Bari Weiss startled “60 Minutes” staffers during a private meeting last week by asking why Americans view the show as biased — another sign of the new CBS News chief’s aggressive approach to reshaping the network, according to a report.
Weiss “surprised senior staff … when she asked a provocative question: Why does the country think you’re biased?” the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing three people who attended the Midtown Manhattan session.
The exchange was met with “stunned awkwardness,” the paper said.
The question came less than two weeks into Weiss’s tenure as editor in chief — and underscored the upheaval inside the nation’s most-watched news magazine as hundreds of CBS News employees gauge their new boss’s unorthodox style.
Weiss, 41, has never worked in television. The outspoken founder of the Free Press — a digital outlet bought this month by CBS parent Paramount Skydance for about $150 million — has been tasked by billionaire owner David Ellison to make the network “rigorous” and “fact-based.”
According to the Times, Weiss has already irritated CBS executives by griping about a flood of internal leaks and “urging managers to identify the leakers.”
She also told staff on an Oct. 9 conference call to be “more aggressive” in booking major figures — announcing that she had personally secured three former secretaries of state for a special on the Middle East peace deal.
Only Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared; Antony Blinken and Mike Pompeo did not.
Weiss also lined up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pushed “60 Minutes” producers to land Trump allies Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff for Sunday’s broadcast, the Times said.
Her hands-on approach has jolted a newsroom that typically keeps its top brass far from the booking desk, according to the Times.
“I love to win,” Weiss told producers during her first week, according to the report.
Inside CBS, Weiss’s blunt question to “60 Minutes” hit an already tense environment.
As The Post has reported, employees described the network as a “snake pit” where old-guard producers resist change and “deep-state CBS News will try to kill Weiss with leaks.”
Days after Weiss’s start, she faced her first internal revolt.
Last week, the Writers Guild of America East, which represents CBS journalists, told members they would not be disciplined for ignoring a Weiss memo demanding descriptions of their daily duties and recent work.
Weiss’s early weeks have been defined by turmoil and turnover.
On Thursday, standards-and-practices chief Claudia Milne — long accused internally of pushing “woke” editorial policies — was out, the first senior executive to exit under Weiss.
That same day, President Donald Trump publicly praised Ellison and Weiss, telling CNN he expects CBS to be “fairer” under their leadership.
“They’ll bring it back to its former glory,” Trump said during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One.
Ellison, whose $8.4 billion merger of Paramount and Skydance closed this summer, has vowed to “restore balance” across CBS News and placate regulators who questioned its liberal tilt.
In a memo to employees, he said Weiss would pursue “rigorous, fact-based reporting and a relentless commitment to amplifying voices from all corners of the spectrum.”
Weiss’s arrival has already reshaped coverage. Earlier this month, The Post reported she was “vocal” in CBS News editorial meetings about the Israel-Hamas cease-fire, pressing producers to book Kushner and Witkoff, architects of Trump’s peace plan.
“This is the first time she really got involved,” one person told The Post.
The Post has sought comment from CBS News.
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