There’s panic in the control rooms and back offices at CBS News—and it’s not because of ratings or budget cuts. No, what’s sending the network into a newsroom tailspin is the unthinkable: someone with actual editorial independence is being given the keys to the kingdom.
Enter Bari Weiss. The former New York Times opinion writer turned Substack standout has officially been appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News under its new ownership. And if the anonymous leaks, public hand-wringing, and frantic headlines are any indication, her mere presence is being treated like a hostile takeover.
Why the hysteria? Because Weiss has the audacity to advocate for balanced journalism. In her introductory memo to staff, she committed to two simple, yet apparently radical, ideas: holding both political parties accountable and showcasing a wide spectrum of voices so viewers can weigh arguments from all sides. In other words, journalism.
But for CBS’s entrenched editorial culture, this reads like a manifesto for heresy. After decades of being comfortably nestled in the ideological echo chamber, many of the network’s veterans have no appetite for recalibrating toward fairness. They’ve operated for years under the convenient fiction that they’re “independent,” even as their editorial track record overwhelmingly favors the political left.
Just look at their marquee programs. 60 Minutes, long considered a flagship of CBS News, hasn’t operated as a neutral arbiter of truth for years. From Steve Kroft playing defense for Bill Clinton in the 1990s, to Lesley Stahl dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 as unverifiable—even as it was confirmed later by other outlets—the pattern is clear: Democratic missteps are shielded, while Republican ones are magnified.
Then there’s Scott Pelley, who, in his 2022 sit-down with President Biden, delivered one of the most sycophantic interviews in modern memory. Gently asking what keeps the octogenarian president in the arena, Pelley acted less like a journalist and more like a White House biographer.
And it wasn’t just a one-off. When Biden appeared visibly tired and allegedly needed prodding during a second interview, CBS staff were reportedly concerned—not about the president’s cognitive decline, but about how the network might be perceived if they edited out the worst parts.
That’s the culture Weiss is walking into. And it’s the very culture she’s threatening to disrupt.
CBS’s new parent company, headed by David Ellison, has made its intentions clear. They want the network to appeal to the 70% of Americans who identify between center-left and center-right. That may sound like a modest goal, but in today’s media climate, it’s revolutionary. The mere idea that Republican-led scandals or Democratic policy failures should be reported with equal seriousness is enough to send legacy journalists into cardiac arrest.
