Bari Weiss Is A Losing Loser Who Is Losing

CBS does in fact still want to make money

Tony Dokoupil, Bari Weiss’ pick to anchor the CBS Evening News

Bari Weiss, the fash-friendly new editor-in-chief of CBS News, has in six months turned a historic and respected news org into a punchline from which viewers are running like rats fleeing a ship that is sinking, on fire, and beset with plague. According to Oliver Darcy at Status, the network is “on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21^st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demo.” Darcy also points out that ABC and NBC have had viewership increases in both morning and evening—which means that CBS is bucking positive trends, and/or is bleeding viewers to its competitors.

Weiss is a poisonous figure who hates free speech, loves censoring left and especially pro-Palestinian views, and has used her platforms to spread transphobia and racism. It’s fun to see her fail.

And yet, whenever more news of her disastrous tenure hits the interwebs, many on the left insist that the disasters were all part of the plan. Billionaire asshole Trump cronies David and Larry Ellison wanted to destroy CBS journalism and align the network with Trumpism, the argument goes. They don’t care if it bleeds viewers and dollars as long as its reporting is kneecapped and it toes the party line.

It’s true that the Ellisons wanted to make CBS into a Fox News clone. But part of the allure of Fox News clone status is cloning Fox’s audience numbers and revenue. Oligarchs like the Ellisons and Jeff Bezos sincerely believe that taking their media properties hard right will be a financial bonanza. When it isn’t, they lose—and the rest of us win, not everything, but real ground.

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The failed populist dreams of Bari Weiss

The Fox News visions of the Ellisons and Weiss were not particularly subtle. When Weiss was appointed in October, David Ellison justified the decision by claiming, “We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.” [italics mine]

This is a barely rephrased version of Fox News’ Orwellian catchphrase “fair and balanced”—which means slanted hard right for people who think the mainstream media is too mean to Republicans and Nazis. Weiss similarly promised to reach out to a silent majority who are neither part of “an America-loathing far left” (ie, anyone to the left of Mitt Romney) or “a history-erasing far right,” (ie anyone on the right who indulges in antisemitism rather than sticking to all the other bigotries of which Weiss approves.)

The core point here is that billionaires like the Ellisons and their sycophantic boot-lickers like Bari Weiss all sincerely, truly believe that they speak for the real, true core of Americanness. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Ackman, Donald Trump—all these heirs and hedge fund assholes and grotesque corrupt swindlers bloated with avarice and hate—they all think they are the true voice of the common man, and that the branch-campus professors pointing out that racism exists, or the trans middle-schoolers who want to play basketball, or the Palestinian-Americans existing, are the out of touch elite who must be stifled and ridiculed in the name of the volk. The oligarchs see themselves not as disgusting parasites bleeding the public dry, but as bold everydudes whose success demonstrates both their brilliance and their understanding of white male cishet bigoted Joe Average, who has been sitting in front of his television all day every day just waiting for the chance to turn his TV from Fox News to Johnny-come-lately Fox News that’s somewhat more ambivalent about being state TV for Trump and somewhat less ambivalent about being state TV for Netanyahu.

Obviously if you are not paid to stuff your head up a billionaire’s asshole every day, you are probably aware that billionaires are not in fact psychically connected to the volk. Also, it may have occurred to you that the conservative marketplace is incredibly saturated already, and that CBS viewers probably would turn on Fox News if they wanted Fox News.

And so you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Foxification of CBS has gone about as badly as it could, but not worse than anyone with a brain would expect. Key CBS figures like Anderson Cooper (who Weiss wanted to anchor the evening news) veteran news producer Mary Walsh, and TV anchor Scott McFarlane all left citing Weiss’ bias and unprofessionalism.

Weiss also personally censored a “60 Minutes” story on the ugly conditions at an El Salvador prison where Trump was sending deported immigrants after it had already been released in Canada, resulting in mass bootlegging, embarrassing headlines, and a general sense of chaos and (again) unprofessionalism. CBS Evening News’ new white male Zionist MAGA anchor Tony Dokoupil has been widely mocked as an incompetent liar; he’s sunk the show’s viewership below 4 million, a ratings disaster.

