Always bet on Bari
Don't believe the hype. The CBS News head is (sigh) likely doing just fine.
Welcome to The Flashpoint. Let’s do the news.
Bari Weiss’s dizzying media ascension has been heavy on the right-wing politics and sycophancy toward billionaires and light on actual work—and the latter is starting to bite.
Since she was appointed head of CBS News Weiss has been a fixture in media gossip reporting. Her decisions have been the focus of damning stories as she has cut positions, reworked programming, and promoted people with few qualifications other than being white, pro-Israel, and hostile to inclusivity.
The stories about her tenure at CBS thus far are entertaining, especially if you find Weiss’s grift as appalling as I do. A far-right operative who covers up her bigotry and extreme politics with a veneer of smarm, Weiss has an affect that’s incredibly off-putting and instantly recognizable.
Eye-rollingly bad—here’s an example, from The New Yorker’s recent profile, published Monday:
Early on, she circulated a list of ten principles that would guide the network’s coverage under her leadership, laying out a brand of journalism that, she said, “holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny” and “embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate.”
People in the media, for the most part, loathe Weiss, and her mistakes at CBS have made for a constant stream of articles that make noise on social media and get clicks.
A Variety article on Tuesday, hot on the heels of that New Yorker article, alleged that her problems were deeper than some mismanagement, with “ten people familiar with the workings of CBS News” alleging the network is “veering toward dysfunction” under Weiss’s leadership. The New York Times last week reported that her decision to hold a piece critical of the Trump administration’s deportation of people to CECOT in El Salvador generated anger and confusion in the newsroom.
To be clear—I’m a Weiss critic. I’ve written about her in less than glowing terms on a number of occasions, both in my book and at outlets like The Nation, The Intercept, and others.
So I take no pleasure in informing you that I do not think her rocky start at CBS is going quite as badly as some might believe, nor do I think she is in any danger of losing her job.
Here’s why.
CBS News’s ratings are up from last quarter. In Q4 (when Weiss took over), the CBS Evening News saw its ratings improve from the previous two quarters, where numbers plummeted after Q1. And for all the criticism—warranted!—of new anchor Tony Dokoupil, his first week this month saw another bounce from Q4’s average number. Numbers are down year-over-year but that’s not really relevant, they plummeted back in Q2.
Bari was hired to further the Ellisons’ business interests, not to make CBS a better network. When the Ellisons bought Paramount+, CBS News’s parent company, it was with the understanding that they would be shifting coverage to the right to flatter Trump. Weiss’s appointment must be seen in that context—she’s not there to “do the fucking news.” She’s there to promote the business interests of the Ellisons and make the network more Trump-friendly.
David Ellison likes her. Weiss’s most enduring talent has been ingratiating herself to billionaires, and David Ellison, head of Skydance Media, is no exception. The two are friends and her appointment to lead CBS was, reportedly, his doing due to their ideological lockstep. Until the Ellisons cut her loose, if they do, she’s there to stay and to remake CBS News to her and their liking.
Betting against Bari is usually a mistake. It pains me to admit this, but Weiss has only ever failed up. She went from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times, alienated nearly everyone there and eventually resigned in a grandiose, self-satisfied statement. For almost anyone else, the embarrassing spectacle of leaving the paper in that way would have been a career killer—for Weiss, it allowed her to found Common Sense, a blog that her “Twitter Files” reporting spun into the Free Press, which Ellison bought for $150 million last year.
Look, I don’t like this anymore than you do, but I don’t think Bari’s in any danger of losing her job. The details of how she makes CBS News into another arm of the Trump media regime are unimportant, what matters is that she does it.
I’ve been asked about how people can support me at this moment as I face a lawsuit from Matt Taibbi over my book’s reporting on his career. I stand by the work.
If you want to help and have the wherewithal to do so, there are two easy ways to help me fight this legal challenge:
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