When it was first merely hinted at last year that Bari Weiss might be put in charge of CBS News, I was quite excited. Monitoring and calling out the old guard biased media monoliths like the broadcast networks and The New York Times has long been my thing. I knew that there would never be substantive change at any of these “news” outlets unless one of the boats got rocked until it almost capsized. If Weiss were to be entrusted with the calcified bias machine that was CBS News, some rocking was sure to happen.
Weiss has that unique combination of both insider and outsider cred, which is why I had such high hopes for her. This is from the post I wrote when the rumors first began circulating:
If this plays out with Weiss being in charge of the thoroughly corrupt CBS News division it would be a seismic shift of massive proportions in the dinosaur mainstream media. Weiss was once a part of the MSM old guard, having been an Opinion writer for The New York Times from 2017-2020. Her breakup with the NYT was legendary. Weiss committed the leftist cardinal sin of deviating from the hive mind. She called out her leftist colleagues for being increasingly intolerant and writing for a very specific audience.
She eventually wound up at Substack, where she turned The Free Press into a new media juggernaut. Weiss was savaged by all of the shrillest voices on the left during her exit from the NYT and turned that into a success that she ended up selling to mega media corporation Paramount Skydance. In the not-too-distant past, running afoul of The New York Times was career suicide, and Weiss’s trajectory would have seemed impossible.
On cue, the lefty social media mob began heaping derision on Weiss before she officially got the job, which was the surest sign that she was right for it. When she did finally take over, those of us who have been toiling in the conservative media trenches for a long time knew that Weiss wasn’t going to be able to change things overnight. CBS News had been a cesspool of entrenched bias for well over half a century, and every employee Weiss inherited was thrilled to be a part of it.
During Weiss’s first week or two on the job, our good friend and colleague Ed Morrissey joined Stephen Green and me on “Five O’Clock Somewhere.” We had a lively discussion about how we thought her tenure might play out. Again, we all agreed it would be slow going. We also agreed that we would all be happy at first if CBS News simply became slightly less awful.
Sadly, we were right about how difficult it would be for Weiss to effect institutional change in such a corrupt institution. People on the right thought that maybe she was just like the rest of the Dems’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media. I was never worried about that; I just hoped that her superiors gave her enough time to make real progress.
It would appear that Weiss is hitting her stride.
On Monday, 60 Minutes correspondent and the former anchor of the CBS Evening News Scott Pelley pitched a hissy fit during a staff meeting, saying that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes.” On Tuesday evening, Pelley was fired, which I gleefully wrote about here. In modern parlance, Weiss was quick to dole out the FO after Pelley decided to FA.
It’s obvious that she wants to make the CBS News chain of command clear to everyone. This is from The New York Times:
“I’m only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect; we cannot do our work without it,” Ms. Weiss said on a 9 a.m. editorial call, according to a recording that was obtained by The New York Times.
“That foundation was broken on Monday,” she continued, referring to the explosive “60 Minutes” staff meeting where Mr. Pelley said that Ms. Weiss was “murdering ‘60 Minutes’” and asserted that Nick Bilton, the tech journalist hired to run the show, would “never be welcome.”
“Despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways,” Ms. Weiss said. “We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose.”
This was no relative newbie who was sent packing. Scott Pelley had been with CBS in one capacity or another since the late 1980s. He has also been one of the most egregious abusers of the truth in the MSM for almost 40 years. George Stephanopoulos seems balanced and fair when compared to Pelley. He needed to go. Pelley responded to Weiss’s comments, saying that none of it was true. Again, he’s been lying for so long that it’s a safe bet he’s doing it again.
The social media meltdown from the usual suspects on the left has been delicious. Weiss is frequently accused of being some sort of MAGA puppet, which is laughable. She’s actually center-left, but that’s not good enough for a Democratic Party that has taken up permanent residence with its lunatic fringe.
Weiss still has a lot of work to do, but she may be able to get there sooner now:
That just might make it watchable. https://t.co/WxXyMuyKiN
— SFK (@stephenkruiser) June 3, 2026
Lefties love to blather on about 60 Minutes being the “number one rated news program.” That’s the Mother of All Participation Trophies. In reality, 60 Minutes is just a weekly propaganda broadcast for the Democratic National Committee. If it goes away completely, it’s only the worst people in America who are going to be upset.
Bari Weiss is angering all the people I love to see angry. They’re lashing out because she’s shaking the foundation of their propaganda machine, which has been a mainstay of the Democrats’ election interference efforts since the mid-20th century. The louder they shriek, the better she’s doing.
I hope that I can soon hear the screams in New York and D.C. from here.
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