Bari Weiss to be named CBS News’ editor in chief - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 10-03-2025, 01:59 AM

https://x.com/DylanByers/status/1973833358410199426

According to Puck News’ Dylan Byers, the polarizing editor and founder of the conservative outlet The Free Press is expected to be named editor in chief of CBS News on Monday. She’ll report directly to Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison as part of a deal to acquire The Free Press, which is also expected to be announced on Monday. According to the New York Post’s Alexandra Steigrad, “Weiss’s direct line to Ellison means she will not report to CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, who currently reports to George Cheeks, chair of TV media at Paramount Skydance. No further details could be immediately learned about how Weiss would work with Cibrowski.” Steigrad adds: “Sources told The Post that Weiss could be a strong counterpart to Cibrowski, a former Good Morning America executive who is regarded more as a production wizard than a journalist. Others said they expect it will only be a matter of time before Weiss — who has emerged as a leading voice against antisemitism and the ‘woke’ elites in mainstream media — zeroes in on Cibrowski’s job.”

TMC · 10-06-2025, 07:42 PM

Bari Weiss officially named CBS News editor in chief

Paramount acquired the Free Press for $150 million and named its co-founder Bari Weiss as CBS News' first-ever editor in chief.

TMC · 10-07-2025, 06:24 PM

Bari Weiss tells CBS News staffers: “Let’s do the f***ing news”

CBS News’ polarizing new editor in chief was introduced to staffers this morning. Weiss told staffers in a 9 a.m. call “she wants to ‘win,’ which requires restoring trust to CBS. She also said she was excited for staff to get to know the Free Press, and ended her remarks by saying: ‘Let’s do the ****ing news,’” according to Semafor’s Max Tani. CBS News president Tom Cibroski, who will work alongside Weiss but won’t be her boss, praised her, saying: “Bari’s energy and passion is infectious and you will feel it, big time.” He also added that the Free Press and CBS News “are going to learn a lot from each other...that’s what this is all about.” Meanwhile, one CBS News staffer told The Guardian that Weiss’ hiring is “utterly depressing. Somebody who has zero experience in television news or even hard news for that matter... but with a clearly defined political agenda.”

TMC · 10-08-2025, 08:41 PM

Bari Weiss’ will be managing CBS News' decline

So, I think savvy industry observers think that Weiss has maybe been brought on to manage the decline of CBS, I would think, by purging voices ...

TMC · 10-10-2025, 08:17 PM

Dan Rather blasts Bari Weiss’ hiring and Paramount-Skydance merger as “a dark day in the halls of CBS News”

TMC · 10-13-2025, 07:11 PM

John Oliver takes on Bari Weiss’ CBS News hiring, acknowledging that her boss could become his boss.

On the October 12, 2025, episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver heavily criticized the hiring of Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. He also explicitly acknowledged that the new boss at CBS News' parent company, David Ellison of Paramount Skydance, could soon become his boss at HBO's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).

Oliver devoted the main segment of his show to a deep dive into Weiss's background and journalistic track record, which he described as "at best irresponsible and at worst deeply misleading". He criticized her lack of experience in hard news reporting, noting she came from opinion pages, and pointed out instances where articles in her outlet, The Free Press, contained factual errors or linked to a known hoax site.

Oliver also addressed the larger corporate implications of the hiring. He noted that David Ellison, the billionaire CEO of Paramount Skydance, bought The Free Press and installed Weiss to lead CBS News. Oliver then revealed that Ellison is reportedly exploring a bid to acquire WBD, the media conglomerate that owns HBO and CNN, which would make Ellison his boss.

Oliver commented on the awkwardness of the situation, quipping, "if what he likes about Bari is that she forces him to have hard conversations, to get a bit uncomfortable, maybe he'll like this". He used the segment to warn viewers to keep a close eye on the editorial changes at CBS News, expressing concern that a billionaire was injecting "contrarian, right-leaning opinion journalism into an American icon".

