Bari Weiss has a documented history of promoting right-wing positions and engaging in targeted attacks, including leading a racist smear campaign against Arab professors as a Columbia student. As a New York Times columnist she advanced right-wing arguments while presenting herself as a centrist critic of left-wing extremism, which raised her media profile. As founder and editor of The Free Press she has pushed genocide denial, transphobia, and defended extreme expressions. Billionaire David Ellison is acquiring The Free Press for roughly $100–$200 million and intends to give Weiss an editorial role at CBS News, a move that could shift the network's editorial posture and provoke newsroom blowback.
Bari Weiss has been making the world worse for a long time. Twenty years ago, as a student at Columbia, she led a racist smear campaign against Arab professors who had the audacity to criticize Israel. As a New York Times columnist, she constantly hawked right-wing bile while posing as a liberal who was just tired of all the extremism and censorship on the left-a tedious bait-and-switch that nevertheless sent her media profile soaring.
And, as founder and editor of The Free Press, she has pushed genocide denial, transphobia, and the freedom to make Nazi salutes. If we lived in a less terrible time and place, Weiss would be dismissed as a crank and a bigot, and never heard from again. But we live in the waking nightmare that is the United States in 2025. So instead Weiss is being rewarded with a prize that even she must think is kind of wild.
As part of the deal, I am told David plans to give Bari a role at CBS News that would, among other things, task his fellow Millennial with guiding the editorial direction of the division. Bari's avowedly pro-Israel and anti-woke worldview-not to mention her broadly shit-kicking anti-establishment disposition-would inevitably inspire blowback from various corners of the newsroom, and could dramatically change the editorial posture and reputation of one of the most storied, and certainly self-important, institutions in American journalism.
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