Bari Weiss, the newly installed editor in chief of CBS News, sparked outrage over her suggestion that Alan Dershowitz is the type of “charismatic” thought leader who should grace the airwaves of the Tiffany Network.
The founder of the anti-woke news site the Free Press provoked a meltdown on X after gushing that the 87-year-old former lawyer and longtime Jeffrey Epstein pal is the kind of voice CBS News needs to win back America.
During a panel discussion at the Jewish Leadership Conference in New York earlier this month, the 41-year-old journalist said a recent debate between Dershowitz and former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch, hosted by the Free Press, was emblematic of her vision for the future of CBS News.
“Now these are people that have wildly different opinions on the Second Amendment, and yet showing that they could have good faith, very passionate, very charismatic disagreement and still like each other at the end of the day, we think it’s important,” Weiss told the audience.
She went on to call Dershowitz and Loesch “center left and center right” and claimed they represent the views of most Americans — unlike podcasters such as Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, who “don’t represent our values and the worldviews of the vast majority of Americans.”
Her remarks, which were posted on X, included her goal of getting CBS “back to that normalcy,” adding that her mission isn’t to create a “centrist news” operation because “they have all failed.”
The former New York Times opinions editor likened “centrist news” or news that is just facts to “trying to force-feed spinach down someone’s throat.”
Instead, her hope is to win back trust in the mainstream media by featuring people who are “clearly identifiably in the center left or the center right in conversation with each other.”
Critics pounced on Weiss’ suggestion that voices like Dershowitz and Loesch would help CBS win back viewers.
“The kids demand Alan Dershowitz,” a contributor from MSNow noted.
Others snarked it was “funny” that Weiss felt that the way to reach the average American news consumer was to give more airtime to the celebrity defense attorney.
“America has a fever and the only cure is more Dersh,” said one Vox critic.
“I saw some teens today. I asked them who represents them best. They told me that Gen Alpha and Zoomers are on TikTok and Instagram demanding more and more clips of Alan Dershowitz,” Southern Poverty Law Center researcher Hannah Gais wrote on X. “They can’t get enough of him. He is the voice of their generation. The voice America needs.”
Contrarian podcaster Glenn Greenwald noted the low viewership of the Dershowitz-Loesch debate Weiss cited — a measly 860 people in its first five hours online.
“The example Bari Weiss gave of the ‘charismatic’ mainstream debates she believes will revitalize CBS — namely, the gun control debate she arranged between Alan Dershowitz and Dana Loesch — has so far been watched by a grand total of 860 people in the 5 hours since posting,” tweeted Greenwald, who has been an outspoken critic of Weiss in recent months.
Still, some supported Weiss’ vision for the struggling news network that is home to Gayle King, Norah O’Donnell and Scott Pelley.
“Her alternative isn’t moderation. It’s transparency,” Mediaite’s Colby Hall argued. “Put people with genuinely different worldviews in the same studio and let them argue with full force, in good faith, on air, where viewers can see how the arguments are made. Actual pluralism, not neutrality theater.”
Weiss was tapped to lead CBS News in October as Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison moves to bring more balance and conservative voices to the network. As part of the mission, Ellison acquired Weiss’ Free Press for $150 million.
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