David Remnick

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-30s, 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 wrong-think, 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 Zengerle 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.

Let's listen to that.

Should we count the sexist insults here?

Breastfeeding secretary.

What is with this guy and what's going on here?

But you've now spent months thinking about reporting on Barry Weiss for a long piece in The New Yorker.

It's been published this week.