Bari Weiss has plan to flood CBS with 'paid commentators' while culling opponents: report

CBS News chief Bari Weiss plans to lay out her newest vision for the network in an all-staff meeting that would sideline some veteran journalists, it was reported Tuesday.

The network's recently installed editor-in-chief plans to tell staffers that she intends to hire 18 "paid commentators" and make significant cuts to the newsroom. She will announce that she only wants top-flight performers who back her approach to remain with the news division, reported NPR.

The details of Weiss' plans were revealed by three sources inside CBS News with direct knowledge of the strategy, and NPR based its report on interviews with eight current and former CBS News journalists who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The former conservative opinion writer and editor for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal was hired last fall by Paramount's new owner, Larry Ellison, to reshape the network's news division after the parent company's previous owners settled a $16 million lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump over a 2024 pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.

Weiss has alienated "60 Minutes" staffers with her heavy-handed oversight and made major changes to "CBS Evening News," whose new anchor, Tony Dokoupil, promised to consider the viewpoints of the "average American" when presenting the news and vowed to be "more transparent" than his predecessors — singling out the legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite by name.

"According to four people at the network's news division, It was taken as an affront by some of his colleagues: Walter Cronkite, the iconic CBS anchor who narrated the death of President John F. Kennedy, humanity's ascent to the Moon, and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon for tens of millions of Americans, embodied the definition of the TV news anchor for the modern era," NPR reported.