bari weiss cbs

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JRNL FAIL 4 ON CBS CLIMATE ANX BS 1 26 ICE CRIMINAL DEPORT BS

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ORIGIN STORY // SHILL, VICTIM AT NYT

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RATHER

CBS legend warns of 'disaster' as network turns into Fox News under Trump

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Under Bari Weiss, CBS News dismantled its climate team and retreated from climate reporting

Climate coverage on CBS Evening News fell 81% in January–September 2026 compared with the same months in 2025. The network also aired segments that discounted scientific warnings and downplayed the consequences of climate policy.

*Special* ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Published 10/20/26

Since Bari Weiss became CBS News editor-in-chief in October 2025, the network has dismantled the dedicated climate reporting team that helped make it a multi-year leader in broadcast coverage of climate change, eliminating most of the team last fall and laying off its last dedicated climate correspondent in spring 2026. As its climate coverage contracted, the network also aired segments that discounted scientific warnings and downplayed the consequences of federal climate policy.

A Media Matters analysis found that CBS aired 87 minutes of climate coverage across 35 segments from January 1 through September 30, 2026, a 61% decline from the 222 minutes it aired during the first nine months of 2025. Coverage on CBS Evening News fell 81%. Across the network, fewer climate segments discussed solutions, the Trump administration’s federal climate actions, or fossil fuels.

The decline in volume began before Weiss arrived, but through the first nine months of 2025, CBS continued to produce substantive climate reporting that explained how global warming affected people’s lives and scrutinized the policies and industries shaping the crisis. In 2026, CBS sharply reduced that coverage while eliminating its last dedicated climate correspondent’s position.

Topline findings

CBS’ climate coverage declined 61%. The network aired 87 minutes across 35 climate segments, down from 222 minutes across 78 segments in 2025.

Climate coverage on CBS Evening News fell 81%. The network’s flagship nightly newscast aired just 15 minutes across 10 climate segments, compared with 79 minutes across 35 segments in 2025.

Fewer climate segments addressed solutions, federal actions, or fossil fuels. Climate solutions appeared in 7 segments, down from 12 in 2025. Trump administration federal climate actions appeared in 3 segments, down from 11, while fossil fuels were mentioned in 3 segments, down from 10.

CBS dismantled the climate operation that helped make it a leader in broadcast coverage

Shortly after Weiss became editor-in-chief in October 2025, CBS dismissed most of its dedicated climate team. In a memo announcing the companywide layoffs, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison described the cuts as “phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities.” National environmental correspondent David Schechter remained for a time, but without a dedicated producer. By spring 2026, CBS had eliminated his position as well.

CBS’ climate coverage contracted in Weiss’ opening months, with the network airing just 20 minutes of climate coverage across 7 segments from October through December 2025, down from the same period in 2024. A December 29 segment aired on CBS Evening News also marked an early departure from the network’s previous climate reporting, focusing on young people’s climate anxiety and decisions about having children. It represented a shift away from attention to climate impacts and accountability to whether individuals were giving climate concerns too much weight.

That framing echoed the approach of The Free Press, the publication Weiss founded. Under her leadership, The Free Press has elevated contrarian and conservative voices such as Steven Koonin, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Epstein, who have downplayed the climate crisis, disparaged renewable energy, and/or promoted fossil fuel use.

As its climate reporting declined, CBS amplified claims that downplay global warming

CBS still produced some informative climate reporting in 2026, but under Weiss, its broadcasts also discounted scientific warnings and downplayed the consequences of the Trump administration’s federal climate rollbacks.

For example, CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil cast doubt on climate scientists, using findings about one polar bear population to question broader scientific warnings and concluding that “the experts have been wrong before.”

Dokoupil also framed the consequences of federal climate rollbacks as competing political claims. In a September 14 headline report on the repeal of greenhouse gas limits for coal and natural gas power plants, he relayed the Environmental Protection Agency’s promised savings for industry while attributing concerns about the resulting health and climate consequences only to “environmentalists.” He presented those dangers as an opposing claim without independently examining them.
CBS’ retreat under Weiss weakens a major source of broadcast climate journalism

For years, CBS helped sustain corporate broadcast climate reporting through the volume of its coverage and the substance of its journalism, even as broadcast news devoted little attention to the crisis overall.

At The Free Press, Weiss framed climate change as a distraction from everyday concerns. In a November 2023 introduction to her podcast Honestly, published under her byline, she included climate change among the “more elitist topics” that had supposedly overshadowed “kitchen table issues like the economy and public safety.” CBS’ reporting had previously demonstrated how closely those subjects were connected.

