Paramount In Talks With Journalist Says Report
The media world is in a full-blown uproar over reports that Bari Weiss — the once-exiled New York Times editor turned renegade media mogul — may be heading to CBS News in a top leadership role. The potential shakeup has sent shockwaves through liberal media circles, with critics decrying the move as everything from “disturbing” to a “waking nightmare.”
At the center of the storm is a reported $100 to $200 million deal between Paramount CEO David Ellison and Weiss’s news platform, The Free Press. According to Puck News, Ellison is in the final stages of acquiring the platform and installing Weiss in a senior editorial position at CBS News.
If true, this would mark a dramatic pivot for one of the oldest institutions in American broadcasting — and a pointed rebuke of the progressive orthodoxy that has dominated much of legacy media in recent years.
The right wing grift economy is undefeated https://t.co/bgwZ2v5BpP
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) September 3, 2025
Weiss, who left the New York Times in 2020 citing a hostile, ideologically narrow newsroom culture, has become a lightning rod for cultural criticism ever since. Through The Free Press, she’s championed reporting that questions DEI initiatives, challenges prevailing gender ideology, and presents alternative narratives on Israel’s war with Hamas — all positions that have made her an object of disdain on the cultural left.
And now, those critics are going ballistic.
finally! a pro israel voice in mainstream media! https://t.co/iOeT43IBzr
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) September 4, 2025
CNN’s Oliver Darcy led the charge, calling the rumored move “absurd” and accusing Ellison of betraying his promise to keep politics out of Paramount. “Weiss, the stridently pro-Israel, proudly anti-‘woke’ culture warrior,” Darcy wrote, represents exactly the kind of figure that he believes will alienate CBS’s core audience. Other media outlets echoed the alarm. Salon labeled Weiss’s Free Press “conservative,” while The Nation declared that “vile grifters are taking over establishment media.”
CBS about to become your go-to news source on keffiyeh-wearing college students, how wokeness is the defining crisis of our times, whatever trans kids are up to, and whatever this is: https://t.co/qyoPsRBjzA pic.twitter.com/PXwvnsTsgV
— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) September 4, 2025
The backlash hasn’t stopped at the editorial page. High-profile commentators across social media have piled on, sarcastically lamenting what they see as the creeping normalization of center-right voices in traditionally liberal media spaces. From Twitch streamers to ex-WaPo journalists, the refrain has been the same: Weiss doesn’t belong at CBS.
