Bari Weiss, the Free Press founder who was tapped yesterday as editor-in-chief at CBS News, is being smeared.

I can tell you, from having interviewed her – and followed the extraordinary online news and commentary site she created – that this is an extremely smart and talented woman. 

She was a top opinion editor at the New York Times, where she melded liberal views – she couldn’t stand Donald Trump – with more conservative stances, such as believing the Democrats have moved too far left on some issues. Weiss resigned after three years, following what she described as "bullying by colleagues."

"Intellectual curiosity" was "now a liability at the Times," she said, and some colleagues "called me a Nazi and a racist…Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery."

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CBS, now controlled by the billionaire Ellison family, along with parent company Paramount, is a very different place. Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, is a Trump pal. And the old network had drawn flak for the misleading "60 Minutes" Kamala Harris interview, which led to a $16-million settlement of the president’s lawsuit.

With the new CBS buying Free Press for $150 million, Bari will be pretty wealthy – and that fueled the online backlash. Many libs are outrageously portraying Bari as a right-wing nutjob.

Jamelle Bouie, an ultra-liberal columnist at the Times: "A heartwarming story of how being an unethical and talentless hack is no barrier to your success when you are willing to endlessly flatter the ratchet views of rich dipshits."

Walker Bragman: "Bari Weiss is a misinformation-peddling right-wing operative. She is totally unqualified for this job."

Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the Times’ hugely controversial 1619 Project: "Zero news experience. Never been a reporter."

Well, let’s look at a former CBS News president, Sean McManus, who I know quite well. He took a series of production and management jobs in sports, became president of CBS Sports, and then was handed the news division as well. He’s never been a reporter either. I don’t recall anyone questioning his credentials. So that’s a bogus argument.

And how incompetent could she be to build from scratch an organization that is worth a small fortune? 

"The values that we’ve hammered out here over the years — journalism based in curiosity and honesty, a culture of healthy disagreement, our shared belief in America’s promise — now have the opportunity to go very, very big," she posted yesterday.

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"What does this mean for CBS News? It means a redoubled commitment to great journalism. It means building on a storied legacy—and bringing that historic newsroom into 2025 and beyond. Most of all, it means working tirelessly to make sure CBS News is the most trusted news organization in the world."

That may take a while. A Pew Research survey found 39 percent trusting CBS News and 23 percent distrusting it.

Bari, who also worked at the Wall Street Journal, founded the Free Press with her wife, Nellie Bowles, creating a must-read site with a vast array of opinions and 1.5 million subscribers (some of them paid).

In our "Media Buzz" interview this year, Bari confirmed that she sobbed at her desk when Trump won the White House in 2016.

"Look, I'm the first to admit that I was a sufferer of what conservatives at the time called TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and I was alarmed and really nervous about everything I was reading,"

And now? "What I didn't see was that Trump was going to do a lot of policies that I agreed with. I thought the Abraham Accords were historic and excellent. I thought his policy vis-a-vis Iran was excellent. The economy was better.

"And look, the argument that the country would unravel and democracy would die in darkness and Trump would be this authoritarian, Hitlerian power, it was impossible to make that argument in the run-up to this election only because Americans had lived through four years of him and things didn't fall apart."

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So how did she wind up at the Times in the first place?

"Howie, I was a diversity hire," she said, not really joking.

Bari started getting plenty of speaking invitations from conservatives, and recalls one in particular: "A consistently liberal Jewish lesbian from Pittsburgh. Who's a journalist, and I was being invited to the Federalist Society. It seemed kind of insane."

I asked her whether hanging out with zillionaires as she was raising money had changed her. She said she didn’t think so but understood how others might view it differently.

Anyone who doubts her knowledge of how television works should look at her "Honestly" podcast. Her guests have ranged from Marco Rubio to Rahm Emanuel, from Amanda Knox to Mike Huckabee, from Andrew Cuomo to Amy Coney Barrett.

Her finesse, and knowledge of movies, were recently on display in her 98-minute video podcast with Woody Allen. 

She got him to talk about the Knicks, love affairs, death, and why he doesn’t care what people think of him. But she also pressed him aggressively on the accusations, which he denies and were never proven, of child sexual abuse and how that scandal affected his life. When Woody was awkwardly silent, she just waited him out.

That’s why the left-wing sliming of the "consistently liberal" Bari Weiss, perhaps tinged by a bit of jealousy, is missing the mark. But reshaping the battered CBS News will be no small challenge.