The failed right-wing influencer dreams of Bari Weiss

Weiss believes she is the voice of the people and the people have solidly rejected her and her bullshit. That has to be a foul pill for her to swallow. Less discussed, but perhaps even more humiliating, is her utter failure to turn CBS into a force in the right-wing marketplace.

Weiss’ blogging platform, The Free Press (which CBS acquired) carved out a position as a clearinghouse for supposedly highbrow right-wing screeds, making the intellectual case for DEI, transphobia and hate—a place for Ivy Leaguers and would-be Ivy Leaguers to come together and rigorously apportion footnotes to their genocidal impulses. Weiss clearly hoped that with the oomph of CBS behind her, she could move more forcefully into the right-wing media sphere, influencing the discourse and poaching the audience of quasi-Nazi bloggers, Christofascist podcasters and manosphere YouTubers alike.

Weiss saw her moment after the assassination of the far-right leader of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk. She lined up a deferential interview with Kirk’s widow Erika which CBS promoted relentlessly. The not-very-buried agenda was two-fold; by aligning herself with the aggressively Christian Kirk, the Jewish Weiss hoped to burnish her Christofascist bona-fides with the right-wing marketplace. At the same time, she hoped to promote Kirk’s brand of philosemitic Zionism, using a mainstream imprimatur to push back against the growing antisemitism and intertwined Israel-skepticism on the right. (Yes, you can criticize Israel without being antisemitic; the far right, though, makes it a point of pride to criticize Israel by being as antisemitic as possible.)

Weiss’ plan to garner right-wing bona fides was a failure on absolutely every level. The town hall was deeply unpopular; ratings were 20% below the year-to-date average of the hour. More Weiss and Kirk have utterly failed to stem right-wing antisemitism. On the contrary, openly antisemitic podcaster Candace Owens—who has gone all in on grotesque conspiracy theories about Erika Kirk herself—has more than 24.5 million subscribers, an 80% increase since the beginning of 2025.

Everyone laugh at Bari Weiss

To sum up, Weiss and Ellison believed that turning CBS to the right would allow them to

1. blunt the network’s criticism of Trump

2. revel in a ratings bonanza

3. become a major player in the right-wing marketplace.

Weiss managed (1) through stunningly clumsy censorship and MAGA sycophancy. But she failed utterly at (2) and (3), as she shed CBS’ core audience and picked up approximately zero Fox/Newsmax/Tucker Carlson viewer. The network is a joke, bleeding cash and shedding influence. And Weiss is almost uniformly blamed for every one of these disasters.

Ellison did get some of what he wanted. But he didn’t get the monetary windfall he expected. He almost surely still believes that right-wing news is a goldmine if only he could put the right person in charge. Weiss is clearly not that person—which means that her job is by no means secure. Ellison has to be doing a real gut check, too, about whether Weiss—who has destroyed CBS’ ratings and influence—is the right person to helm his new acquisition of CNN.

This doesn’t mean that CBS or CNN will be saved. Again, Ellison very likely believes that someone could make a killing from a Fox MAGA clone. Maybe he’ll try to poach a producer from Fox or bring in some other right-wing figure with more of a pretense to competence. Maybe, like Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, Ellison will try replacing a subservient hack with a subservient bean counter. Maybe he’ll just chuck every vague pretense to dignity and ask Candace Owens to run the thing.

So yes, CBS and probably CNN have been badly damaged, oligarchy has been strengthened, journalism and a free press are harmed. But it’s also true that Weiss humiliating failures serve as a helpful tonic for all the mainstream media bozos constantly looking with wistful envy at Fox News and dreaming of a conservative turn that drives up viewer or reader numbers.

The story of CBS and the Washington Post over the last two years is a cautionary tale about right-wing branding. The country does not have some huge untapped well of underserved rabid fascists; Trump’s narrow 2024 victory did not herald a massive cultural shift for all time. Oligarchs and their minions who ignore that truth are going to lose (a lot) of money and (even more) status. And yes, billionaires hate to lose money and status. Not enough to admit they’re wrong, perhaps. But enough to take it out on people like Bari Weiss.