MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Plots Massive Risk as Backlash Spirals

Bari Weiss is considering the risk of a high-profile interview with The New York Times to try to calm the firestorm engulfing her leadership of CBS News.

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The 42-year-old has stayed mostly quiet as anger has built over her MAGA-flavored overhaul of the network and, in particular, what critics describe as her gutting of the storied investigative program 60 Minutes.

She reportedly admires Barbaro and floated him this year as a possible CBS Mornings recruit. Her interest in the podcast runs deeper, given she also apparently tried to poach its founding editor, Lisa Tobin, for a senior CBS News role building new programming.

Tobin passed, Status reports, and in mid-May the Times instead handed her a promotion, putting her in charge of its new “Shows” unit.

Weiss is understood to have been quietly courting members of the press, holding off-the-record calls with reporters this year and meeting some face-to-face. A Times spokesperson, asked about the interview chatter, said that the newspaper “is always pursuing interviews with newsworthy people.”

Weiss herself spent years on the Times’ opinion staff before exiting in 2020 with a blistering open letter accusing the paper of left-wing bias.

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She arrived at CBS News last October, after Trump allies Larry and David Ellison secured a merger of network parent company Paramount with their media conglomerate Skydance, which had bought her media venture, The Free Press, for about $150 million.

Regulators waved the merger through soon after Paramount, pressured by the White House, cut Trump a $16 million check to settle his claim that 60 Minutes had edited a Kamala Harris interview in her favor.

Her time running the news operation has been turbulent, with on-air talent and producers streaming out the door or getting axed. Ex-employees have fueled accusations that the network is softening its journalism to please Trump—a charge CBS rejects.

The most direct attack came from Scott Pelley, 68, a longtime 60 Minutes correspondent, also on The Daily after he was fired following a combustible staff meeting where he accused Weiss of “murdering” the famed news magazine show.

Weiss has not been entirely silent on the backlash. She defended her overhaul of the network and the program in comments to the Wall Street Journal for its profile of Tony Dokoupil, the network’s conservative-leaning Evening News anchor, arguing that what critics call interference “is in reality the job description of an editor-in-chief.”

Status reports that her advisors have nevertheless warned Weiss off a splashy sit-down for now, and apparently, none is imminent. The timing is also fraught, with David Ellison still working to close Paramount-Skydance’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, which would see him also assume control of CNN, President Donald Trump’s most reviled network.

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