The announcement by CBS News that Bari Weiss would take over as editor-in-chief drew immediate response from the mainstream media. The biggest critique? She has no background in broadcast journalism.
Fair enough — Weiss built her reputation as a writer and editor, not as a producer behind a camera. But that’s only part of the story. Her appointment may actually be the clearest sign yet that new ownership at CBS is trying to do something the network hasn’t done in decades: rebuild public trust.
CBS News was once considered the gold standard of American journalism. Yes, Archie Bunker didn't like him, but longtime CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite was culturally considered “the most trusted man in America.” When Cronkite ended his broadcasts, “And that’s the way it is,” viewers believed him. And, by proxy, they believed CBS.
That reputation has eroded. And not just because of changing media habits, but because CBS increasingly came to be seen as an institution with a left-leaning slant. It wasn’t invented by right-wing pundits; it was documented by people who knew CBS from the inside. Bernie Goldberg, who worked for CBS for nearly three decades, blew the whistle in his 2001 bestseller Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News.
Goldberg wasn’t a conservative crusader; he was a veteran newsman frustrated that his network no longer seemed capable of seeing its own blind spots. He argued that the bias wasn’t malicious — it was cultural. In newsrooms dominated almost, if not completely, by progressives, journalists didn’t even realize when their worldview colored their coverage.
Goldberg pointed to how CBS framed stories about taxes, welfare, or gun rights. The “good guys” and “bad guys” were pre-decided, and dissenting views were treated as outliers or fringe. To millions of viewers, CBS stopped sounding like a mirror of America and started sounding like an editorial page. It was the place to See B.S.
In 2004, Dan Rather — who had taken over the anchor slot when Cronkite retired in the 1980s — aired a bombshell report alleging that George W. Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.
The problem? The documents backing the story turned out to be fake. The fallout was catastrophic. Rather was forced out, producers were fired, and CBS’s credibility took a hit it’s never fully recovered from.
That episode didn’t just expose sloppy journalism; it confirmed what critics like Goldberg had been warning about: Political bias had clouded the network’s judgment.
Bari Weiss’ appointment makes sense. She’s not a product of the broadcast establishment, and that’s her value. Weiss made her name as an independent thinker — first at The New York Times, where she left over what she described as a stifling ideological culture, and later as founder of The Free Press, her own media venture committed to open debate and intellectual honesty.
She’s often branded a conservative by the left, but she’s anything but. She is a center-left classical liberal who supports same-sex marriage, abortion, and more. She is a free speech advocate, saying all voices should be heard.
That mindset is exactly what CBS needs. Traditional networks have been hemorrhaging viewers and credibility for years, especially among independents and conservatives who no longer trust mainstream news.
The skeptics do have a point: Running a broadcast newsroom is a different beast than running a Substack page. But the bigger issue isn’t whether Weiss can direct camera angles or manage anchor egos — she’ll have a team for that. The question is whether she can change a culture.
If she can restore a spirit of curiosity, fairness, and intellectual diversity — if she can make CBS a place where Americans of all stripes believe they’ll get the full story, not just one side — she’ll have achieved something no one in broadcast news has managed in a generation.
Consider14
this exchange between Archie and Edith Bunker in the 1971 episode of All In The Family, “Man on the Street”:
Archie: Edith, what channel is Cronkite on?
Edith: Channel 2, Archie. The one we don't watch 'cause you always say Walter Cronkite is a Communist.
Archie: I never said that, Edith. The man ain't all red.
In today's political terms, Bari Weiss' assignment is to make viewers feel CBS isn’t all Blue State or all Red State. And that’s the way it … can be.