Just when you thought the Paramount corporation couldnât heap any more indignities on the head of poor, beleaguered CBS Newsâwhich got to spend months being abused by the Trump administration for the horrible crime of editing down an interview, before having to watch its parent company sheepishly shell out millions rather than fight it out on its behalfâmultiple sources are now reporting that the venerable TV news brand might end up being handed off to former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss. This is per TheWrap, seemingly confirming a Puck report from earlier today suggesting that Paramount (now owned by Skydance, and under the watchful eye of its founder, David Ellison) is in talks to acquire Weissâ media company The Free Press, potentially with an aim toward installing her at the top of CBS News.
Weiss has been running the National Nobody Should Yell At Meâpreviously Common Sense, before switching to the Free Press monikerâsince 2020, i.e., shortly after she publicly resigned from her op-ed job at The New York Times for having to suffer the indignity of some of her co-workers (and readers) telling her they thought she sucked. The organization has since hewed pretty closely to the positions Weiss herself spent years charting, first at the Wall Street Journal, and then at the Times: Cancel culture unambiguously bad, Israel unambiguously good, and the worst sin of all being yelling at Bari Weiss or telling her sheâs doing harm. It has, if nothing else, been a formula for financial success: Substack, which hosts the core Free Press newsletter, reports that itâs the top revenue generator on the platform.
