All posts tagged: Bari

Gavin Newsom, Bari Weiss, and the Washington Power Class Gather for the Vanity Fair and CAA Party to Celebrate WHCD Weekend

Gavin Newsom, Bari Weiss, and the Washington Power Class Gather for the Vanity Fair and CAA Party to Celebrate WHCD Weekend

Bari Weiss—who will have fifteen (!) tables for CBS at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, her first ever WCHD as well as her first as editor-in-chief of the network—chats with the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd and Michael Grynbaum (who wrote the recent history of Condé Nast, Vanity Fair’s parent company). Vermont Congresswoman Becca Balint, who recently roasted Pam Bondi during her congressional hearing , dishes that she enlarged Christopher Anderson’s photos for Vanity Fair—the ones of Susie Wiles, Karoline Leavitt, Marco Rubio, et al—and put them on her office wall. Meanwhile, former CBS producer Shawna Thomas, who left the network just months after Weiss’s contested arrival, introduces herself to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who simply cannot make it past the grand foyer and into the bustling party on account of the crowd that descends on him. “I’m the political director of MS Now,” Thomas says—or she will be. She starts in June. Newsom poses for a photo with Oz Pearlman, the mentalist booked to perform at tomorrow’s dinner. “Will you be going?” I ask …

Tony Dokoupil Is the Face of the Bari Weiss Revolution at CBS News. Will He Survive It?

Tony Dokoupil Is the Face of the Bari Weiss Revolution at CBS News. Will He Survive It?

Others see all the angst around Weiss as a little hysterical. One reporter who’s fond of her calls it “Bari derangement syndrome.” To her defenders inside CBS, she’s a well-meaning if naive liberal whose errors are borne more out of inexperience than malice. She may have been out of place amid the progressive paroxysm that engulfed The New York Times in 2020, but she’s hardly MAGA. The CBS journalist tells me that Weiss often praises teams for tough coverage of the Trump administration, and has described certain Trump policies as “insane.” There might be a little “Tony derangement syndrome” at play as well. The clips that have gone painfully viral belie the reality that the Evening News, on any given night, is a fairly anodyne broadcast. A recent episode mixed straightforward reports on airport delays and the Iran war with some elder-millennial cringe. During a segment on the death of Chuck Norris, Dokoupil reported the late action star inspired “some of the funniest memes on social media,” including: “When Chuck Norris slices onions, the onions …

CBS News Announces Fresh Round Of Layoffs As Bari Weiss Buzzsaw Continues

CBS News Announces Fresh Round Of Layoffs As Bari Weiss Buzzsaw Continues

After paying Bari Weiss $150 million for The Free Press and hiring her to run their newsroom, CBS News announced a fresh round of layoffs on Friday which will affect over 60 jobs, or 6% of the news division, according to the NY Times.  Bari Weiss “Certain parts of this newsroom need to get smaller in order for us to make room for the things that we need to build to remain competitive in the future,” said Weiss, who entered the scene last October, during a Friday newsroom-wide conference call.  The move follows roughly 100 layoffs last year, while ratings have continued to plummet under Weiss. Today’s round includes the entirety of CBS News Radio – a century-old division that “served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927,” said network president Tom Cibrowski in a memo.  CBS came under the control of David Ellison, a billionaire tech heir, after his Hollywood studio Skydance absorbed the media giant Paramount last year. The Trump administration approved Mr. Ellison’s purchase after Paramount paid $16 million to settle a suit brought by President Trump …

CBS is unraveling — and it goes beyond Bari Weiss

CBS is unraveling — and it goes beyond Bari Weiss

In the span of months, one of America’s most storied broadcast institutions has managed to alienate its most recognizable late-night host and lose one of its most respected journalists, all while inviting scrutiny over whether it is voluntarily bending the knee to political pressure from the Trump administration. The optics are catastrophic. CBS looks to have made a strategic blunder when it announced plans last year to cancel “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” but decided to keep host Stephen Colbert on air until May 2026. The decision created a lame-duck host with a nightly platform and a growing sense of grievance. On Monday, Colbert told his studio audience that CBS lawyers had called his show “in no uncertain terms” to block an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. According to Colbert, the network didn’t just want to censor the content — it wanted to censor the censorship itself, informing him that he couldn’t even mention that he’d been prohibited from airing it.  “Because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about …

CBS is unraveling — and it goes beyond Bari Weiss

“Hindered by fear”: CBS producer paints picture of Bari Weiss’ “vision” in resignation letter

A producer for “CBS Evening News” worried about the direction the network is taking in a farewell letter to her colleagues, saying that the “excellence” employees “seek to sustain is hindered by fear and uncertainty.” The letter from producer Alicia Hastey was shared on social media by New York Times reporter Ben Mullin. While Hastey never mentioned Bari Weiss or newly appointed anchor Tony Dokoupil by name, she fretted about the “sweeping new vision” of the Tiffany Network. “There has been a sweeping new vision prioritizing a break from traditional broadcast norms to embrace what has been described as ‘heterodox’ journalism,” she said. “Stories may instead be evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.” Halsey said that the new era of CBS “pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.”  She closed her letter with a nod to legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, quoting his response to the idea that his news coverage leaned …

