paramount.<\/li>\n<li>Some CBS News and Paramount employees are wary of their new boss&#039; latest hire.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bari Weiss has a new home.<\/p>\n<p>The anti-establishment journalist is now the editor-in-chief of the storied CBS News. David Ellison&#039;s Paramount Skydance has hired Weiss and acquired The Free Press, the conservative-friendly news site Weiss founded after leaving The New York Times&#039; opinion section.<\/p>\n<p>Paramount announced the news on Monday morning. The editor-in-chief role is a new position for CBS News, reporting to Ellison. <\/p>\n<p>Paramount said in a statement that Weiss &quot;will shape editorial priorities, champion core values across platforms, and lead innovation in how the organization reports and delivers the news.&quot; It&#039;s not immediately clear what level of involvement Weiss will have in the newsroom&#039;s day-to-day operation and who will report to her.  Paramount said Weiss &quot;will partner with CBS News President Tom Cibrowski.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The Free Press &quot;will maintain its own independent brand and operations, and continue to do reporting, video and audio podcasts, and events,&quot; Paramount added.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Bari is a proven champion of independent, principled journalism, and I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News,&quot; Ellison said in a statement. &quot;This move is part of Paramount&#039;s bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects \u2014 directly and passionately \u2014 to audiences around the world.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Not all CBS News staffers will be giving Weiss a warm welcome. Business Insider spoke with five current and formeremployees across CBS News and Paramount who said they had hesitations about Ellison&#039;s decision to bring on Weiss.<\/p>\n<p>Some staffers were already on edge after Paramount settled President Donald Trump&#039;s lawsuit against &quot;60 Minutes&quot; in July for $16 million. Now, they worry Weiss&#039;s arrival could further entangle the newsroom politically.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The general sense is, &#039;This can&#039;t be happening,&#039;&quot; said a high-ranking journalist at CBS News, who doesn&#039;t think hiring Weiss would pay off since she doesn&#039;t have a background in TV. Weiss has worked on the editorial sides of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. It&#039;s worth noting that NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein also came from those two newspapers without a background in TV.<\/p>\n<p>One CBS News reporter was optimistic that Ellison&#039;s appointment of an editor-in-chief could signal that the news organization is prioritizing digital at a time when its TV audience is steadily shrinking. This person also questioned whether Weiss is qualified for the role.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;This partnership allows our ethos of fearless, independent journalism to reach an enormous, diverse, and influential audience,&quot; Weiss said in a statement. &quot;We honor the extraordinary legacy of CBS News by committing ourselves to a singular mission: building the most trusted news organization of the 21st Century.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Paramount didn&#039;t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<h2>A CBS News culture clash?<\/h2>\n<p>A cultural commentator like Weiss seems like &quot;quite an odd choice&quot; to lead CBS News, said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the media nonprofit Poynter Institute. CBS News is not overtly partisan but faces trust gaps across the political spectrum. Less than a quarter of Republicans trust the network, and Democrats view it less favorably than its peers, according to the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n<p>CBS News is hierarchical and grounded in history, said a longtime &quot;60 Minutes&quot; employee who left earlier this year. By contrast, Weiss is a contrarian who &quot;likes to go rogue&quot; and is highly opinionated on hot-button issues, like Israel&#039;s involvement in Gaza, they said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;How does she engender trust with the journalists she&#039;s trying to oversee?&quot; the former &quot;60 Minutes&quot; veteran said.<\/p>\n<p>While the Free Press is widely seen as leaning conservative, it&#039;s not a far-right site. Weiss and Co. have criticized Trump and his allies, including when the FCC pressured local ABC affiliates into deplatforming Jimmy Kimmel&#039;s late-night show.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;If they wanted a beloved-by-MAGA person, I&#039;m not sure she&#039;s it,&quot; Edmonds said.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Weiss is divisive precisely because she&#039;s not overtly partisan, said media analyst Alan Wolk, who co-founded TV research firm TVREV.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;She&#039;s demonized by both sides,&quot; Wolk said.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, hiring Weiss shortly after installing right-leaning ombudsman Kenneth Weinstein to monitor for bias may shift the perception of CBS News. Media industry observers are split on whether that&#039;s for the best, and how audiences feel may depend on their political leanings.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Trying to broaden your audience by bringing in different points of view is rarely successful, particularly with network news,&quot; TV industry consultant Cathy Rasenberger previously told Business Insider.<\/p>\n<p>Former ABC News anchor Terry Moran is more optimistic. &quot;Viewpoint diversity will make things better,&quot; Moran said when asked about rumors of Weiss joining CBS News. &quot;There&#039;s a monoculture and monothink in established media, and breaking that can only be good.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The former longtime &quot;60 Minutes&quot; staffer also said Weiss could jazz up CBS News with her knack for podcasts and newsletters.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;That&#039;s probably a good thing if it&#039;s going to stay alive and relevant,&quot; this person said.<\/p>\n<p>While hiring Weiss might be risky, it&#039;s driving buzz about CBS News \u2014 arguably for the first time since the &quot;60 Minutes&quot; lawsuit settlement.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;For putting attention on CBS News, it&#039;s a brilliant move,&quot; Wolk said.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Ellison&#039;s Paramount Skydance is acquiring Bari Weiss&#039; The Free Press. Charly Triballeau\/AFP via Getty Images; Noam Galai\/Getty Images for The Free Press Bari Weiss and The Free Press are now part of David Ellison&#039;s Paramount Skydance. The acqui-hire shows how Ellison is making his mark on Paramount. Some CBS News and Paramount employees are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34332,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}