In word first leaked out Wednesday afternoon to the New York Post, Puck’s Dylan Byers, and others, Paramount Skydance will reportedly announce as soon as Monday it will not only acquire the great team running The Free Press, but make its founder Bari Weiss the editor-in-chief of CBS News, triggering a hopeful avalanche of changes to the ratings-challenged legacy liberal network at a time of record-low trust in the press.
Over at the New York Post, media reporter Alexandra Steigrad said Weiss would be given “unusual clout to revamp the struggling network” and she would “report directly to Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison,” not CBS News boss Tom Cibrowski or Paramount Skydance TV media chair George Cheeks.
Steigrad cited sources who told her “they expect it will only be a matter of time before Weiss — who has emerged as a leading voice against antisemitism and the “woke” elites in mainstream media — zeroes in on Cibrowski’s job.”
Steigrad also revealed a key fact about the future of The Free Press that had not otherwise been widely reported (if at all): “A source with knowledge said the Free Press will remain a standalone property operating separate from CBS News and owned by Paramount. It is unclear if the site will eventually be integrated into CBS News’ digital site.”
Byers had reported last month the deal was “on the 1-yard line” and Weiss would have a key role “guiding the editorial direction of” CBS News. The Weiss-Paramount Skydance courtship first trickled out in a mournful late June missive from deranged liberal media defender and former CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy.
Weiss’s ascendance will undoubtedly cause turmoil in the far-left network, whether it’s wokesters with views that, say, include a hatred for Israel (and we can think of a few who’d fit here), aging journalists with a disgust for Trump voters (of which there are plenty), or staffers writ large with blinders to the world outside their deep blue, New York City bubble.
Weiss will have a mountain to climb, both in making changes to the stories CBS covers to the tone and tenor that has come to dominate liberal TV networks.
Without stealing and adopting it as their own moniker, Weiss would do well to (and we have no doubt she will) cultivate a newsroom with new and old voices that echo NewsNation’s slogan: News for all Americans.
A simple respect for viewers would behoove CBS News staffers, especially at a time when trust in the media fell to 28 percent in a new Gallup poll and some may have the instinct to lash out and blame Americans as misinformed or too stupid to see things their way.
