Bari Weiss & the Return of Journalistic Integrity
Ignore the media convulsion about Paramount’s acquisition of The Free Press. It’s time to think for ourselves.
Take a minute and read this reporting from The New York Times’ Jessica Testa on Paramount’s acquisition of The Free Press and the installation of Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News.
It’s revealing, but not surprising. Three standouts:
- “[Bari Weiss] is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions.”
- “In the aftermath [of resigning from The New York Times], she devoted herself to free speech, building her profile on charisma…”
- “As a public figure, it appeared her newest allies were mostly billionaires.”
Feels like a bit too much conjecture for a classically reported piece, so let’s rewind the tape and take these opinions on individually.
#1: Weiss built The Free Press on the very journalistic traditions Testa dismisses: “honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence…investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is.” This is why I pay them money, despite disagreeing with a good deal of what’s published.
#2: Seems to me (and most The Free Press subscribers, I suspect) that she built her profile by addressing a major need in the market — real, inquisitive journalism and diverse, unafraid opinion pieces — and grew her profile by growing a healthy business. She is also charismatic, yes.
#3: I suspect her allies are more than “mostly billionaires” — they include millions of ordinary humans like myself that would consider themselves a part of the silent moderate majority, which also happens to be “70% of the [CBS News] audience that would really define themselves at center-left to center-right.”
The media convulsion continues elsewhere, and extends to academic commentary. In The Wall Street Journal’s coverage, we hear from American University School of Communication’s Jane Hall that “These appear to be editorial decisions tied to business deals before the government under Donald Trump.”
And yet The Free Press rails on Trump Administration policies, and the President himself, on the regular.
Le sigh.
I’m a fan of The Free Press, obviously, and had been begging for something like it for years before Bari (and many others) built it. The outlet is not perfect, and the owners suffer their own biases. But CBS, along with other more traditional media outlets, are struggling existentially with three areas that Weiss should be able to help with.
#1 Restore Principles, Restore Trust
While most mainstream media operatives surely see themselves as abiding by core journalistic principles in pursuit of truth, most Americans may not agree. From The Washington Post coverage:
“The atmosphere in the newsroom Monday was ‘noticeably uncomfortable,’ one of the staffers said, noting that most CBS News journalists feel they are already upholding the principles that Weiss espoused in her memo.”
Therein lies the problem, this lack of awareness that they are not upholding said principles. And with recently released Gallup numbers suggesting new lows for Americans’ confidence in media, it’s clear dramatic change is needed. Restoring accountability to those principles within these news organizations internally should enable trust-building with audiences externally.
#2 Political Diversity → Credibility
A couple weeks before the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, The Free Press polled the company to see where its newsroom was intending to vote. The results should speak for themselves:
“The staff…is split almost exactly three ways in this election between Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and [undecided]. Our editorial staff is split, just like the country we write about.” (from 2:05 here)
This is the only newsroom, as far as I could tell, that made public any such information. If mainstream news outlets had done the same, I suspect the outcome would have been 90% Harris or above for their staff. Maybe not? The point here is that greater political diversity in the newsroom, whatever the newsroom, would likely produce more rigorous debate within — the kind we see at The Free Press every day. And greater reporting, with greater credibility, would soon follow.
#3 Stop the Ratings Slide
“For the 2024–25 season, ABC’s ‘World News Tonight,’ NBC’s ‘Nightly News’ and CBS’s ‘Evening News’ averaged about 17.8 million nightly viewers combined, according to Nielsen. That is about half the audience they commanded a quarter of a century ago.”*
I’m surprised it’s not worse.
Does Weiss have “the experience” to do this? Does it matter? Regardless, incrementalism in any form won’t save CBS News, or its peers. A hard pivot back to principled investigation, done in the vein of The Free Press’s “serve it up and let the readers/viewers think for themselves” ethos is as good a bet as any. Add a dose of the digital-native thinking, and it just makes sense.
In May I attended The Free Press live debate at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, the headline question: “Will the Truth Survive Artificial Intelligence?” Aravind Srinivas (Perplexity) and Fei-Fei Li (Stanford AI leader) debated Jaron Lanier (Microsoft) and Nicholas Carr (author) in what was a deep, surprising, and revealing discussion.
I attended with a good family friend, who found his way to The Free Press just like I did after being adrift for years. In his words, it was “Genuinely one of the most thought-provoking things I’ve ever watched.” I agreed.
He was a junior in high school.
As we reflect on the next chapter at CBS News, I can’t help but imagine they are building for him — a young, dynamic, curious individual that yearns for thoughtful, rigorous news and perspectives — and that’s a good thing.
