Taking charge of CBS News in early October with no television industry experience, and already facing both deep skepticism from many network employees and a faltering business model, Bari Weiss began with a lot working against her.
Still, her three months as editor in chief have been more chaotic than even many of her critics expected. “There is blood in the water,” said one CBS News journalist, who, like the others quoted in this story, was not authorized by the network to comment.
In recent days, a group of former CBS News journalists drafted a letter to David Ellison, the man who bought Weiss’s company, the Free Press, and put her atop the network, expressing deep reservations about her recent decision to pull a segment originally scheduled to air on the 21 December episode of 60 Minutes, creating perhaps the first real crisis of her tenure.
The story, by veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, had been abruptly removed from the show’s lineup after Weiss determined that it had issues that needed to be addressed, including a lack of a response from the Trump administration. Still, the decision shocked those inside and outside the company. The network has said the segment, about abuses at the Cecot prison in El Salvador, will air at a later date, likely this month. (The segment did not air on Sunday’s edition of 60 Minutes, though another piece reported by Alfonsi did.)
“This clumsy editorial interference endangers 60 Minutes’ role as CBS’s flagship public interest broadcast and as the news division’s most profitable franchise,” according to an early draft of the letter, which was originally slated to be sent on Saturday. “The crown jewel of the network you recently acquired now faces a crisis of credibility and trust.”
While the letter received nearly 200 signatories, including many veteran journalists as well as prominent individuals in the entertainment industry, the organizers have shelved it for now – “giving the staff at CBS News an opportunity to continue doing the good work they do”.
One signatory listed was former 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman, who was blocked by the network from publishing an exclusive interview with a tobacco industry whistleblower in the mid-1990s. That incident was cited in an email Alfonsi sent to colleagues protesting Weiss’s decision to pull the piece as “political”.
Alfonsi’s email was a rare rebuke of company management that could be seen by some as insubordination. It also served as the first open airing of grievances that many network staffers have expressed anonymously for weeks and months about Weiss. (Alfonsi did not respond to an email seeking comment.)
“I’ve known and worked with Sharyn Alfonsi for nearly 20 years, and I trust and support her completely,” Rome Hartman, a former 60 Minutes producer who left the network last year, said in an interview. “I don’t know Bari Weiss at all, and I don’t pretend to know why she did what she did with this piece. Sharyn’s explanation to her colleagues of what happened is clear and compelling. I can’t say the same about Weiss’s explanations so far.”
Hartman said he doubts the open letter to Ellison will help, considering that Weiss seems to be accomplishing the mission he gave her.
While Weiss successfully pulled Alfonsi’s segment, it was too late for the Canadian television network Global TV, which aired it, providing an easy basis for comparison if and when the segment airs on CBS.
“Anyone with network TV experience could have warned her that holding that story would have been like walking the plank,” a former CBS News reporter said. “Once you promote it, there are very limited circumstances under which you hold it, including it being false. That wasn’t the case. But I think it’s also true that it wasn’t moving the story forward and it could have included the administration’s perspective. So I think there was blame to go around.”
We are a prideful newsroom, and she’s rubbing people the wrong wayA CBS News staffer
In addition to a chorus of criticism from liberals, Weiss has faced blowback from stars of the conservative media world who are normally aligned with her anti-woke, anti-cancel culture political alignment. One of Weiss’s first big moves was a 13 December town hall with Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, that failed to attract major advertisers and performed weakly with viewers.
“Bari Weiss wants to couch herself as Erika’s protector, Erika’s defender,” Megyn Kelly said at an event held recently by Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA. “Bari doesn’t know anything about Erika. Bari Weiss has never been to a Turning Point event.”
During the town hall, Kelly said: “Bari Weiss tried to play both super-important VIP executive and super-fabulous star anchor at her new network, CBS.”
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has also spoken dismissively about Weiss. “I’m not too worried about Bari Weiss taking over the world,” he said on a recent episode of his streaming show, criticizing her support for Israel. “I don’t care how many billionaires hand her news organizations because she’s obedient to their preferred country. She’s still an idiot – sorry.” (He said, however, that she’s “very charming and very energetic”.)
Journalists at CBS News say that Weiss still has not laid out a clear strategy for how she wants the network to change and adapt, though she is expected to do so as soon as this week, sources say.
“I’m constantly confused by what her definition of ‘making news’ is,” a second current CBS News staffer said. “It seems like she only cares about big names saying controversial things. That’s not the same as newsworthiness.”
