After a rocky first four months, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss on Tuesday laid out her vision for the network’s news division to its staff, one that’s expected to continue shaking up the newsroom with the addition of new, more provocative voices.
Weiss used the town hall forum to outline her approach to the opportunities and challenges ahead, although she didn’t comment on the prospect of layoffs. She also promised to earn the staff’s trust amid the “tumult” of her nearly four-month tenure.
“I’m not going to stand up here today and ask for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers,” Weiss said, according to her prepared remarks. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers as a journalist: transparency, clarity, straight talk.”
Weiss’ town hall coincided with CBS News announcing 19 contributors, a wide-ranging group of voices spanning tech and lifestyle, history and economics, politics and, well, happiness. In building a new stable of prominent — and at times provocative — voices, Weiss appears to be taking a page from the Free Press, the right-leaning, contrarian news and opinion site she co-founded and sold to CBS-parent Paramount in October for $150 million, and leaning into commentary.
The meeting took place inside “the Hub,” where the network broadcasts “CBS Evening News,” as staffers from Washington, London and elsewhere streamed the event. The conversation with Weiss was moderated by “CBS Mornings” featured host Vladimir Duthiers, while “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King also spoke, according to sources in the meeting.
Given the raft of headlines about Weiss these past few months, the town hall was an opportunity for the embattled editor to explain why she took this high-profile (and much-scrutinized) role and articulate her perspective on the media landscape — and CBS’s place in it. Gone are the days of Walter Cronkite, she noted, when CBS primarily competed against ABC and NBC; now the network is vying for attention against a “vast universe of podcasts and YouTube and Twitch and newsletters.”
To that end, she added names familiar to Free Press readers, including historian Niall Ferguson, social scientist and happiness authority Arthur Brooks, podcast host Coleman Hughes, and author Elliot Ackerman, to the roster of CBS News contributors.
Also on board: Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, tech journalist Patrick McGee, Manhattan Institute president and conservative commentator Reihan Salam, “Abundance” co-author Derek Thompson, fashion journalist Lauren Sherman, former national security adviser HR McMaster, physics and astronomy professor Janna Levin, New York chef Clare de Boer, cookbook author Caroline Chambers, Gen-Z and Gen Alpha-focused journalist Casey Lewis, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, Ph.D and Dr. Mark Hyman, a proponent of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Weiss said that her goal is to “make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century,” while offering a blunt message to the assembled journalists about the challenges the network faces as the third-place news network.
“We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves,” she said. “We are not producing a product that enough people want.”
And she said the newsroom can’t just be looking to hold onto a broadcast TV audience. “If we stick to that strategy we’re toast,” Weiss said. “Starting now, we all must focus on first on what we’re building, not on what we’re maintaining.
Early missteps and media trust
Weiss has come under scrutiny for her relaunch of the “CBS Evening News” with anchor Tony Dokoupil and igniting a media firestorm by abruptly shelving a “60 Minutes” segment on the plight of Venezuelan men who were swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown and sent to a notorious El Salvador prison.
“60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi suggested the decision was “political,” and Scott Pelley reportedly told colleagues that Weiss, who only weighed in on the segment after its legal review with concerns that it didn’t include on-the-record administration voices, could not treat her role as “a part-time job.” Both Alfonsi and Pelley’s “jobs are on the line,” according to the New York Post.
During the town hall, Weiss acknowledged making a mistake in her last-minute handling of the “60 Minutes” report, “Inside CECOT,” but stood by her broader decision to hold the story, according to a source. Weiss, who has never worked in television news, admitted to being “green” when it comes to scheduling.
The same “Inside CECOT” report aired earlier this month with a new introduction and postscript, but without Weiss’ desired interviews with Trump administration officials, who declined to participate.
One staffer asked Weiss how CBS plans to make up for lost revenue as linear television consumption continues to decline. Weiss said that the network plans to introduce some version of a subscription-based model, though she did not specify what it would look like.
During her presentation, Weiss, who hasn’t shied away from criticizing mainstream media, spoke of declining trust and how some audiences “retreated to” outlets to “protect them from conflicting narratives.”
“I don’t need to name them,” she said. “You know who they are.”
Weiss noted how it was “not hard to understand” why trust in the media had fallen to new lows, and presented a slide with articles from Vox (COVID-19 conspiracies). ABC News (young Trump-supporter Nick Sandmann) and the New York Times, the latter being an infamous and erroneous 2002 story on Saddam Hussein’s alleged quest to build weapons of mass destruction based on false intelligence.
At another point, Weiss said that there had been no change to CBS News’ editorial standards since she arrived. A “CBS Evening News” producer told Weiss that there had, in fact, been a change to the network’s language around transgender people to now use the term “biological sex at birth,” a reversal from previous deference to the Trans Journalists Association’s style guide, as TheWrap reported earlier this month.
Weiss offered to speak to the staffer individually.
Cuts loom
Hours before Weiss took the stage, NPR reported that Weiss is “expected to make significant cuts to the newsroom.”
It would mark the second round of layoffs under Weiss after about 100 employees were cut in October. It is unclear how widespread the layoffs will be, though Paramount has planned to cut an additional 1,000 people across the company as part of its merger cost savings following its acquisition by David Ellison’s Skydance.
Weiss didn’t mention cuts in her presentation, though one staffer asked about the prospect of layoffs. Weiss said that she couldn’t say there wouldn’t be staff changes, while also pointing to some of the network’s open roles.
One marquee staffer who is staying is Gayle King.
Weiss confirmed that King would remain with the network after reports emerged that she was weighing her options for when her contract expires in May.
King spoke positively about future at CBS while expressing her frustration about the drumbeat of leaks that have emerged since Weiss joined in October.
