Bari Weiss startled “60 Minutes” staffers throughout a non-public assembly final week by asking why Individuals view the present as biased — one other signal of the brand new CBS Information chief’s aggressive method to reshaping the community, in response to a report.
Weiss “shocked senior employees … when she requested a provocative query: Why does the nation assume you’re biased?” the New York Occasions reported on Sunday, citing three individuals who attended the Midtown Manhattan session.
The trade was met with “surprised awkwardness,” the paper stated.
The query got here lower than two weeks into Weiss’s tenure as editor in chief — and underscored the upheaval contained in the nation’s most-watched information journal as a whole lot of CBS Information workers gauge their new boss’s unorthodox fashion.
Weiss, 41, has by no means labored in tv. The outspoken founding father of the Free Press — a digital outlet purchased this month by CBS mum or dad Paramount Skydance for about $150 million — has been tasked by billionaire proprietor David Ellison to make the community “rigorous” and “fact-based.”
In line with the Occasions, Weiss has already irritated CBS executives by griping a few flood of inner leaks and “urging managers to determine the leakers.”
She additionally informed employees on an Oct. 9 convention name to be “extra aggressive” in reserving main figures — saying that she had personally secured three former secretaries of state for a particular on the Center East peace deal.
Solely Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared; Antony Blinken and Mike Pompeo didn’t.
Weiss additionally lined up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pushed “60 Minutes” producers to land Trump allies Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff for Sunday’s broadcast, the Occasions stated.
Her hands-on method has jolted a newsroom that sometimes retains its prime brass removed from the reserving desk, in response to the Occasions.
“I like to win,” Weiss informed producers throughout her first week, in response to the report.
Inside CBS, Weiss’s blunt query to “60 Minutes” hit an already tense atmosphere.
As The Submit has reported, workers described the community as a “snake pit” the place old-guard producers resist change and “deep-state CBS Information will attempt to kill Weiss with leaks.”
Days after Weiss’s begin, she confronted her first inner revolt.
Final week, the Writers Guild of America East, which represents CBS journalists, informed members they’d not be disciplined for ignoring a Weiss memo demanding descriptions of their day by day duties and up to date work.
Weiss’s early weeks have been outlined by turmoil and turnover.
On Thursday, standards-and-practices chief Claudia Milne — lengthy accused internally of pushing “woke” editorial insurance policies — was out, the primary senior govt to exit below Weiss.
That very same day, President Donald Trump publicly praised Ellison and Weiss, telling CNN he expects CBS to be “fairer” below their management.
“They’ll deliver it again to its former glory,” Trump stated throughout a press gaggle aboard Air Drive One.
Ellison, whose $8.4 billion merger of Paramount and Skydance closed this summer season, has vowed to “restore steadiness” throughout CBS Information and placate regulators who questioned its liberal tilt.
In a memo to workers, he stated Weiss would pursue “rigorous, fact-based reporting and a relentless dedication to amplifying voices from all corners of the spectrum.”
Weiss’s arrival has already reshaped protection. Earlier this month, The Submit reported she was “vocal” in CBS Information editorial conferences in regards to the Israel-Hamas cease-fire, urgent producers to guide Kushner and Witkoff, architects of Trump’s peace plan.
“That is the primary time she actually bought concerned,” one individual informed The Submit.
The Submit has sought remark from CBS Information.
