Never let it be said that Bari Weiss, the new and utterly ridiculous head of CBS News, doesn’t know how to get things done. The problem is that what Weiss is getting done is dragging a once-venerable news organization down to the tacky, grifty level of her other media outlet, The Free Press.
Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Weiss kicked off a meeting with the senior staff of “60 Minutes” by asking, “Why does the country think you’re biased?”
Hmm, maybe because President Donald Trump, the person responsible for you having a job you have no business having, spent the last several years howling about how editing interviews is actually election interference? Or maybe because The Free Press did the same thing?
Weiss is right to be worried about bias, but not in the way she thinks.
A cartoon by Jack Ohman.
‘60 Minutes” is the longest-running prime-time news show, and it’s been the No. 1 news program for more than 50 years. It still draws about 8 million viewers per episode and has been absolutely showered with awards for its investigative journalism. But now, it’s in the hands of someone with no experience in TV news, running a newsroom, or doing investigative journalism.
If Weiss wants to talk about bias, she should talk about how CBS basically bribed the president to get a merger approved. And nothing says “unbiased” like making sure to personally book the president’s son-in-law as one of your first big “60 Minutes” guests, right?
It’s not just that Weiss is a hard-right conservative given to whining any time there is the slightest whiff of unfavorable news coverage. She’s also—just like the president who ensured she got this gig—incredibly grifty and tacky.
Truly, nothing says “quality reporting” like booking your own sister on “CBS Mornings Plus” to talk about lab-grown diamonds, which her sister also wrote about for The Free Press. And, oh yeah, Weiss is staying on as head of The Free Press too.
It isn’t clear how Weiss will juggle her duties between The Free Press and CBS News, but so far it’s pretty clear that she sees her role at CBS as an opportunity to promote The Free Press.
For the first two weeks of her CBS News tenure, she didn’t promote any CBS News stories on her X account, but she did make time to share a bunch from The Free Press, including one saying that New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani failed “the Hamas test.”
That sort of seems like … bias?
