Liberals are up in arms over reports that independent journalist Bari Weiss is eyeing a top role at CBS News as the new Paramount chief is inching closer to striking a major deal with her.
Puck News reported Wednesday that Paramount CEO David Ellison, who just took over the company last month following his $8 billion merger with Skydance, is at the "one-yard line" with his plans to buy Weiss' online publication The Free Press and appoint her to a top editorial position at the struggling broadcast network.
Weiss, a classical liberal who famously exited The New York Times in 2020 after facing bullying by far-left colleagues, has largely been ostracized by the cultural left for The Free Press' reporting that challenges DEI, gender ideology and media narratives against Israel during its ongoing war with Hamas.
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New Paramount owner David Ellison is reportedly on the "one-yard line" in striking a deal with Bari Weiss, involving a multi-million buyout of The Free Press and giving her a prominent position at CBS News. (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images; James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images; Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press)
Status newsletter author Oliver Darcy lamented the looming deal, calling the reported $100 to 200 million price tag an "absurd sum."
"David Ellison vowed not to politicize Paramount—yet his first big move at CBS News is a major bet on Bari Weiss, one of the most polarizing figures in media," Darcy began his newsletter Wednesday night. "Weiss, the stridently pro-Israel, proudly anti-'woke' culture warrior, has built her brand on polarizing political commentary—supposedly the type of material Ellison signaled to reporters that he wishes to run away from."
Darcy warned, "Handing Weiss the keys won’t broaden trust—it will further erode it among the people who actually watch the network, reinforcing suspicions about Ellison’s agenda. In effect, the move will set CBS News on a course to squander its hard-earned credibility with the audience that reveres its history and demands it stand unbowed to power."
HuffPost similarly branded Weiss the "polarizing editor of The Free Press" in its report and said the pending acquisition "offers a preview of how Ellison, the son of a top Trump ally, intends to shape CBS News moving forward." Salon referred to Weiss as "the polarizing editor and founder of conservative outlet The Free Press" and called her a "controversial figure."
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The far-left magazine The Nation published a piece with a headline decrying "Vile Grifters Are Taking Over Establishment Media."
"If we lived in a less terrible time and place, Weiss would be dismissed as a crank and a bigot, and never heard from again. But we live in the waking nightmare that is the United States in 2025. So instead, Weiss is being rewarded with a prize that even she must think is kind of wild. That prize? CBS News," The Nation senior editor Jack Mirkinson wrote Thursday, calling the deal "disturbing."
"Whatever CBS News currently is, it isn’t just some hate factory pumping out shoddy propaganda 24/7. But now it’s being shipped over to one of the leading hateful propagandists of our time," he wrote, later adding, "I hope that CBS News staffers resist this attempt to destroy their workplace with everything they have. I hope that Weiss’s tenure atop CBS is short and failed. But mostly, I hope that one day we live in a world where people like Weiss are treated with the contempt they deserve and are hurled into the cultural wilderness where they belong."
Liberals are enraged following reports that The Free Press founder Bari Weiss could be given a top role at CBS News. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
While conservatives and critics of the legacy media have largely welcomed the idea of Weiss leading a CBS overhaul, liberals and anti-Israel commentators slammed the move on social media.
"The right wing grift economy is undefeated," ex-Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz reacted.
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"finally! a pro israel voice in mainstream media!" progressive Twitch personality Hasan Piker sarcastically exclaimed.
"CBS about to become your go-to news source on keffiyeh-wearing college students, how wokeness is the defining crisis of our times, whatever trans kids are up to, and whatever this is," liberal writer Jil Filipovic said while sharing a screenshot of a Free Press op-ed penned by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.
"I don't hate the Free Press and I think Bari Weiss definitely has a lane. I frankly think it was a mistake to let her go from the Times - there is definitely a demand for anti-woke center-right people on the op/ed pages. But that lane is not running CBS News (!)," Flipovic added.
Bari Weiss famously quit The New York Times with a scathing resignation letter in which she detailed bullying by then colleagues in an "illiberal environment." (Getty Images/Bari Weiss)
CBS and Paramount declined to comment. The Free Press didn't respond to a request for comment.