CBS News’ Bari Weiss unveils new strategy amid backlash, viewership lags | Media News

CBS News’ Bari Weiss unveils new strategy amid backlash, viewership lags | Media News

CBS News Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss has unveiled the network’s new plan to grow the audience amid efforts to broaden the network’s political appeal after a set of blunders. Among the changes that were announced in an all-hands meeting on Tuesday, the network will bring on 18 new commentators akin to US cable news powerhouses, CNN, MS Now and Fox, as well as steep staffing cuts to those who don’t align with Weiss’s vision for the network, as first reported by NPR which sourced the information from a set of journalists within the network who spoke under condition of anonymity. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list In an all-hands call with staffers, the network said that it will need to expand its reach beyond typical broadcasting and lean more into podcasting, according to audio first obtained by the outlet Business Insider. “I’m here to tell you that if we stick to that [focusing on broadcast] strategy, we’re toast,” Weiss said. The new hires include conservative podcasters Niall Ferguson and Patrick McGee and others like …

Bari Weiss to cut staff, add commentators at CBS News : NPR

Bari Weiss to cut staff, add commentators at CBS News : NPR

New CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss arrived with a mandate to reshape the network’s news coverage. Initial moves involving such mainstay shows as 60 Minutes and the CBS Evening news have sparked dissent inside the newsroom and drawn criticism from journalists outside it. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Spencer Platt/Getty Images CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss said she will make the news division “fit for purpose in the 21st Century” at an all-staff meeting Tuesday, in which she outlined her strategy. Weiss announced the hiring of 18 paid commentators — on subjects ranging from national security to health and wellness — as part of an effort to “widen the aperture of the stories we tell and the voices we listen to.” They include HR McMaster, who served as national security advisor during the first Trump administration; Reihan Salam, the president of the conservative Manhattan Institute; and the historian Niall Ferguson. She also cited several new hires who are going to produce original reports from Kyiv, London and New York City with a social …

Bari Weiss Takes Hiatus From Podcast as Turmoil Mounts at CBS News

Bari Weiss Takes Hiatus From Podcast as Turmoil Mounts at CBS News

As Bari Weiss’s bumpy tenure as the top editorial honcho at CBS News nears the four-month mark, the millennial opinion writer turned broadcast exec announced that she is taking a hiatus from the podcast she’s hosted for four years. On Friday, Weiss made the announcement of her hiatus from her podcast Honestly With Bari Weiss in a post on The Free Press, the news and opinion website that she founded two years ago and was purchased by Paramount Skydance for $150 million. That deal, brokered by CEO David Ellison, also included the editor-in-chief of CBS News gig for Weiss, putting her at the helm of a major broadcast newsroom after spending much of her career as an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and running The Free Press. “If I sound mushy right now, it’s because I love making this show, and I’m not done making it. But as you may have heard, if you have an internet connection, I’ve also taken on a new role, and …

Tony Dokoupil’s viral first week should worry Bari Weiss

Tony Dokoupil’s viral first week should worry Bari Weiss

As Tony Dokoupil himself put it on his chaotic first official day anchoring the “CBS Evening News,” “First day, big problems here.” He was supposed to start his new gig as anchor on Monday, but his debut, in a kind of preview appearance, was moved forward to Saturday, Jan. 3 following the breaking news of Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. Hand-picked by CBS News editorial director Bari Weiss, herself plucked for the position by parent company SkyDance Paramount CEO David Ellison, who has ties to Trump, Dokoupil’s first week as anchor was hyped as a coronation of sorts. Instead, his carefully stage-managed rollout — a 10-day private jet tour to promote a new ideological era at CBS News — was derailed by reality in Trump’s America. When the U.S. government abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, suddenly Dokoupil’s “reinvention” of the evening news had to contend with actual breaking news. In his first week on the job, and in the bizarre publicity blitz that preceded it, Dokoupil has attempted to position …

Bari Weiss Fires Back at George Clooney

Bari Weiss Fires Back at George Clooney

CBS News boss Bari Weiss is sending a message to George Clooney after the actor criticized her management of the news network. The editor in chief issued an open invitation for Clooney to visit her newsroom and playfully mocked his move to France. “Bonjour, Mr. Clooney!,” wrote Weiss in a statement shared with The New York Post. “Big fan of your work. It sounds like you’d like to learn more about ours. This is an open invitation to visit the CBS Broadcast Center, where I’m spending the holidays working to relaunch the Evening News with my colleagues. Tune in January 5.” The statement was apparently in response to an interview Clooney gave to Variety, where the actor said, “Bari Weiss is dismantling CBS News as we speak. Am I worried about film studios? Sure. It’s my business, but my primary loyalty is to my country. I’m much more worried about how we inform ourselves and how we’re going to discern reality without a functioning press.” Clooney also criticized CBS and ABC for settling costly lawsuits filed …