TMC · 12-18-2025, 09:39 PM

CBS News announces town hall and debate series Things That Matter

Following last weekend’s Bari Weiss-Erika Kirk town hall, CBS News announced Thursday that it planned to air a series called Things That Matter, featuring town halls and debates involving newsmakers and people shaping American life. “The events will be held in front of audiences with some stake in the issue, in venues across the nation,” says Variety’s Brian Steinberg. “The program will launch formally in the new year, with what a person familiar with the matter says is a rotating series of hosts.” Guests for the town halls will include Vice President JD Vance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, while the debates will feature Isabel Brown and Harry Sisson; Ross Douthat and Steven Pinker. and Liz Plank and Allie Beth Stuckey. “We believe that the vast majority of Americans crave honest conversation and civil, passionate debate,” Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor in chief, said in a statement. “This series is for them. In a moment in which people believe that truth is whatever they are served on their social media feed, we can think of nothing more important than insisting that the only way to get to the truth is by speaking to one another.”

TMC · 01-13-2026, 10:17 PM

Bari Weiss wants CBS Evening News to tell stories with “viral potential”

“Let’s make sure every single night has something with viral potential,” the CBS News editor in chief wrote in a memo ahead of Tony Dokoupil’s as CBS Evening News anchor, according to The New York Times. The “viral potential” started with Dokoupil going on a 10-city road show. “The goal for this road show is not to deliver the news so much as it is to *drive the news*,” Weiss wrote in a note obtained by The Times. “We need to *be the news* for these 10 days.” As The Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin point out, Weiss has indeed made CBS Evening News go viral, but “perhaps not in the way she hoped. Her reimagining of CBS News has faced heavy scrutiny, and even became a punchline on her own network: At Sunday’s Golden Globes, broadcast by CBS, the host, Nikki Glaser, earned one of her biggest laughs when she declared that CBS News was ‘America’s newest place to see BS news.’ (David Ellison, the technology heir who controls CBS and installed Ms. Weiss, was in the audience.) That Ms. Weiss’s news division merited a mention at a Hollywood awards show speaks to how the disruptions at CBS have penetrated the culture beyond the media in-crowd — and underscored questions already hanging over her bumpy stewardship of a major news institution.” Weiss’ micromanaging led to Dokoupil’s teleprompter gaffe on his official debut last Monday, Grynbaum and Mullin report. “The blunder occurred in part because Ms. Weiss and her aides were rewriting the Evening News script up until minutes before the 6:30 p.m. airtime, three people with knowledge of the events said,” they report. The CBS Evening News negative headlines come on the heels of Weiss controversially pulling a 60 Minutes “Inside CECOT” segment at the last minute. “Privately, Ms. Weiss has been deeply frustrated by the negative reaction to her decisions, and has blamed some subordinates for not stanching the criticism, three people familiar with internal discussions said,” report Mullins and Grynbaum. “Ms. Weiss’s wife, Nellie Bowles, a former reporter at The Times, openly mocked the objections of the 60 Minutes staff who had clashed with her spouse in a column published by The Free Press, which Ms. Weiss continues to oversee.” “My lovely wife asked some 60 Minutes producers to report out a story a little more, literally Hey guys make a couple more phone calls and then we’ll run the piece in a week or two,” Bowles wrote. “No! the media collectively shrieked. We shan’t!”

ALSO:

TMC · 01-25-2026, 06:48 PM

“60 Minutes” Civil War: No New Show Tonight, Repeat of Irrelevant Celeb Interviews from Past Seasons Flags Turmoil

Quote:

January 25, 2026 2:30 am
By Roger Friedman

There will be no new episode of “60 Minutes” tonight.

Instead, the Emmy winning, venerated news program is showing three archived movie star profiles with no relevance to anything current.

The profiled actors are Timothee Chalamet from last year, Jamie Lee Curtis from May 2025, and Kate Winslet from 2024. Only one, Chalamet, is an Oscar nominee this year. But his interview isn’t for “Marty Supreme,” but for last year’s “A Complete Unknown.”

(I was actually assured some time ago that a new Chalamet piece about “Marty Supreme” was coming during this Oscar campaign. That may not be the case now.)

This comes as there’s been another ICE killing in Minnesota, riots and protests in Minneapolis, and a week when Donald Trump was mocked in Davos over his obsession with Greenland. Measles is spreading in South Carolina, as well. Any of these topics would have made for a scintillating new episode tonight.

Clearly, a show that was supposed to air tonight simply has been pulled. Under CBS news shill Bari Weiss and CBS owners David and Larry Ellison, “60 Minutes” is being destroyed, quickly, from within.

There is absolutely no reason why a new show wouldn’t be on tonight. It should be obvious that there is no promo for tonight’s show. (Promos are usually dropped on Thursday or Friday.) And nothing on the “60 Minutes” website page has been updated since last Sunday.

