Paramount closed its deal with The Free Press to acquire the digital news site for $150 million, including a deal to bring cofounder Bari Weiss on as the top editor of CBS News. The deal represents one of many changes CBS News and Paramount have undergone since President Donald Trump sued the 98-year-old network over a “60 Minutes” interview.
Paramount CEO David Ellison called Weiss a “proven champion of independent, principled journalism,” according to CBS News. He added that Weiss will report directly to him and still manage The Free Press while also overseeing the CBS newsroom.
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The Wall Street Journal reported the deal was worth $150 million.
Weiss said in a statement that the transaction would continue to build on the legacy of CBS News while also uplifting independent journalism. Weiss started The Free Press — originally called Common Sense — in 2021 with her wife, Nellie Bowles, a former New York Times reporter, and her sister Suzy Weiss. The outlet has nearly 1.5 million subscribers and 50 staffers, according to CBS News.
Weiss resigned from The Times as a columnist in 2020 after being hired in 2017 to help bring conservative perspectives to the paper’s opinion section. In her highly publicized resignation note, she claimed to have been “bullied” by liberal colleagues who disagreed with her views.
Weiss, 41, has no experience in overseeing television news coverage and has never managed an organization the size of the CBS newsroom. Skeptics also wonder about how CBS News will change under Weiss’ direction.
“There are a lot of opinion writers out there who I think would be great editors, because they’re curious about the truth,” Susan Seager, founder of the Press Freedom Project, previously told Straight Arrow News. “They investigate things. But I feel that she’s an ideologue and she’s not going to be interested in the truth of things. She’s got a point to make.”
“She doesn’t really have experience as a journalist,” Seager said. “She’s an opinion writer, and I just think it’s really sad.”
Changes at CBS, Paramount
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Since its 2021 founding, The Free Press has amassed 1.5 million subscribers and earned recognition for its independent journalism.
Paramount continued on its path to reimagine its business with the acquisition of Weiss’ publication.
Most notably, the company paid $16 million in July to settle a lawsuit Trump filed in which he alleged CBS edited a “60 Minutes” interview last year to give an advantage to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Weeks later, Paramount executives canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” effective next May. The cancellation came shortly after Colbert criticized the settlement with Trump as a “big fat bribe.” And in the season 27 premiere of “South Park,” also owned by Paramount, the animated show’s creators poked at the agreement, using the Jesus character to warn angry parents about standing up to Trump.
“You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount,” the character said. “You really want to end up like Colbert? He also has the power to sue and take bribes, and he can do anything to anyone.”
Three weeks after the lawsuit was settled, Skydance received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to complete its $8.4 billion purchase of Paramount Global. The merger gave Skydance control of Paramount’s media assets and broadcast licenses. The approval came after Skydance told the FCC it would appoint an ombudsman for at least two years to review complaints of bias and editorial concerns at CBS.
In September, CBS News hired Kenneth R. Weinstein as ombudsman. He previously presided over the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Paramount President Jeff Shell has said Weinstein is tasked with advising executives about concerns but won’t have control over editorial decisions.
Criticisms of The Free Press’ credibility
Talks about Paramount’s acquisition of The Free Press started in July, as well as analyses of the publication’s stories and credibility.
Responsible Statecraft, an online magazine from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank focusing on foreign policy, wrote that The Free Press had published a story in July claiming that mass starvation was not happening in Gaza. The Intercept later reported that The Free Press helped amplify a claim that children who were starving in Gaza had preexisting health conditions.
AllSides, which rates political biases of news outlets, rated The Free Press as leaning right after a November 2024 editorial review.
“The panel noted that The Free Press is similar to outlets like Reason magazine as it does not fall cleanly on a left-to-right scale,” according to AllSides. “Its content is very pro-Israel and has a classical liberal bent. However, its coverage largely frames Democrats negatively and right-wing figures more positively, while not falling totally in line with the ‘MAGA right,’ or populist right-wing.”
The Media Accountability Project, based in Canada, asked The Free Press last December to correct “numerous factual errors” in an article it said promoted Islamophobia.
“I hope I’m wrong, but this appointment suggests that CBS is moving away from reporting actual news and moving towards amplifying right-leaning commentary,” Victor Pickard, a media studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, previously told Straight Arrow News.
