‘Gender-critical’ queer journalist Bari Weiss appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News

US media conglomerate Paramount has announced the acquisition of conservative outlet The Free Press, in a multi-million-dollar deal and has named Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Weiss is a conservative journalist known for her criticism of so-called cancel culture and all things “woke”, gender-critical views which have led her to offer a platform to trans exclusionary figures such as JK Rowling.

She has said she “happily plead[s] guilty as charged” to the label of “Zionist fanatic”.

She founded The Free Press alongside her wife, tech journalist Nellie Bowles, in 2021 as a newsletter under the name Common Sense which was published on Substack. Later changing its name, the media company described itself as focusing on stories which are “ignored or misconstrued in the service of an ideological narrative”, and amassed an estimated 1.5 million subscribers.

Paramount’s acquisition deal is reportedly worth $150 million (approximately £112 million) and chairman and chief executive David Ellison described Weiss, who has not worked in broadcast television before, as a “proven champion of independent, principled journalism”, adding: “I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News.

“This move is part of Paramount’s bigger vision to modernise content and the way it connects, directly and passionately, to audiences around the world.

“This is an important initiative for our company and Bari will report directly to me, leading the work of The Free Press and collaborating with our CBS News team in the pursuit of making it the most-trusted name in news.

“We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.”

In addition to CBS, Paramount Sundance also owns Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, Showtime, VH1 and part of Miramax as well as streaming services, and channels in the UK and Australia. The latest purchase comes in the wake of changes to CBS News after a merger between Paramount Global, the channel’s parent company, and Skydance Media, a media company founded by Ellison, the son of billionaire Trump-supporter Larry Ellison.

Talking about the move, Weiss said: “This is a great moment for The Free Press. This partnership allows our ethos of fearless, independent journalism to reach an enormous, diverse and influential audience.

“We honour the extraordinary legacy of CBS News by committing ourselves to a singular mission: building the most-trusted news organisation of the 21st century.”

Who is Bari Weiss?

Weiss grew up in a Jewish family in Pittsburgh and is a graduate of Columbia University, where she dated Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon.

As a student, she co-founded Columbians for Academic Freedom, a group which challenged the university to fire academic staff they believed were biased against Israel and stifling pro-Israel intellectual thought. After university, Weiss worked and wrote for several publications, including Haaretz and Tablet, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Weiss has often courted controversy, particularly in the latter half of the 2010s, for defending cultural appropriation, labelling intersectionality at Chicago Dyke March a “caste system”, criticising the organisers of the women’s march against Trump, defending actor Aziz Ansari in the wake of #MeToo allegations, and branding the left as intolerant, in a column with the headline We’re All Fascists Now.

She left The New York Times in the wake of fall-out over the publishing of a piece by Republican senator Tom Cotton in which he called for the military to be sent in to deal with Black Lives Matter protests and carry out an “overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers”.

Opinion editor James Bennet resigned after more than 1,000 staffers signed a letter opposing the story. Weiss described the aftermath as an internal “civil war” between “the (mostly young) wokes” and “the (mostly 40+) liberals”.

Weiss subsequently resigned too, citing a “hostile work environment” and claiming “intellectual curiosity” was “now a liability at The Times”.

What has Bari Weiss said about trans issues?

Weiss has long been a critic of trans rights. She taken issue with gender-affirming healthcare and trans inclusion in sport, as well as using her platform to tout the views of TERFS.

In 2021, she launched her podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss, in which she has interviewed figures including Julie Bindel and Abigail Shrier.

That same year, she spoke to actress and former mixed martial arts star Gina Carano who was fired from The Mandalorian after being accused of “mocking trans people” by adding the pronouns “boop/bop/beep” to her bio and comparing being a Republican in the US to being Jewish during the Holocaust.

In the piece, published by The Free Press, Weiss wrote: “In Hollywood, as in so many other industries, there are two sets of rules: one for leftists and one for everyone else.”

In 2023, The Free Press produced the The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a podcast series during the author was interviewed by Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church.

The Free Press also interviewed a mother who claimed to have had no say about her teenager receiving gender-affirming car, and who had been felt “bullied” by the gender clinic. However, her daughter took to social media to deny the allegations.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.