Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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-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.
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Chapter 2: How did Bari Weiss's resignation from The New York Times change her career?
A lot of our overlords, like Barry Weiss, are actually totally mediocre. And the most depressing thing about the United States in 2025 is that we're led not just by bad people, but by unimpressive, dumb, totally non-creative people. Barry Weiss has no experience in journalism at all. Like, she's never committed. She's like an opinion writer or whatever for the New York Times or something.
She's not a journalist. Like, never written a freaking story in her life. Barry Weiss or she's calling me names or I'm calling her names or whatever. It's like in no fair system and no meritocracy would Barry Weiss rise above secretary. Like actually, and I mean that. I've been in this business my whole – I've been in this business since Barry Weiss was breastfeeding, OK?
There's no world in which Barry Weiss rises to the top of a news network except a rigged world. That's it.
Should we count the sexist insults here? Breastfeeding secretary. What is with this guy and what's going on here?
There are a lot of debates about what Barry Weiss's own political leanings are, but they are very different from Tucker Carlson's. And I think, you know, Barry Weiss is Jewish and very sort of openly Zionist, has written a book, How to Fight Antisemitism. So I think that they disagree on some some things. I also think there is this war happening in conservative media a little bit.
Tucker's also sort of flirting with further right elements. And Barry, I think, is trying to court the middle. This is sort of the line I think she would say, which is people are politically homeless. They don't... They don't see themselves in CNN or MS Now or The New York Times. They see themselves nowhere. Or The New Yorker or Public Radio. Or The New Yorker or Public, yeah.
Her vision for CBS would be, you know, we're going to catch them all, right? We're going to catch all those people on the center right and the center left who think Tucker is crazy and flirting with Nazis. Mm-hmm. And we're going to bring them in. And, you know, there's an interesting thing.
He has sort of tapped into a criticism of Weiss that she is unqualified to run CBS News because she's never worked in a traditional news side of a newsroom. She came up on the opinion side of The Wall Street Journal. And at the New York Times.
And then I think she would argue that her her substack, the Free Press, has had, you know, reported investigations that while sort of maybe more ideologically slanted that there's there's been reporting and she's been an editor for a long time.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Bari Weiss's appointment at CBS News?
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. Who is Barry? What's she all about?
She's from a particular neighborhood in Pittsburgh called Squirrel Hill. It has a large Jewish population. And, you know, Barry Weiss comes from a family where she spent a lot of time in Israel, feels a deep connection. And she comes to Columbia after doing a gap year in Israel. She goes to a screening of a documentary that has been made by a Boston-based activist group called The David Project.
And it's called Columbia Unbecoming. And it basically is a brief documentary that's interviewing students, Jewish students at Columbia, who feel that professors in basically the Middle Eastern Studies Department have intimidated them because of their background. views that are supportive of Israel.
And, you know, there are some back and students basically testifying about their experiences with the professors. And Barry is very sort of moved to action by this documentary. She comes up at the end of the meeting and says to the guy organizing things, how can I help out? And she starts writing op-eds and becomes pretty quickly, particularly if you sort of
know or become familiar with Barry Weiss. She's sort of this energetic force of nature. She's soon writing op-eds. And I think probably because this controversy with the Middle East Studies Department because it was New York City, because it was a hot topic, it really got picked up by mainstream media, the New York Times, the New York Sun were covering it.
And I think through that, Barry just really gets connected to not just kind of, you know, media appearances, but a wider networking world. She's a really good networker. She sends the email. She walks up to people at the party. She sends the follow-up note. That's kind of her. And she is sort of good in a room, as they say, right?
So she got to the Wall Street Journal, where she worked on the opinion side of the paper.
Right.
And she knew people like Bret Stephens and all kinds of people. And eventually she's hired at the New York Times to work in the opinion section under James Bennett. What happened?
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Chapter 4: How does Bari Weiss's editorial vision differ from traditional media?
Now, AI memes have added to that portfolio, casting Secretary Rubio as the new governor of Minnesota, the new Shah of Iran, the prime minister of Greenland, the new manager of Manchester United.
So I think there are different editorial choices being made at CBS. And perhaps some of that is sensibility, a desire for the news to, you know— speak to people in a more casual, intimate way. The idea that a lot of people get their news not from the television anymore, but from YouTube. I think I would say that that is the generous interpretation.
And I think that the very vocal criticism is, well, this is, you know, softening an administration that is taking really, really radical, radical actions, including against journalists. I You know, not soon after, the FBI searched a journalist's home. I mean, just a genuinely, I found it shocking.
Now, Barry Weiss did not want to talk to you on the record, but you talked to a lot of people at CBS. If one were to walk into that building, what's the mood there?
I think that people... Broadly understand that the network has to modernize, adapt, change. I think even Barry Weiss's supporters, and maybe even Barry Weiss herself, would say that she's made some mistakes. From people who, you know, are...
critical, you know, hostile to her or openly critical of her, they'd point to, they'd say, you know, listen, I don't know if I want to be at this kind of news organization. This isn't the kind of place I want to work at, and this isn't something that I find familiar. So this idea that, yes, we might need change, but you throw the baby out with the bathwater, right?
And the baby being, you know, regular, shmegular, traditional reporting journalism, right?
I mean, it's gotten to the point where the host of the Golden Globes in her, you know, comic opening, which was on CBS, which was on CBS, took time to insult CBS News under Barry Weiss. Let's hear that for a second.
And the award for most editing goes to CBS News. Yes. CBS News, America's newest place to see BS News.
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