When Bari Weiss took over as editor-in-chief of CBS News in October, it was a question of when, not if, she would fundamentally undermine the network’s credibility as a news organization. That it happened just 11 weeks into her reign is shocking, but it’s not surprising. After all, she was brought on at CBS not to do hard-hitting journalism, but largely for political and business reasons.
David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder and avowed Trump supporter Larry Ellison, acquired CBS News’ parent organization, Paramount, earlier this year, creating the new company Paramount Skydance. He then purchased Weiss’ “anti-woke” website, The Free Press, for the vastly inflated sum of $150 million and, as part of the deal, gave Weiss the newly created position of editor-in-chief at CBS News. In that role, Weiss reports directly to Ellison, not the head of CBS News or even the president of Paramount.
Weiss has an unquestionable talent for currying favor with rich, influential people who can advance her ambitions.
Barely three months into Weiss’ tenure at the Tiffany Network, it’s clear that soothing President Donald Trump’s fragile ego and helping Ellison establish a modern media empire are her key job requirements — good journalism be damned.
On Sunday, after months of reporting and repeated reviews by CBS legal and standards departments, Weiss stopped the broadcast of a segment on the network’s flagship news program, “60 Minutes,” that featured harrowing accounts of Venezuelan men who were deported earlier this year by the Trump administration to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. These men said they were subjected to brutal conditions that included physical violence and torture.
Weiss said she pulled the piece because the story required more reporting, including on-the-record comments from White House officials. But according to Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-tenured “60 Minutes” correspondent who took the lead on the piece, the story “is factually correct. … [P]ulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision; it is a political one.” Indeed, the CECOT story had moved so far along in the editorial process — and overcame so many legal and procedural hurdles — that a teaser clip promoting the episode was already public. Weiss reportedly pulled the plug a mere two hours before it was supposed to air.
Although Weiss would say it wasn’t a political decision, anyone who has followed her meteoric rise as a media mogul would have good reason to doubt her claim that stopping the story was all about journalistic ethics. Prior to founding The Free Press, she was an opinion editor who never worked as a reporter or even had a background in editing hard news.
However, Weiss has an unquestionable talent for currying favor with rich, influential people who can advance her ambitions. Her ascent to the top rung of CBS News, even though she has zero experience in broadcast television and a threadbare career in journalism, was a direct result of The Free Press’ political leanings. While financially successful, the website is a propagandistic news outlet that does little original reporting, frequently parrots Trump administration talking points and relies heavily on first-person essays built on anecdotes that satisfy the ideological priors of its right-leaning, “anti-woke” readers.
By installing Weiss in the news network’s top job, Ellison put his stamp on CBS News as “anti-woke” and pro-Trump. But make no mistake: For Ellison, acquiring CBS is merely a means to an end.
If Ellison and Weiss can turn CBS News into a pro-Trump news network, they could do the same with CNN.
Ellison’s purchase of Paramount firmly established him as one of the entertainment industry’s most prominent players. But to create a true media conglomerate, he needed to add a studio with a stable of beloved movies and TV shows. Doing so would allow Ellison to play in the same media sandbox as prominent media streamers like Disney and Amazon. That’s why Paramount Skydance is now pursuing a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, which also happens to be the parent company of CNN.
If Ellison and Weiss can turn CBS News into a pro-Trump news network, they could do the same with CNN, which is the argument Ellison apparently used with Trump to garner his support — and that of the administration’s regulatory arms — for the corporate merger.
According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, “Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump’s ire, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming.”
Trump’s obsession with news coverage — and his hatred of CNN — is well known. He and his underlings routinely describe any story that portrays him and his administration in a negative light as “fake news.” Indeed, Trump has already complained publicly not just about “60 Minutes” but about the Ellisons. On Friday night, he said at a political rally in North Carolina, “For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that ‘60 Minutes’ has treated me far worse since the so-called takeover than they have ever treated me before. If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!” Trump expects news organizations to toe the party line — only complete allegiance will satisfy him — and he has no compunction about using the powers of the federal government to that end. There’s probably nothing that Ellison could do to better win Trump’s favor in his bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery — and CNN — than having Weiss kill a “60 Minutes” story that portrays the White House and the Trump administration in a negative light. That Weiss seems to be going along with Ellison’s gambit, shredding both her credibility and that of “60 Minutes” (probably the country’s most venerable news program), is a sad though unsurprising decision. It also means that she is a very far cry from the person who, when she resigned from The New York Times in 2020, berated the news organization for engaging in “self censorship” and “satisfying a narrow audience rather than allowing a curious public to read.” According to that iteration of Bari Weiss, “ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.” Amen. If only Bari Weiss today lived that credo, rather than mocked it.
Michael Cohen is an MSNBC columnist. He is also the publisher of the newsletter Truth and Consequences and hosts the weekly podcast That ‘70s Movie Podcast. 
