New CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has been on the job for just one week, but her position of power at the network is sparking controversy. President Donald Trump, when speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One while en route to the Middle East, stated, “Larry Ellison is great and his son David is great. They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine, and they’ll do the right thing.“
New deal between Paramount and Skydance
CBS’s parent company, Paramount, recently merged with Skydance Media, founded by Larry Ellison. The merger has resulted in the billionaire’s son, David Ellison, taking over as CEO of Paramount. Larry Ellison is also the founder of the tech company Oracle and a key Trump backer.
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The Ellisons’ newfound control of CBS News and the hiring of Weiss to oversee the news organization are sparking backlash from critics who believe Trump is trying to take more control of the mainstream news media.
Weiss is a former New York Times opinion writer who left The Times five years ago to start The Free Press. She is staunchly pro-Israel and a critic of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In announcing that The Free Press was joining forces with Paramount, Weiss wrote that she quit The New York Times in 2020 because it had become “a fancy logo and a motto that many had abandoned in exchange for devotion to a set of narrow, partisan ideas.”
Criticism of current mainstream media
Weiss goes on to decry both the far left and the far right, saying that most Americans are smart, politically mixed, and pragmatic and that “this is the actual mainstream. These people are the overwhelming majority of the country. And they are being ill-served.”
But long-time CBS News anchor and journalist Dan Rather is unhappy with the appointment and calls Weiss one of the most polarizing figures in today’s media landscape. Rather recently wrote a critical review of the Weiss hire.
He called her “one of the most polarizing figures in today’s American media landscape,” who is “unabashedly anti-woke, anti-DEI and pro-Israel.” He also criticized her lack of experience in television news and accused David Ellison of creating the position for her at CBS. Rather then goes on to detail how he doubts she will be an “equitable steward” of the news division due to the Ellisons’ involvement and their ties to Trump.
Rather predicts that CBS News is unlikely to air any unaltered content that criticizes the Trump agenda, or perhaps not air it at all. He concludes that the Ellisons’ ownership and Weiss’ hiring are clear signals that CBS is now controlled by a conservative billionaire and not independent.
