Forget “DEI”—Bari Weiss Is Proof That Merit Doesn’t Matter

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Bari Weiss is having her revenge on the so-called liberal media. On Monday morning, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that the Paramount-Skydance behemoth, headed by tech scion David Ellison, had acquired Weiss’ Substack-based publication the Free Press for a $150 million valuation, about 10 times the revenue the platform brought in last year. The “anti-woke” newsletter will now join the suite of brand-name properties under the merged-media umbrella, including BET and MTV, while Weiss herself will become editor in chief of CBS News—which is about to lay off 10 percent of its very worried staff.

The appointment gives Weiss, who has zero experience in broadcast television, the extraordinary power to shape coverage at the venerable news institution in her own image. Weiss has built a career railing against “wokeness,” and her critics fear this could mean a CBS News more sympathetic to her causes: more unconditional support of Israel, more antagonism wielded at “the left,” and more Crossfire-style “debates” over common bugbears like Zohran Mamdani and gender-affirming care. (Per the Journal, “CBS News plans to launch a debate-style program that Weiss will oversee that is similar to debates the Free Press streams.”) Editorial changes won’t be felt for a while yet, since much of the network’s programming is planned far in advance, but Lachlan Cartwright reports in his Breaker Media newsletter that Weiss may “use her role to put increasing pressure on political pieces and to secure more favourable coverage of Israel.” She will also remain in charge of the Free Press.

It is, undoubtedly, a remarkable journey for Weiss, and no one can say she hasn’t worked for it. Since 2021, Weiss has leaned on a network of wealthy lefty-skeptical Democrats, reactionary venture capitalists, and Trumpworld associates to build the Free Press up from a small newsletter-podcast outfit to that rarest of enterprises: a lucrative text-based outlet with paying customers, a staffed newsroom (including Weiss’ wife and younger sister), multiple video podcasts, and access to the halls of power.

The Free Press has become the favored read of aggrieved tech moguls like Jeff Bezos, whose latest move as Washington Post owner has been to compromise the independence of its opinion pages and drift them rightward. Weiss’ website also earned the personal financial backing of President Donald Trump’s tech-world advisers, including David Sacks and Marc Andreessen. The acquisition by Paramount-Skydance brings her still closer to another powerful Silicon Valley right-winger: Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, father of David, source of endless cash who’s brokered favorable deals with the Trump administration around A.I. data centers, control of a potentially “Americanized” TikTok app, and his son’s acquisition of Paramount. (As Cartwright points out, the Ellisons are close with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and “a major reason” for their interest in Weiss’ platform is its pro-Israeli bent.)

It’s not just the direct White House connections that make this a concerning situation; it’s the seeming lack of commitment to the very principles that inform the Free Press’ name. The editors recently devoted two editorials to grudgingly admitting that the government crackdown on Jimmy Kimmel was bad, yet had (and still has) nothing to say about the very government pressures that played a role in Stephen Colbert’s firing—which preceded the approval of CBS owner Paramount’s merger with David Ellison’s Skydance by Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. Why poke that bear on principle when you can just let the process work and cash that megamerged check?

That would be more understandable as a sheer business move if the Free Press were just any other site. But it’s not: The newsletter is framed as “honest” and “fearless,” even as it carries water for some of the most powerful people in the country. There are few better examples than what occurred late last year, when Ta-Nehisi Coates’ media tour for his latest book, The Message, led him to a line of aggressive questioning from CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil. The anchor reportedly bulldozed over his on-screen colleagues to smear Coates’ dispatches from Palestine as something that “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” before accusing the author, baselessly, of being “offended” by the idea of Israel and not by its documented actions. Weiss and co. rushed to defend Dokoupil and undermine the rest of the CBS News team by reporting that Dokoupil had been chided by network executives for the way he’d handled his co-panelists and their guest (which, to be clear, was at the very least visibly unprofessional). Since then, the scolding CBS News leaders have been pushed out of the network, as part of Paramount’s overhaul to appease Carr and Trump, while Dokoupil still has his job; last month, now-former Paramount owner Shari Redstone, who’d also defended Dokoupil, told reporters that Weiss would be a “good voice” for CBS.