This work depended on producers and correspondents across CBS. Senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf and climate producer Chris Spinder developed and coordinated coverage with correspondents Ben Tracy, David Schechter, and Dave Malkoff, alongside journalists across the network and its local stations. Wholf helped reporters incorporate climate science into daily coverage, circulating scientific context during extreme weather events and supporting local CBS stations, as well as the network’s television, streaming, and radio reporting.

By eliminating its dedicated climate operation, CBS weakened the support available throughout the newsroom for testing official claims against established research on climate change and incorporating scientific explanations into breaking news. It also reduced the network’s capacity to examine how climate change affects people’s lives and scrutinize the decisions that leave them exposed to harm.

CBS’ retreat also leaves more room for reporting that treats climate-driven weather disasters as isolated events and reduces climate policy to competing political claims. Coverage that separates those decisions from their consequences weakens scrutiny of the industries driving global warming and the officials eroding those protections. Under Weiss, CBS dismantled an operation that showed why climate change belongs among the everyday concerns she claimed it displaced.

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Secret Service director interview tanks 60 Minutes ratings

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A senior CBS News editor can be heard threatening journalists that defying management could get them fired in newly released audio from a heated staff meeting, exposing an internal fight over the network's coverage of Israel and Gaza.

Shayndi Raice, the network's foreign editor and a hire of editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, delivered the warning during a Tuesday meeting with foreign bureau staff that was leaked to media reporter Oliver Darcy and executive editor Jon Passantino on the Power Lines podcast.

"This is not your publishing platform," Raice told employees, insisting that decisions about what CBS publishes ultimately rest with her and other senior leaders.

"That is called insubordination! And it's legal grounds for firing," she said of refusing management directives in a long rant that went on for 15 minutes.

The leaked audio follows reports of disputes with two high-profile 60 Minutes segments involving Israeli settler violence by Lesley Stahl and a report by Holly Williams on the third anniversary of the October 7 attack by Hamas militants.

The issue was with Williams adding the Palestinian death toll in Gaza, which was removed from the broadcast version.

Raice denied ordering the figure's removal and said she had wanted the Israeli death toll as well, wanting to distinguish the civilian casualties from combatants. She claimed that the additional info about the deaths made the report too complicated for the time reserved for the segment to air.

Williams pushed back during the meeting, saying the revisions were given to her without having a chance to discuss it.

"I was told that I had to make the changes as written, and that there was no negotiation," she said.

According to Status, Raice also told Williams she had gotten the story wrong, claiming she understood the subject better than the veteran correspondent.

Raice defended the authority of editors to reshape stories, arguing that challenging reporters and adding layers of review were essential parts of journalism. She pointed to her experience at The Wall Street Journal, which she described as “the best journalism.”

Darcy said he felt Raice's tone was condescending, adding that the veteran CBS journalists have already worked with producers, standards officials, and senior editors before their reports reach the air as standard procedure

Bari Weiss, who had no experience before heading CBS, has been a controversial addition to the newsroom, with this being just the latest in a string of controversies, with veterans on the network accusing her of bias.

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ABC, CBS, and NBC aired nearly 200 segments about three U.S. heat events without mentioning climate change

08/06/26

CNN and MS NOW consistently connected prolonged power outage in Gary, Indiana, to race and poverty, while broadcast news rarely did, and Fox did not

08/28/26

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Other reported candidates included former Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell, 60 Minutes correspondent and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, and both Dana Perino and Bret Baier of Fox News.^[28]

CBS axed its last climate reporting pillar

CBS’ climate coverage was already shifting toward misleading framing before the network reportedly cut its last dedicated climate reporter

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Published 04/03/26

CBS News is laying off national environmental correspondent David Schechter, reportedly leaving no one at the network dedicated to covering climate change. That means that when CBS does cover the issue, the reporting will be more likely to omit scientific context and elevate misleading or contrarian framing, a shift already visible in the network's limited coverage so far in 2026.

Schechter’s departure is part of a broader round of cuts and restructuring

CBS is reportedly eliminating its last dedicated climate reporter as part of a wider round of layoffs affecting approximately 6% of staff. The cuts also include correspondents across the newsroom and the shutdown of CBS News Radio, ending the network’s radio service after almost 100 years on air.

CBS also cut another correspondent, Dave Malkoff, a national correspondent whose work included climate and environmental reporting across the network’s platforms.

The layoffs come as CBS News struggles with declining ratings and a shrinking audience. In the first quarter of 2026, it was reported that CBS Evening News was on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century, while CBS Mornings is also heading toward record lows, even as competitors ABC and NBC grew during that period.

