One Dog Barking: CBS News gets a new leader, with an ideological agenda
An occasional column by John Dineen
There was a time when journalists were judged largely by the quality of their journalism, measured in any number of ways: scoops, insights, writing elegance, sheer productivity.
There were exceptions that stood out: Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly invented a new type of journalism on television in the 1950s; Theodore White shook up coverage of presidential politics with his book The Making of the President in 1960; 60 Minutes launched a new age of television news magazines. But even in those cases, people judged the journalism first. By and large, great journalists were recognized for their work within stable, successful business models: newspapers, magazines, nightly news broadcasts.
No more.
Oh, those journalists — that journalism — still exists. Traditional, thoughtful pieces particularly jump out in the new frenzied news ecosystem we all endure. But increasingly, many journalists gain prominence through their business acumen, their ability to navigate unstable editorial platforms, to game the ever-evolving business of attracting reader attention.
The latest poster child for that phenomenon — in the lucrative category of ideologically driven journalism — is, of course, Bari Weiss, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’s opinion sections, still of The Free Press, and now brand new editor-in-chief of CBS News, reporting to the CEO of parent company Paramount Skydance, David Ellison. The president of CBS News, Tom Cibrowski, who does not report directly to the big boss, would appear to have some adjusting to do.
According to the Times:
She achieved this without climbing the typical journalistic career ladder, and with no experience directing television coverage. She is richer in social clout than in Emmys or Pulitzers. And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions. While newsroom leaders do not traditionally trumpet their personal beliefs, Ms. Weiss has described herself as a “left-leaning centrist,” a “radical centrist,” “a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice” — she is married to Nellie Bowles, a former Times reporter who is a co-founder of The Free Press — and a proud recipient of the label “Zionist fanatic.”
If there’s nothing in Weiss’s journalism resume that remotely qualifies her for this new leadership role, there are plenty of clues as to what she likely plans to do with this opportunity. Weiss in July 2020 loudly left her job as a junior editor in the Times’s opinion section, decrying legacy media and claiming “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views” in her resignation letter to Times Publisher AG Sulzberger. A letter she, naturally, released to the public.
Jem Bartholomew notes in the Columbia Journalism Review:
It’s worth remembering that the Times did not fire Weiss, force her out, or lay her off — instead, she quit an influential job at one of the most powerful journalistic institutions in the US. In other words, her claim to martyrdom — which is, despite her identifying as center-left, a core attention-grabbing tactic mostly deployed by the right — rings disingenuous. Nevertheless she and figures on the right including Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump Jr. have used her experience as a shorthand for the worst excesses of the left.
Moira Donegan wrote in the Guardian at the time, “Weiss’s resignation letter reads less like an internal HR document and more like a pitch for a new venture, and it’s likely that Weiss will soon be outfitted with a book deal or a cushy new perch from which to continue her opining.”
Oh, Moira … however did you know?
Months after her departure from the Times, Weiss launched a newsletter, Common Sense, which grew into The Free Press. She had the backing of venture capitalists Mark Andreesen and David Sacks, one-time Democrats who have moved on to support Donald Trump.
According to Popular Information:
“In 2021, Weiss founded The Free Press, a publication that is purportedly committed to ‘honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence.’ In a 2023 column, Weiss suggested the progressive movement ‘demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.’ In 2024, Weiss claimed that the ‘political left … makes war on our common history, our common identity as Americans, and fundamentally, on the goodness of the American project.’”
Paramount is plunking down $150 million for The Free Press, where Weiss will have a side-gig in addition to running CBS News.
Dan Rather, he of CBS News fame, notes:
“In July, Skydance Media bought Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, for $8 billion. The deal had to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, which it did after Paramount settled a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump for $16 million. As part of the deal, Skydance had to agree to appoint an ombudsman. Kenneth Weinstein, an ally of Trump and a head of a conservative think tank, was chosen.
“That deal and the hiring of Weiss signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent, but under the tutelage of a conservative billionaire who is putting more than his thumb on the scale.”
What’s missing from this equation is, of course, the reader, the viewer, the user, the community. The metrics of success in journalism in 2025 are commercial, not communal — that is part of the context of Weiss’s hiring, alongside the distinct ideological goals. To apply John Doerr’s wisdom in the book Measure What Matters, journalism’s objectives are economic. The key results are market-based.
In the folk song If I had a Hammer, that hammer hammered out danger, it hammered out a warning, it hammered out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land.
That’s a pretty nifty hammer, but it exists only in song.
Our traditional journalism model is hammering nails; that’s all. In the case of Weiss, she also has an axe to grind.
If journalism is to play a role in restoring democracy, we will have to develop concrete objectives that reflect that goal, and key results to measure our progress. CBS may be abdicating its place in that fight, but other, community-based journalism models are not.
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