Last week, “60 Minutes” finally aired its censored piece by Sharyn Alfonsi on the CECOT prison in El Salvador. The whole show was up against the NFL, had no football lead in of its own, was disposed of a sop to critics and Alfonsi. The result was one of the lowest rated episodes in years.

Since then, Weiss has made it clear she wants to remove Alfonsi, Bill Whitaker, Scott Pelley, and any of the staff that comes from established and respected “60 Minutes.” As far as Weiss is concerned, they could be replaced by seals. Her goal, her mission, is to undermine the legacy of CBS News.

Weiss has been doing this for three weeks now at the CBS Evening News, which has turned into a circus under new host Tony Dokoupil.

Meanwhile, I’m curious to see what the CBS Sunday Morning piece is today on Shen Yun. I written extensively about this cult that’s tied to the Epoch Times. See below.

The acting CEO of The Epoch Times is on the board of the Kennedy Center under Donald Trump. Coincidence? Nope.

TMC · 01-28-2026, 01:23 AM

Bari Weiss tells CBS News staffers: “I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century”

At an “all-hands” meeting this morning, CBS News’ editor in chief said while Walter Cronkite “had two competitors,” CBS has “two billion.” “I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers,” Weiss told CBS News staffers. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers a journalist: transparency. Clarity. Straight talk. So here it is as plan as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years, and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here.” Weiss said she understood “why, in the face of all this tumult, you might feel uncertain or skeptical about me or what I’m aiming to do here. I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers.” But she told her staff: “Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.” Weiss also said that the network would invest in brands like 60 Minutes, 48 Hours and CBS Sunday Morning with podcasts, newsletters and live journalism.

ALSO:

Bari Weiss said she doesn’t plan to pull any future 60 Minutes segments after they’ve already been promoted after the “Inside CECOT” debacle: “It’s always going to be my prerogative as of editor of this newsroom to say that I want more information and to push to get new information,” she said. “Now am I ever going to hold something again after it has been put out there with promos? I don’t want to make that exact same decision again. No, I do not.”
Bari Weiss is expected to make significant cuts to the CBS News newsroom, though she did not address them in her remarks to staff
Bari Weiss tells staffers: “Ratings are the past. It doesn’t mean they don’t matter”
CBS News names 19 new contributors to write articles and host podcasts, including conservative commentator and Bari Weiss pal Niall Ferguson
Gayle King rallied the troops in a passionate speech that discouraged leaking: “I just want to say something about working at CBS,” the CBS Mornings co-host said. “I think we’ve all been walking around with gasoline on our pants. We’ve had a lot of incoming. People come and pet me like a puppy and say, ‘I’m so sorry that you’re leaving CBS. I won’t watch you guys again. And it’s not the same place.’ And when I come here, what I see everyday are people who really love what they do. We work really hard, we’re very proud of what we do here, and I don’t want anybody to lose sight of that.”

TMC · 02-13-2026, 01:33 AM

CBS Evening News loses 11 of 40 staffers to buyouts

“Approximately 11 members out of a production staff of about 40 have opted to leave,” reports Variety’s Brian Steinberg of the CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss-led overhaul. According to Steinberg, “at least two employees taking the buyout were veteran producers, who played significant roles in getting CBS Evening News out each weekday.”

10-03-2025, 01:59 AM	#1
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	Bari Weiss to be named CBS News’ editor in chief https://x.com/DylanByers/status/1973833358410199426 According to Puck News’ Dylan Byers, the polarizing editor and founder of the conservative outlet The Free Press is expected to be named editor in chief of CBS News on Monday. She’ll report directly to Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison as part of a deal to acquire The Free Press, which is also expected to be announced on Monday. According to the New York Post’s Alexandra Steigrad, “Weiss’s direct line to Ellison means she will not report to CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, who currently reports to George Cheeks, chair of TV media at Paramount Skydance. No further details could be immediately learned about how Weiss would work with Cibrowski.” Steigrad adds: “Sources told The Post that Weiss could be a strong counterpart to Cibrowski, a former Good Morning America executive who is regarded more as a production wizard than a journalist. Others said they expect it will only be a matter of time before Weiss — who has emerged as a leading voice against antisemitism and the ‘woke’ elites in mainstream media — zeroes in on Cibrowski’s job.”

