How Bari Weiss Is Changing CBS News
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
Last October, Bari Weiss—best-known as a contrarian opinion writer who launched the right-leaning Free Press—was appointed the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Donald Trump has called her new regime “the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.” The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone wrote about Weiss’s hostile takeover of CBS for the January 26, 2026, issue of the magazine. In a conversation with David Remnick, Malone discusses her reporting on Weiss: how resigning from the New York Times launched Weiss to prominence as a crusader against what she has characterized as woke groupthink; how Weiss gained the support of Silicon Valley titans who had their own political grievances; and the headlines about Weiss’s rocky beginning as head of a news network, including the on-air travails of her new anchor, Tony Dokoupil.
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the political scene. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:08.3 | Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour. |
| 0:16.0 | This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. |
| 0:23.0 | Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:29.5 | Until 2020, Barry Weiss was known only to that small tribe of people who were obsessed with inside baseball in the media. |
| 0:37.7 | But then Weiss, who was in her mid-30s, caused a stir when she bolted the opinion section |
| 0:42.9 | of the New York Times in anger. |
| 0:45.2 | She claimed that she was chased out of the paper by a woke culture at the Times, staffers |
| 0:50.5 | who had relentlessly attacked her. |
| 0:52.7 | In an open letter, she described herself as having been bullied for her, quote, forays into |
| 0:57.9 | wrongthink, an echo of George Orwell. |
| 1:01.3 | And like Tucker Carlson, Weiss soon found backers for a new platform online, the free press. |
| 1:07.3 | And then just a few years later, Paramount Skydance purchased the free press, and the owners |
| 1:12.7 | moved Weiss over to run CBS News. And now we all know Barry Weiss's name. Donald Trump called |
| 1:19.5 | the new regime at CBS News, quote, the greatest thing that's happened in a long time to a free |
| 1:26.0 | and open and good press. |
| 1:29.1 | In this week's New Yorker Claire Malone, who covers the media, journalism, and politics, |
| 1:33.5 | has published a piece called Inside Barry Weiss's Hostel Takeover of CBS News. |
| 1:41.5 | Claire, I spoke on the show recently with our colleague Jason Zangerly about Tucker Carlson, |
| 1:46.2 | and he's written a book about him, a really terrific biography. Now, Carlson is an enemy of what |
| 1:51.8 | he considers liberal bias in media, of course, but he's very far to the right of Barry Weiss, |
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