David Ellison Secretly Met With Bari Weiss For Possible Role at CBS News: Report

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Skydance CEO and founder David Ellison — poised to head CBS News after his company’s merger with Paramount Global wraps up —  “has quietly courted” Bari Weiss to bring her on board for a potential high-profile gig with the network, according to a report by Oliver Darcy in the latest edition of his Status newsletter.

Weiss was an editor and writer at The New York Times, covering political and culture topics, until she left in 2020 and launched a Substack newsletter, later renamed as The Free Press. Earlier in her career, Weiss was viewed as being aligned with the center-left but has moved rightward on certain issues, garnering praise in conservative circles for her critiques of “woke” liberal excesses at the Times, other media outlets, universities, and prominent progressive institutions.

The planned Paramount-Skydance merger has taken on larger political implications in the wake of President Donald Trump’s re-election, due to his vociferous criticism of 60 Minutes and CBS News programs and reporters — not to mention the lawsuit he filed regarding an interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s ire with the network and the role his Federal Communications Commission appointee will play in approving the merger have loomed over strategic decisions at CBS, with a veteran 60 Minutes producer resigning in protest, other reporters publicly lambasting their employer, and longtime network veterans lamenting if programs like 60 Minutes will even exist post-merger.

In that context, outreach to someone like Weiss, who is not a dogmatic conservative but is generally viewed with more respect and less hostility on the right than other media figures, may make strategic sense. The owners of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have also made substantial efforts to recruit right-leaning voices to appeal to audiences in this second Trump presidential term.

As for Ellison, he “quietly made time for a meeting that said as much about his worldview as it did about his interest in media” during a visit to New York City last year, Darcy reported about the Skydance chief’s sit-down with Weiss.

The meeting “hints at how he may steer the network” post-merger, Darcy wrote.

His sources told him Ellison “has long been an admirer of Weiss’ style of journalism” and “view[s] her as one of the more compelling voices in the shifting landscape of independent journalism,” and revealed that the future CBS News head “expressed strong interest in recruiting Weiss to work in some capacity with the network.”

Darcy added more details about the discussions:

I’m told that Ellison appeared to leave a wide range of options on the table, signaling that he sees Weiss as a valuable addition while he considers how to put his stamp on the news division. While a management role is not said to be on the table, it would not be out of the range of possibilities that she could be named as an on-air contributor or even perhaps given a coveted correspondent position on “60 Minutes.”

A representative for Skydance declined to comment and Weiss did not respond when contacted for comment, and it is not known if the discussions from that meeting in NYC delved into more specifics or otherwise continued later.

Weiss is now a “major star in right-wing media,” Darcy noted, in no small part due to her sharp critiques of mainstream media outlets as “as biased instruments of the progressive elite,” and she has not spared CBS from her barbs.

“While Weiss might be popular in certain circles, many journalists view her unfavorably, criticizing both her tactics and views,” wrote Darcy, and Ellison’s willingness to recruit her to CBS signals that he is not only “interested in looking beyond traditional broadcasting talent, but he appears to be on board with introducing voices that have made their names by relentlessly criticizing—or outright bashing—the legacy press.”

Journalists at CBS News are “on edge” about how their jobs will change after the merger, and at 60 Minutes, staff morale “is at a nadir, with staffers uncertain what the future holds for the crown jewel of American broadcast journalism,” wrote Darcy.

Throughout the organization, staffers are holding their breaths in anticipation of the merger bringing brutal budget cuts and chatter about Ellison trying to recruit new talent like Weiss “is sure to add to the unease already coursing through the newsroom,” Darcy added.

Read the full report at Status.