It’s worth noting that Weiss herself does not appear to be a paragon of newsroom professionalism. In his newsletter, Cartwright noted back in May that the Free Press was experiencing high rates of staff turnover and internal rupture, thanks to plans for a future sale as well as what anonymous sources described as a “chaotic” and “highly disorganized” management on Weiss’ part. One anecdote Cartwright offered in a follow-up report: a complaint from a Free Press contributor about how “Weiss had abruptly made changes to their opinion piece late at night and in the process inserted errors that went to print.”

Surviving CBS News staffers seem worried about what Weiss will do to their operation, not least because they see her as just one part of an increasingly partisan shift at the revered network. (See also: the installation of a Trump loyalist to review complaints of “bias” at CBS, as well as the promotion of an executive who’s pressured Paramount to cave to Trump’s demands.) But perhaps even more alarming to them is the journalistic sloppiness Weiss will bring, because it’s a particular constant at the Free Press. After columnist Coleman Hughes’ case for Derek Chauvin’s innocence was thoroughly debunked, repeatedly, by fellow Substacker Radley Balko, Weiss defended Hughes and merely asked Balko to “debate” the matter. (Hughes’ original piece contains no corrections or clarifications.) A July post from Israeli reporter Amit Segal downplaying the mass starvation in Gaza was treated to a similar cross-examination by the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, who took apart Segal’s denials about Israeli troops firing at aid-seeking civilians from Gaza and claims that the New York Times employed Hamas members. That piece also lacks any further notes or clarifications.

The Free Press has made a habit of publishing such shaky stories. There was the op-ed from a Jewish student who claimed to have been purposefully stabbed in the eye as part of an antisemitic attack, even though video footage from that event shows nothing of the sort—no stabbing, no purposeful lunge to her eyes, no targeting. (The mere presence of protesters advocating for Palestine seemed to be what constituted the “antisemitism.”) Another first-person essay—supposedly written by a “whistleblower” from Washington University’s pediatric care center—made allegations about youth gender-affirming care operations that, as my colleague Evan Urquhart explained on his independent Assigned Media blog, fell apart under scrutiny. The site also repeatedly platformed Doomberg, the anonymous pseudoscience peddlers whose whole purpose is to cite professional climate deniers to make the case for more fossil fuels.

It isn’t limited just to simple fact-checking failures either. The Free Press has whitewashed RFK Jr.’s medical kookery, laundered by physician Vinay Prasad, who now works for the Trump administration. (Prasad was briefly ousted thanks to a campaign from Trump loyalist Laura Loomer, and was later reinstated thanks to Kennedy himself.) The publication has presented Andy Ngo—a documented liar and misinformation peddler—as a straightforward journalist who covers “far-left extremism.” It has also run uncritical messaging on behalf of the Trump administration, which has given the outlet “exclusives” on canceling green energy grants or “finding” unaccompanied immigrant children who’ve been torn from their families by this very administration. (Notably, the Free Press does not appear to have joined organizations like Bloomberg and Newsmax in support of the Associated Press’ efforts to regain White House access following the “Gulf of America” brouhaha.)

Grossest of all, however, may be the continued efforts to deny the famine in Gaza, including through reporting intended to undercut stories of starving children by pointing out that those kids also suffer from other ailments—as if that at all minimizes the horrific impact of their malnutrition and lack of access to basic supplies as well as income, a horror frequently attested to by on-the-ground medical workers and even American soldiers.

This is not to say the Free Press is a one-note operation; it has run op-eds critical of certain Trump administration moves and even reported on Immigration and Customs Enforcement abuses. But it’s that broader lack of journalistic ethics, combined with the shake-up of CBS leadership and the accounts of Weiss’ apparent clumsiness as Free Press chief, that has network staffers most concerned—rightly so, as their incoming EIC plans to play a “hands-on role” with editorial coverage in supposed service of “trust and integrity.” Bari Weiss has found a profitable niche, but it isn’t an “honest” or “fearless” one. And CBS viewers will find that out soon enough.

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