01-13-2026, 10:17 PM	#8
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	Bari Weiss wants CBS Evening News to tell stories with “viral potential” “Let’s make sure every single night has something with viral potential,” the CBS News editor in chief wrote in a memo ahead of Tony Dokoupil’s as CBS Evening News anchor, according to The New York Times. The “viral potential” started with Dokoupil going on a 10-city road show. “The goal for this road show is not to deliver the news so much as it is to drive the news,” Weiss wrote in a note obtained by The Times. “We need to be the news for these 10 days.” As The Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin point out, Weiss has indeed made CBS Evening News go viral, but “perhaps not in the way she hoped. Her reimagining of CBS News has faced heavy scrutiny, and even became a punchline on her own network: At Sunday’s Golden Globes, broadcast by CBS, the host, Nikki Glaser, earned one of her biggest laughs when she declared that CBS News was ‘America’s newest place to see BS news.’ (David Ellison, the technology heir who controls CBS and installed Ms. Weiss, was in the audience.) That Ms. Weiss’s news division merited a mention at a Hollywood awards show speaks to how the disruptions at CBS have penetrated the culture beyond the media in-crowd — and underscored questions already hanging over her bumpy stewardship of a major news institution.” Weiss’ micromanaging led to Dokoupil’s teleprompter gaffe on his official debut last Monday, Grynbaum and Mullin report. “The blunder occurred in part because Ms. Weiss and her aides were rewriting the Evening News script up until minutes before the 6:30 p.m. airtime, three people with knowledge of the events said,” they report. The CBS Evening News negative headlines come on the heels of Weiss controversially pulling a 60 Minutes “Inside CECOT” segment at the last minute. “Privately, Ms. Weiss has been deeply frustrated by the negative reaction to her decisions, and has blamed some subordinates for not stanching the criticism, three people familiar with internal discussions said,” report Mullins and Grynbaum. “Ms. Weiss’s wife, Nellie Bowles, a former reporter at The Times, openly mocked the objections of the 60 Minutes staff who had clashed with her spouse in a column published by The Free Press, which Ms. Weiss continues to oversee.” “My lovely wife asked some 60 Minutes producers to report out a story a little more, literally Hey guys make a couple more phone calls and then we’ll run the piece in a week or two,” Bowles wrote. “No! the media collectively shrieked. We shan’t!” ALSO: Tony Dokoupil lands interview with President Trump in Detroit for tonight’s CBS Evening News Tony Dokoupil accused of using President Trump’s Truth Social to source a “fact” in an interview with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis Jerry Seinfeld’s eldest child, 25-year-old Sascha Seinfeld, was brought on from Bari Weiss’ The Free Press to work for her at CBS News

01-28-2026, 01:23 AM	#10
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	Bari Weiss tells CBS News staffers: “I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century” At an “all-hands” meeting this morning, CBS News’ editor in chief said while Walter Cronkite “had two competitors,” CBS has “two billion.” “I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers,” Weiss told CBS News staffers. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers a journalist: transparency. Clarity. Straight talk. So here it is as plan as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years, and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here.” Weiss said she understood “why, in the face of all this tumult, you might feel uncertain or skeptical about me or what I’m aiming to do here. I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers.” But she told her staff: “Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.” Weiss also said that the network would invest in brands like 60 Minutes, 48 Hours and CBS Sunday Morning with podcasts, newsletters and live journalism. ALSO: Bari Weiss said she doesn’t plan to pull any future 60 Minutes segments after they’ve already been promoted after the “Inside CECOT” debacle: “It’s always going to be my prerogative as of editor of this newsroom to say that I want more information and to push to get new information,” she said. “Now am I ever going to hold something again after it has been put out there with promos? I don’t want to make that exact same decision again. No, I do not.” Bari Weiss is expected to make significant cuts to the CBS News newsroom, though she did not address them in her remarks to staff Bari Weiss tells staffers: “Ratings are the past. It doesn’t mean they don’t matter” CBS News names 19 new contributors to write articles and host podcasts, including conservative commentator and Bari Weiss pal Niall Ferguson Gayle King rallied the troops in a passionate speech that discouraged leaking: “I just want to say something about working at CBS,” the CBS Mornings co-host said. “I think we’ve all been walking around with gasoline on our pants. We’ve had a lot of incoming. People come and pet me like a puppy and say, ‘I’m so sorry that you’re leaving CBS. I won’t watch you guys again. And it’s not the same place.’ And when I come here, what I see everyday are people who really love what they do. We work really hard, we’re very proud of what we do here, and I don’t want anybody to lose sight of that.”

