Bari Weiss named editor-in-chief of CBS News as Paramount buys Free Press startup
www.theguardian.com
Commentator to lead storied US news network, five years after acrimonious exit from New York Times

The CBS News owner Paramount will acquire the Free Press, a media startup founded by Bari Weiss, and has appointed her editor-in-chief of the storied US news network. The publication is known for criticizing both the left and right and has been a home for staunch support of Israel.

Weiss, 41, has no experience working in broadcast television, though she has carved out a reputation as a heterodox opinion writer and burgeoning media operator.

The purchase comes in light of major changes to 97-year-old CBS News after a merger between Paramount Global, the channel’s parent company, and Skydance Media, a media company founded by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, this summer. Paramount is also behind the Paramount Pictures movie studios and US cable channels including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    4·
    7 days ago

    The announcement follows the network’s selection of a major Trump campaign donor, Kenneth R Weinstein, as ombudsman, an appointment that was viewed as a prerequisite for the Federal Communications Commission – and its pro-Trump chair, Brendan Carr – to grant approval of Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media.

    For forty years all we heard was television doesn’t have any effect on people, or their opinions. It was always insane bullshit and now here we are.