In recent weeks, she has infrequently joined the network’s daily editorial calls – though she spoke up on 22 December to address the 60 Minutes controversy and seemed to criticize some of her employees. “The only newsroom I’m interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters with respect and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues,” she said, according to an audio recording of her remarks. “Anything else is absolutely unacceptable.”
Other than that, “we don’t hear from her very often”, the CBS News staffer said.
Some see that as a good thing, however. “We are a prideful newsroom, and she’s rubbing people the wrong way,” a third network staffer said.
With Weiss in charge, there have also been internal cultural clashes on issues that align with her worldview, including a previously unreported 6 November blow-up among staffers about language choices when writing about transgender individuals. A prominent correspondent at the network wrote in an email viewed by the Guardian that CBS “should refrain from adopting terminology advocated by the movement”, referring to guidance from the Trans Journalists Association’s stylebook about how to use the phrase “biological sex”. A producer responded angrily to the correspondent, writing: “It’s a TJA style ‘guide’ – that’s what I’m trying to do. Guide us to better coverage.”
Despite negative headlines about her tenure, it’s still extremely early in Weiss’s career at the network and she will surely have a long runway to prove out her vision – whatever she determines that to be.
“She’s trying to affect a deep cultural change at that network, and that is probably one of the toughest challenges in media,” said Catherine Herridge, a former CBS News investigative journalist. “I still think that if anyone can do it, she probably can. She’s very tough, she’s very smart, and this is monumental what she’s trying to do.”
The network’s journalists have also churned out scoops in recent days, despite the distractions. CBS News was first to report early on Saturday that the Trump administration was responsible for the explosions that were reported in Venezuela.
Weiss will have another opportunity for a programming win on Monday, when her revamped evening news show, anchored by Weiss favorite Tony Dokoupil, will officially launch – though the first CBS News staffer said the run-up to the launch has been “chaotic”. (Weiss had attempted to recruit star anchors from rival networks, including Fox heavyweights Bret Baier and Dana Perino, but discovered they were locked into long-term contracts.)
Tony Dokoupil will anchor CBS’s revamped evening news show. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP
As a promotion for the debut, CBS News sent Dokoupil to New York’s Grand Central Station, where he found few travelers who could pronounce his last name – or who seemed to know who he was.
Dokoupil was set to begin the show with a 10-city, 10-day tour across the country, but due to the US military action in Venezuela he anchored a special edition of the show on Saturday night and will anchor from New York City on Monday – instead of Miami. The episode featured a lengthy interview with secretary of defense Pete Hegseth that was booked by Weiss. The cross-country tour, which had raised cost concerns among staffers at a time when they are bracing for further corporate layoffs, will resume later this week, according to the network. (Weiss was expected to join Dokoupil on some of the stops.)
While CBS News declined to make Dokoupil available for an interview, he published a message to viewers criticizing “legacy” media for excessively relying on academics, “elites” and “advocates” – “and not the average American”. Larry Sabato, an elections expert at the University of Virginia, mockingly replied in a post on X: “Absolutely! You wouldn’t want ‘academics and elites’ who have actually studied a subject to outweigh the off-the-cuff opinions of village idiots.”
Responding to skeptical messages on social media, Dokoupil told one critic who unfavorably compared the network’s current iteration with the days of legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite: “I can promise you we’ll be more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or anyone else of his era.”
Undeterred by the lackluster response to the Erika Kirk town hall, the network recently announced an event series called Things That Matter, which will include town halls featuring the vice-president, JD Vance, and the Maryland governor, Wes Moore, though it’s unclear whether Weiss will be among the CBS News personalities who moderate them. There will also be debates on issues like gender and religion, all sponsored by Bank of America.
Despite the protests of some employees and a lot of racket on social media platforms such as Bluesky, ultimately the only person who matters is Ellison, who has shown no disillusionment with Weiss’s performance.
If anything, she might even double the size of her role in the near future if Ellison is successful at acquiring the assets of Warner Bros Discovery, including CNN, a prospect that has worried some staffers at the cable network.
The irony of the 60 Minutes dust-up is that Weiss and her bosses had recently received something of an endorsement from one of the show’s veteran correspondents. When accepting an award in Washington DC on 12 December, Scott Pelley acknowledged it’s “early” but said: “What I can tell you is we are doing the same kinds of stories with the same kind of rigor, and we have experienced no corporate interference of any kind.” Some on social media chimed in at the time that Pelley might be speaking too soon.
While some have suggested that CBS News journalists who oppose Weiss’s tenure might head for the exits, that seems unlikely, particularly at a time when television jobs are hard to come by. “I know the mood is to stay and fight,” the first CBS News staffer said, with some hoping they may be able to outlast Weiss’s tenure.