10-06-2025, 07:42 PM	#2
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	Bari Weiss officially named CBS News editor in chief Paramount acquired the Free Press for $150 million and named its co-founder Bari Weiss as CBS News' first-ever editor in chief.

10-07-2025, 06:24 PM	#3
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	Bari Weiss tells CBS News staffers: “Let’s do the fing news”* CBS News’ polarizing new editor in chief was introduced to staffers this morning. Weiss told staffers in a 9 a.m. call “she wants to ‘win,’ which requires restoring trust to CBS. She also said she was excited for staff to get to know the Free Press, and ended her remarks by saying: ‘Let’s do the ****ing news,’” according to Semafor’s Max Tani. CBS News president Tom Cibroski, who will work alongside Weiss but won’t be her boss, praised her, saying: “Bari’s energy and passion is infectious and you will feel it, big time.” He also added that the Free Press and CBS News “are going to learn a lot from each other...that’s what this is all about.” Meanwhile, one CBS News staffer told The Guardian that Weiss’ hiring is “utterly depressing. Somebody who has zero experience in television news or even hard news for that matter... but with a clearly defined political agenda.”

10-08-2025, 08:41 PM	#4
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	Bari Weiss’ will be managing CBS News' decline So, I think savvy industry observers think that Weiss has maybe been brought on to manage the decline of CBS, I would think, by purging voices ...

10-10-2025, 08:17 PM	#5
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	Dan Rather blasts Bari Weiss’ hiring and Paramount-Skydance merger as “a dark day in the halls of CBS News”

10-13-2025, 07:11 PM	#6
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	John Oliver takes on Bari Weiss’ CBS News hiring, acknowledging that her boss could become his boss. On the October 12, 2025, episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver heavily criticized the hiring of Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. He also explicitly acknowledged that the new boss at CBS News' parent company, David Ellison of Paramount Skydance, could soon become his boss at HBO's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Oliver devoted the main segment of his show to a deep dive into Weiss's background and journalistic track record, which he described as "at best irresponsible and at worst deeply misleading". He criticized her lack of experience in hard news reporting, noting she came from opinion pages, and pointed out instances where articles in her outlet, The Free Press, contained factual errors or linked to a known hoax site. Oliver also addressed the larger corporate implications of the hiring. He noted that David Ellison, the billionaire CEO of Paramount Skydance, bought The Free Press and installed Weiss to lead CBS News. Oliver then revealed that Ellison is reportedly exploring a bid to acquire WBD, the media conglomerate that owns HBO and CNN, which would make Ellison his boss. Oliver commented on the awkwardness of the situation, quipping, "if what he likes about Bari is that she forces him to have hard conversations, to get a bit uncomfortable, maybe he'll like this". He used the segment to warn viewers to keep a close eye on the editorial changes at CBS News, expressing concern that a billionaire was injecting "contrarian, right-leaning opinion journalism into an American icon".

12-18-2025, 09:39 PM	#7
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	CBS News announces town hall and debate series Things That Matter Following last weekend’s Bari Weiss-Erika Kirk town hall, CBS News announced Thursday that it planned to air a series called Things That Matter, featuring town halls and debates involving newsmakers and people shaping American life. “The events will be held in front of audiences with some stake in the issue, in venues across the nation,” says Variety’s Brian Steinberg. “The program will launch formally in the new year, with what a person familiar with the matter says is a rotating series of hosts.” Guests for the town halls will include Vice President JD Vance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, while the debates will feature Isabel Brown and Harry Sisson; Ross Douthat and Steven Pinker. and Liz Plank and Allie Beth Stuckey. “We believe that the vast majority of Americans crave honest conversation and civil, passionate debate,” Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor in chief, said in a statement. “This series is for them. In a moment in which people believe that truth is whatever they are served on their social media feed, we can think of nothing more important than insisting that the only way to get to the truth is by speaking to one another.”

02-13-2026, 01:33 AM	#11
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,131	CBS Evening News loses 11 of 40 staffers to buyouts “Approximately 11 members out of a production staff of about 40 have opted to leave,” reports Variety’s Brian Steinberg of the CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss-led overhaul. According to Steinberg, “at least two employees taking the buyout were veteran producers, who played significant roles in getting CBS Evening News out each weekday.”