CBS News Head Bari Weiss Has The Makings of a Great Leader
Anna Wintour has offered a vote of confidence for newly appointed CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
“Obviously, she’s a very accomplished young woman with a very strong personality and a strong point of view,” Wintour told Variety on Monday night when asked about Weiss’ appointment at Only Make Believe’s 25th Anniversary Gala in New York City. “And that usually makes for a great leader.”
Wintour assumed control of Vogue’s U.S. edition in 1988 and held the role for 37 years. Chloé Malle, the daughter of actor Candice Bergen and director Louis Malle, succeeded her as head of editorial content for U.S. Vogue in September.
“My days are pretty full,” said Wintour, who continues to oversee the fashion magazine’s worldwide output as chief content officer of Condé Nast and Vogue’s global editorial director.
When asked if she could ever see a day where she stops working, the 75-year-old fashion icon replied, “That hasn’t arisen yet.”
Only Make Believe honored Wintour with the James Hammerstein Award at the annual charity gala. Hosted by John Oliver at the Shubert Theater, the organization raised over $1.3 million to support their mission to bring interactive theater to children’s hospitals and special education facilities across the East Coast.
A day earlier, Oliver dedicated the latest episode of his HBO series “Last Week Tonight” to a deep dive into Weiss’ career. The late-night host highlighted articles from her outlet The Free Press that he described as “pretty poorly fact-checked,” and questioned Weiss’ lack of traditional newsroom experience.
“Of course I knew what they were doing at the Free Press beforehand, that’s fine,” Oliver told Variety. “When it jumps is when you’re in charge of a news organization without being a journalist.”
Weiss made a career for herself as an op-ed staff editor at The New York Times before breaking off from the mainstream publication in 2020 and launching the Free Press. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison announced last week that his company would acquire Weiss’ Free Press for $150 million, a move that’s sparked divisive reactions across the media industry.
Although Oliver expressed deep concern for the future of CBS News, he emphasized wanting “to separate out” Weiss’ new role from the work being done by the journalists at the network.
“The reason why it is so alarming is there’s amazing work being done at CBS,” Oliver told Variety. “They will continue to do that work until the worst case scenario, they are unable to do it anymore and people start getting fired or resigning. So up until that point, I’d want to defend very much the fact that great work is happening at CBS News. I hope it can continue to happen under these circumstances. I worry it’ll be different.”
Pres. Donald Trump said on Sunday that he thinks CBS News has “great potential” after the Skydance–Paramount merger, which put David Ellison in charge of the media company.
“I’m sure he’s happy,” Oliver said. “I mean, he’s certainly happy about Ellison taking over Paramount and CBS. So this is more of that. So, I’m sure he’s happy — if happiness is something that he can ever fully get himself to.”
Oliver concluded, “In general, if he’s really happy about something, you’ve got to question what that something is.”
