Bari Weiss appointed editor-in-chief of cbs News under free press-Paramount deal

The CEO of Paramount Skydance, David Ellison, appointed the editor -in -chief of Bari Weiss of CBS News, as part of an agreement to acquire the online information site she founded, the free press.

Companies have not disclosed the value of the agreement in the announcement on Monday, although a familiar source with the case said it was $ 150 million in the United States.

In a trial announcing the agreement on Monday, Weiss, 41, said that he was offering “a chance to help reshape a legendary media organization – to help guide the news of CBS in the future that honors the big values ​​underlying the free press and the best of American journalism.”

Weiss resigned as a writer of opinion for the New York Times in July 2020 in an open letter of 1,500 words in which she described the subject of “constant intimidation” by colleagues who did not agree with her opinions.

In 2022, she founded her new media business on a credo of “honesty, bordereuse and fierce independence”.

In a letter to Paramount employees on Monday, Ellison wrote that the company was one of the most emblematic press organizations in the world.

“We challenge ourselves to do better-recognizing that we have the capacity to reach a large audience and demonstrate a constructive, respectful and bipartite dialogue in our own work,” he wrote.

“(Weiss) brings a passion to reach a large audience thanks to rigorous reports and based on facts and an incessant commitment to amplifying voices from all corners of the spectrum.”

In a letter to CBS News employees, Weiss said that CBS was part of his family tradition growing up.

“Whenever I hear that check, check, check or this trumpet fanfare, it immediately sends me to our den at Pittsburgh,” wrote Weiss in the letter seen by Reuters. “The opportunity to rely on this inheritance with you – and to renew it at a time that desperately needs it – is an extraordinary privilege.”

Weiss said that she wanted to hear CBS News staff about what is working and what is not, in order to make CBS News the most engaged press organization in America. She promised to listen with “an open mind, a new notebook and an urgent deadline”.

Online reputation for free press

The Free Press has acquired the reputation of challenging conventional accounts. Notable articles include a first -person test of an editor -in -chief at the NPR which accused the public radio network of Liberal bias which cost the confidence of its listeners.

Another offered a denunciator account of the Washington University Transgender Center of the St. Louis children’s hospital, which reported that vulnerable adolescents with mental health problems were precipitated in treatments that modify life. The Missouri general prosecutor, Andrew Bailey, later launched an investigation into the center shortly after the publication of the play.

This editorial and a later article on the subject were however refuted with vehement – including in an internal report of the university, which declared that the allegations of OP -ED were not supported.

In a trial in 2023 in Tablet Magazine, Weiss pleaded for the dismantling of institutional diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI), writing that the movement “threatens not only the Jews – but America itself”.

Online, the reaction to his hiring was mixed. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist covering racial injustice for the New York Times Magazine, wrote on Bluesky on Monday: “In case it was not clear, the anti-dei crusade has never been on merit. Zero News Experience. Was never a journalist.

Weiss will fall directly from David Ellison and will help establish an editorial course for CBS News. The broadcasting of network news is third place behind its television peers.

The Free Press, which has around 1.5 million subscribers, including 170,000 paid members, will remain independent, retaining its brand and operations, companies said. The free press will continue to publish.

PRO-TRUMP media owners

Large media and technological companies are now controlled by supporters of the American president Donald Trump or billionaire business leaders who aligned themselves behind in his inauguration, given to his inaugural fund or visited the White House with gifts.

Trump’s long -standing supporter’s son Larry Ellison, David Ellison, helped guarantee the regulatory approval of his company Skydance Media to buy Paramount, with the promise that the CBS network would reflect “a diversity of points of view from all the political and ideological specter”, according to a press release from the President of the Federal Communications Brendan Carr announcing the Deal.

Before the agreement, Paramount paid 16 million US dollars to settle a trial in 2024 that Trump brought 60 minutes Interview with the candidate for the Democratic presidential election Kamala Harris, who, according to him, gave a distorted view of his rival for the White House.

The FCC said that the regulation and regulatory examination were not linked.