Bari Weiss Wants CBS News to Look ‘Honestly at Ourselves.’ You First, Girl.

Weeks after CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pushed an “exclusive” claiming the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good suffered internal bleeding—citing just two anonymous sources—Weiss reportedly held an all-hands meeting at the network to tell everyone that no one trusts them. 

“We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves. We are not producing a product that enough people want,” Weiss told staff, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In the first week of CBS Evening News under Weiss’s new, MAGA-lite anchor, Tony Dokoupil, they lost nearly one million viewers, and audiences fell 23 percent among viewers ages 25-54, the demographic advertisers love the most. If we’re looking honestly at ourselves here, Bari, that might be worth interrogating.

“We can blame demographics or technology or fractured attention spans or ‘news avoidance,’ but these are all copes,” she added. We could also blame Bari herself for green-lighting stories the Trump administration wants published and killing or indefinitely stalling stories it does not—like the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, the notorious and brutal El Salvador prison where the Trump administration is sending deportees, regardless of where they were born or whether they’ve been convicted of a crime.

Weiss said she held the story because it needed a comment from DHS or one of the administration’s anti-immigration ghouls, like Tom Homan or Stephen Miller, for “balance.” Yet, in the exclusive about the ICE agent getting injured, CBS News quotes both (former) Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—but not a single medical expert who could contextualize what “internal bleeding” actually means, because while it can be serious, it can also mean something as mundane as having an annoying bruise. So much for balance.

“The reality is twofold. First: Not enough people trust us. Not you. Us. As in: the mainstream media,” she continued. “We can debate why that is, but the numbers tell the story. According to a recent Gallup poll, just 28 percent of people say we have their trust.” It’s true that people don’t trust the media—but Weiss, who’s so far spent her tenure platforming people like Erika Kirk and producing debates titled “Has Feminism Failed Women?” is very much making that problem worse.

“Second: We are not doing enough to meet audiences where they are. So they are leaving us. They are not tuning out, far from it. In fact, Americans spend twice as much time consuming news today as they did 50 years ago,” she said. “They are going to the vast universe of podcasts and YouTube and Twitch and newsletters and, yes, sometimes to our nimbler competitors.” To that end, Weiss also announced a slate of 19 new podcasters and writers, including Niall Ferguson, Andrew Huberman, Caroline Chambers, and Casey Lewis, adding that she wants CBS News reporters to become news brands themselves.

“Our strategy until now has been to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television,” she said. “If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.” Another strategy might be not converting a legacy news network into a state-sponsored livestream for Trump administration propaganda.

She reportedly concluded her—whatever this was—by likening CBS News to a start-up and telling everyone they’re free to leave. “But startups aren’t for everyone. They’re places that move at a rapid speed. They experiment. They try new things. They sometimes create noise and, yes, bad press,” she said. “If that’s not your bag, that’s OK. It’s a free country and I completely respect if you decide this is just not the right place at the right time for you.”

I would not advise anyone to leave a full-time news job with health insurance in this media landscape—so if you have anything you want to say about ~anything~, you can feel free to email [email protected].

---

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.