CBS was founded in 1927, just a year after NBC. Nearly 100 years later, it remains one of the most important broadcasting companies in America, known as the “Big Three.” With names like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, CBS News set the journalistic standard for presenting news with integrity.
Or so the network wanted you to think.
For decades, CBS has been part of the Leftmedia network of Democrat Party propagandists, pushing a decidedly left-wing narrative of events that distorts the picture and tilts the political playing field. Who could forget CBS’s utter humiliation and firing of Rather for his fabricated report on George W. Bush’s military service records? Just last year, there was the deceptively edited interview of Kamala Harris that cost CBS a $16 million settlement with Donald Trump.
Imagine what our government and culture would be like if the media simply reported the truth instead of the Left’s lies.
Ironically, a liberal lesbian who quit The New York Times a few years back wants to use that vision to save CBS.
Bari Weiss left the Times in 2020 amidst a kerfuffle over what opinions could be published. Long story short, the Times’s editorial page editor, James Bennett, resigned after a staff rebellion for having published an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton. Weiss soon followed, resigning from what she called a “hostile work environment.”
Weiss is a liberal, not a leftist — a self-described “left-leaning centrist.” Of the Times, she explained, “Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.”
She went on to start Common Sense, which became The Free Press, and which grew quickly on a model of adhering to basic journalistic standards. Five years later, Weiss has cashed in, selling her enterprise to Paramount, which owns CBS, for $150 million. The Free Press will continue to operate, but as part of the deal, she has taken the helm as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
An announcement from @BariWeiss: The Free Press is joining Paramount.
Read more: https://t.co/tFH1mA3t4F pic.twitter.com/3PIlAh6gNc
— The Free Press (@TheFP) October 6, 2025
In her announcement, she described The Free Press’s mission this way: “We would marry the quality of the old world to the freedom of the new. We would seek the truth and tell it plainly. And we would treat readers like adults capable of making their own choices.”
She believes there’s a big audience out there craving just this sort of product:
The Free Press uncovered an America hiding in plain sight. People who want to be surprised. People who want to learn. People who are open to changing their minds in the face of new facts. People who believe that curiosity is a virtue and who crave common sense in a world that feels upside down. People who resist the warmth of political tribalism even as they seek community with one another. People who want logic and wit, not conspiracy theories and demoralization.
The Free Press is a long way from perfect, of course. It’s run by humans, after all. But Weiss and her colleagues do strive to set aside their personal views and biases to present the facts as they are, not as they wish them to be. If she and Paramount chief David Ellison can bring the same approach to CBS News — a herculean task, to be sure — it’s hard to overstate what a major impact that could have on the media landscape.
Fox News grew for much the same reason. Founded the same year we launched — 1996 — Fox quickly rose to become the leading cable news broadcasting company, rivaling each of the Big Three now for nightly audience numbers, thanks to their respective slide over the last quarter century. Combined, of course, the Leftmedia dwarfs Fox’s audience, but clearly, there’s a market for something other than the lockstep leftist narrative in the news.
That’s precisely what Ellison and Weiss say they’re after.
Weiss hopes to report “news that reflects reality” and practice journalism that “doesn’t seek to demonize, but seeks to understand.”
Ellison agrees. “The combination of the Free Press and CBS News will create a news organization that ultimately becomes one of the most trusted destinations for news in this country,” he said. “We want CBS to speak to that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves at center-left to center-right.”
To be sure, I wish the media landscape looked more like The Patriot Post, speaking the truth from a Christian and constitutional perspective, not just staking out some mealy-mouthed middle ground with the Bolsheviks and fascists of the Left. But I’ll take what I can get.
Weiss’s ascent means there’s a real chance for more objective news coverage at CBS. The same goes for The Washington Post, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, of all people, is working to turn the paper away from its rabid Trump Derangement Syndrome toward something more trustworthy.
At the Post, even hinting at not allowing left-wing activism to pose as journalism caused a meltdown and mass exodus. CBS could see something similar.
Legacy media outlets have lost significant trust among the American people over the last 25 years or so. However, it appears that individuals with financial means and influence are hearing these complaints and seeking to address them.
“As the gatekeepers of the mainstream have failed one after another, an explosion took place across the media landscape,” Weiss noted. “Incredible new voices came to the fore. Personalities and influencers have overtaken hundred-year-old journalism brands in only a few years. It’s an exciting, fascinating moment.”
Indeed, it is.
