NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Bari Weiss has made a name for herself as an unflinching critic of mainstream news outlets. Now, she\u2019s set to run one.<\/p>\n
The announcement this week of Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News<\/a> has been met with a response the 41-year-old has grown accustomed to in her years as a polarizing voice in the public eye. <\/p>\n To some, it is a triumph of an anti-woke crusader who could bring an even hand to at least one corner of a media they see as awash in liberal groupthink. To others, it amounts to the elevation of a person who is anything but evenhanded, a conservative posing as a centrist who will shovel half-truths and worse.<\/p>\n The network where Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather became news icons<\/a>, and on which the ticking stopwatch of \u201c60 Minutes\u201d cued some of television\u2019s most revered journalism<\/a>, is now Weiss\u2019 turf.<\/p>\n A look at Weiss and her journey to the top of one of the most vaunted outlets in news:<\/p>\n Calls herself a centrist, but often rankles the left<\/p>\n Weiss bills herself as a centrist and has staked positions on both sides of the political divide. \u201cThere\u2019s a woke left. There\u2019s increasingly a woke right. And then there\u2019s the normal people,\u201d she said in an appearance last year, calling the fringe of both sides \u201ceerily similar.\u201d<\/p>\n In a 2017 appearance, she said she was politically \u201chomeless,\u201d deriding President Donald Trump and the Second Amendment and praising the national anthem protests by NFL players. But it is her right-leaning views that have gotten the most attention, including criticizing corporate diversity efforts, colleges\u2019 lack of political diversity and pro-Palestinian protesters.<\/p>\n She so often has rankled liberals, animosity toward her has been encapsulated in headlines like the one in Current Affairs: \u201cWhy we all hate Bari Weiss so much.\u201d<\/p>\n Weiss has said she voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. Trump\u2019s win in 2016, she has said, left her sobbing. But she later said she had suffered from \u201cTrump Derangement Syndrome\u201d and speaking on Fox News earlier this year, she said Trump had pursued many policies she agreed with, and decried the \u201coverzealous, out-of-touch, hysterical reaction to him.\u201d <\/p>\n She hasn\u2019t said who earned her vote in 2024.<\/p>\n Critic of mainstream news gets premier TV perch<\/p>\n By Weiss\u2019 telling, she was exposed to animated political debate from the very start. She grew up in Pittsburgh, the oldest of four sisters born to a conservative father and liberal mother. At the elite private school Weiss attended, she was student council president, taking a gap year in Israel before starting at Columbia University. Being Jewish, she has said, \u201cis the most important part of my identity,\u201d and at Columbia, she led a student group accusing professors of anti-Israel views.<\/p>\n After stints at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the Jewish publication The Forward, Weiss landed at The Wall Street Journal as an op-ed and book review editor. But she grew disenchanted after Trump\u2019s election, moving to the Times as a self-described \u201cdiversity hire\u201d for views that didn\u2019t always fit liberal orthodoxy. At the time, she described the transition as going from \u201cbeing the most progressive person\u201d at the Journal to \u201cthe most right-winged person\u201d at the Times.<\/p>\n Her Times columns drew buzz for views that often appeared contrarian on its left-leaning opinion pages. Pushing back against the idea of \u201ccultural appropriation,\u201d she celebrated the concept as an ingredient to American success. Taking aim at the #MeToo tenet to believe women\u2019s allegations of sexual assault, she called it condescending that such claims couldn\u2019t stand up to skepticism. Her words so galled many on the left, each column became a source of knee-jerk opposition online.<\/p>\n She eventually grew disillusioned at the Times, too, resigning in 2020 in a lengthy missive in which she suggested stories were chosen to fit a pre-ordained liberal agenda. \u201cShowing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Hobnobbing with billionaires, guest hosting \u2018The View\u2019 <\/p>\n Having gained entry to two of American journalism\u2019s most revered outlets and subsequently leaving, Weiss decided to create her own.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve become someone who believes that the way to change these institutions is not to give money to those places or join the board of them or delude yourself with the idea that you can transform them from within,\u201d she said last year. \u201cIt\u2019s to build new things.\u201d<\/p>\n And so, The Free Press was born.<\/p>\n It has gained a following with an eclectic mix of coverage, from takedowns of traditional news outlets written by insiders to podcasts featuring the likes of Kim Kardashian to lighter fare, like an essay by humorist David Sedaris. It boasted a subscriber base of 1.5 million people.<\/p>\n Along the way, Weiss has hobnobbed with billionaires, guest hosted \u201cThe View,\u201d and even become a punchline on \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm.\u201d Newspaper and magazine profiles have dissected everything from her college relationship with former \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d star Kate McKinnon to her unflapping charm.<\/p>\n But Weiss has spent nearly all of her career airing opinions, not writing objective news, and she has not worked in TV news, a galling reality to some as she ascends to the top of the network hierarchy.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know anyone who can explain why an opinion journalist has been chosen as editor-in-chief,\u201d academic and media watchdog Jay Rosen asked on BlueSky. \u201cDid we need more opinion at CBS?\u201d<\/p>\n Vows to make CBS \u2018most trusted news organization\u2019<\/p>\n Given her past vow to \u201cbuild new things\u201d, Weiss herself acknowledged the questions her followers may have. \u201cWasn\u2019t The Free Press started precisely because the old media institutions had failed?\u201d she wrote on Monday. \u201cIsn\u2019t the whole premise of this publication that we need to build anew?\u201d <\/p>\n She insisted it is a \u201conce-in-a-lifetime opportunity\u201d to \u201creshape a storied media organization\u201d and says she will work tirelessly to make the network \u201cthe most trusted news organization in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n But what Weiss will mean for CBS\u2019 future is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n Aileen Gallagher, a journalism professor at Syracuse University, says there are many unanswered questions on what role Weiss will actually play at CBS, but tapping someone with a background outside of traditional, fact-based news will inevitably open the network \u201cto a lot of questions about credibility.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cCBS has not had an agenda. You\u2019re putting someone in charge who clearly does,\u201d Gallagher says. \u201cThe audience has no other option than to think that the news they\u2019re getting from CBS is politicized now.\u201d<\/p>\n For someone who has been so outspoken in her opinions on so many topics, onlookers will no doubt be keeping a close eye on any impact she might have on CBS\u2019 coverage. The issue she has been most outspoken on is Israel, no stranger to negative headlines in its two-year-old war. Weiss is an unwavering supporter.<\/p>\n In comments last year, Weiss bemoaned what she sees as mainstream news\u2019 shift from a role to \u201chold up a mirror to the world as it actually is so people can make sensible, rational decisions\u201d and to \u201ctell the story about reality as plainly and as truthfully as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n She insisted: \u201cI still believe that this is the job.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Matt Sedensky can be reached at [email\u00a0protected]<\/a> and https:\/\/x.com\/sedensky<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Bari Weiss has made a name for herself as an unflinching critic of mainstream…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[28,97477,120063,12,88,39979,793,27423,803,120065,3319,74437,7475,120064,120062,111,92,795],"class_list":["post-209932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-business","tag-dan-rather","tag-david-sedaris","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-general-news","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-israel","tag-jay-rosen","tag-joe-biden","tag-kate-mckinnon","tag-kim-kardashian","tag-matt-sedensky","tag-mitt-romney","tag-politics","tag-tv","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}