Is Bari Weiss a Good Pick to Lead CBS?

Media criticisms quickly emerged this week over a cross-partisan deal in which Paramount purchased The Free Press (Lean Right bias) and named the outlet’s founder, Bari Weiss (Center), as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News (Lean Left).

“A Polarizing Provocateur:” An opinion writer for The Guardian (Left) called the move by CBS “the latest turn in the network’s confounding departure from its roots” as a former “Tiffany Network.” The writer referred to Weiss as “a staunch Zionist and a fierce opponent of supposed wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives” and criticized her as “someone with no news experience” and “no arrangement to communicate regularly to the public, as normal news ombudsmen or public editors have.” The article also highlighted various ways CBS has “settled” with the Trump administration in recent months.

More “Neoconservative” Than MAGA: Robby Soave (Lean Right), in an opinion article for Reason (Center), called Weiss “a centrist thinker critical of the left whose mission was to bring some measure of ideological diversity to the paper.” Soave highlighted Weiss’ allegations of bias and smothering of ideological diversity by her former employer, The New York Times (Lean Left). He said, “Her elevation to the position of editor in chief of CBS News is, in some sense, one of the clearest indicators yet that wokeness in media, like wokeness everywhere else, is a loser.” He also cautioned that, like wokeness, “patriotic correctness is also annoying,” and asserted, “Weiss isn’t Trump or MAGA.”

A “Heterodox” With a “Tough Job Ahead:” The National Review Editorial Board (Right) said that when Weiss published her resignation from The New York Times, “She wrote as a disillusioned liberal rather than as a doctrinaire conservative, but that was enough to earn her the ire of colleagues in a newsroom that could not tolerate any deviation from progressive groupthink.” The writers declared that protests of the move “aren’t about experience but the idea that the heterodox Weiss (a pro-choicer who doesn’t hate pro-lifers, a critic of woke overreach, a passionate supporter of Israel) will take control of an institution that the left views as one of theirs.” The opinion piece was framed optimistically, though it contended, “Weiss has a tough job ahead of her.” 

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