Conservative writer Bari Weiss named editor-in-chief of CBS News

Appointment of media fig known for pro-Israel, anti-‘woke’ stances comes arsenic US media firms consciousness Trump pressure.

The United States media conglomerate Paramount has announced a woody securing the acquisition of the commentary website Free Press and naming its founder, blimpish media fig Bari Weiss, arsenic the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

The assignment of Weiss, known for her pro-Israel positions and predominant disapproval of “woke” politics, comes amid what critics person called an effort to steer CBS successful a absorption much aligned with the medication of President Donald Trump.

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Paramount CEO David Ellison connected Monday hailed Weiss’s “entrepreneurial thrust and editorial vision”.

“This determination is portion of Paramount’s bigger imaginativeness to modernise contented and the mode it connects – straight and passionately – to audiences astir the world,” Ellison said successful a statement.

The latest moves travel a merger betwixt Skydance Media and Paramount, which owns the CBS tv network, completed successful August. In Skydance’s regulatory bid to bargain Paramount, the institution promised the US authorities greater “viewpoint diversity” astatine CBS, according to a connection from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr successful July.

Before that approval, Paramount besides agreed to wage $16m to settee a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump implicit a conception connected the flagship CBS News programme, 60 Minutes. Media watchdogs wide criticised that suit arsenic a baseless effort to unit quality outlets into much favourable coverage.

Ellison, to whom Weiss volition study directly, is the lad of tech businessman Larry Ellison, 1 of the richest men successful the satellite and a adjacent Trump ally.

Weiss founded The Free Press successful 2022 aft departing from The New York Times, wherever she had penned a letter saying she had been subjected to “constant bullying” by colleagues who disagreed with her views.

She has styled herself arsenic a information teller often astatine likelihood with US bequest media. Recent Free Press articles person taken connected diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes and scepticism implicit vaccines, some issues spearheaded by the Trump administration.

However, the work has besides been astatine likelihood with mainstream Republicans successful immoderate instances, including successful its captious sum of the party’s positions connected abortion.

Weiss’s attack has attracted salient backers, including task capitalists Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, erstwhile Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and hedge money tycoon Paul Marshall.

The Free Press has precocious been criticised for its penning connected Israel’s warfare successful Gaza, including an nonfiction titled The Gaza Famine Myth, which questioned famine conditions successful the enclave arsenic a effect of Israel’s blockade contempt findings by the United Nations and aesculapian groups.