How Bari Weiss Is Changing CBS News

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Until 2020, Barry Weiss was known only to that small tribe of people who were obsessed with inside baseball in the media. But then Weiss, who was in her mid thirties, caused a stir when she bolted the opinion section of the New York Times in anger.

She claimed that she was chased out of the paper by a woke culture at the Times, staffers who had relentlessly attacked her. In an open letter she described herself as having been bullied for her quote forays into wrongthink, an echo of George Orwell. And like Tucker Carlson, Weiss soon found backers for a new platform online, the Free Press. And then just a few years later, Paramount Skydance purchased the free press, and the owners moved Weiss over to run CBS News. And now we all know Barry Weiss's name.

Donald Trump called the new regime at CBS News, quote, the greatest thing that's happened in a long time to a free and open and good press. In this week's New Yorker, Claire Malone, who covers the media, journalism, and politics, has published a piece called Inside Barry Weiss's Hostile Takeover of CBS News. Claire, I spoke on the show recently with our colleague Jason Zangerly about Tucker Carlson, and he's written a book about him, a really terrific biography. Now, Carlson is an enemy of what he considers liberal bias in media, of course, but he's very far to the right of Barry Weiss, if we're being fair. And he lambasted Barry Weiss in an interview with Theo Vaughn in December.

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