The changes to CBS’ climate coverage began in October 2025, when the network dismissed most of its dedicated climate team as part of a broader newsroom overhaul. Producers were reassigned or let go. What had been a sustained reporting effort was reduced to one dedicated climate correspondent and a handful of reporters who occasionally covered climate among their other beats. By this spring, the structure that supported climate reporting at CBS was already gone, and Schechter was left covering the beat in a newsroom no longer set up to support the work.

Dedicated climate reporting at CBS connected science, policy, and real-world impacts – and its degradation is already showing up in coverage

David Schechter was part of a group of CBS correspondents who regularly covered climate, helping integrate the issue into national reporting rather than treating it as an isolated topic. That work did not happen in a vacuum. It was supported by producers and internal coordination that helped reporters connect extreme weather, public health, and economic impacts back to climate change and the policies shaping it.

Schechter was not just covering climate as an abstract issue. He was reporting on how it was affecting people in real time and who was being left exposed.

During the June 8, 2024, episode of CBS Saturday Morning, Schechter examined heat-related disparities, interviewing Ken Rye, whose mother died in her apartment during a heat wave after her building failed to turn on the air conditioning. Schechter connected rising temperatures to inequality, public health, and climate justice.

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From the June 8, 2024, episode of CBS Saturday Morning

During the August 8, 2024, episode of CBS Evening News, he reported on the link between climate-driven heat and labor conditions, federal policy, and worker safety.

These segments showed what climate reporting looks like when someone is responsible for following the story, incorporating scientific context, connecting the issue to policy, and highlighting the communities most affected by climate change.

After October, the shift was immediate. CBS aired just 7 climate segments between Weiss’ takeover in October and the end of the year, a sharp drop from earlier in 2025.

When climate reporting did appear on CBS, it looked different.

During a January segment on CBS Evening News, the network highlighted the surprising health of polar bears despite melting sea ice, elevating an outlier narrative long used by climate skeptics. Not only did the segment not situate its findings within the overwhelming consensus on climate change, but anchor Tony Dokoupil also concluded by telling viewers that “experts have been wrong before,” reinforcing a line commonly used to cast doubt on established climate science.

A December segment on youth climate anxiety followed a similar pattern. Instead of examining the material impacts driving youth concerns, the segment reframed climate coverage around personal decision-making and cultural debate, echoing narratives that downplay risk and shift attention away from systemic causes of global warming.

This is what happens when no one is dedicated to the beat.

There was no one consistently responsible for bringing scientific context into the story. No one to connect individual events to broader climate trends. No one to challenge weak sourcing or misleading framing before it reaches viewers.

That was the state of CBS’ climate coverage before Schechter was laid off. His departure makes it clear that CBS is no longer willing to even pretend climate is worth covering in a way that reflects the science, the stakes, or the people most affected.

MMA

### CBS’ leadership in broadcast news climate coverage is chipping away under Bari Weiss

:{03/04/26

### CBS News’ climate anxiety segment laundered right-wing climate framing as the network shifts its coverage under new leadership

:{01/13/26

### How climate correspondents are driving improvements in corporate broadcast news' climate coverage

03/29/23

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Ben Shapiro claims Abdul El-Sayed, Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Piker, and Cenk Uygur shouldn't be in the country

08/31/26 2:46 PM EDT

Embracing blatant Islamophobia, CBS News makes bizarre attempt to tie El-Sayed to 9/11

08/31/26 2:38 PM EDT

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Legacy outlets that bent the knee to Trump haven’t just lost credibility — they’re bleeding readers and viewers

Trumpism is bad for business: CBS News ratings are in a tailspin six months into Bari Weiss’ tenure

Written by Matt Gertz

:{Published 03/25/26

It turns out that there isn’t a ratings bump for MAGA capitulation.

David Ellison, the son of President Donald Trump’s megabillionaire ally Larry Ellison, took control of CBS last year following a corrupt deal that saw its parent company settle a lawsuit with the president and agree to implement a new conservative ombudsman for CBS News. As part of that takeover, he also installed conservative journalist Bari Weiss at the helm, promising that her “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” would “invigorate” the network. But six months into Weiss’ rightward makeover of CBS, the fruits of her labors include cheers from Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for making the network more palatable to their aims, complaints from the CBS newsroom that she is dismantling its independence — and, it now appears, a viewer exodus.

Status’ Oliver Darcy got ahold of some CBS News ratings data from the first quarter of 2026, and it is brutal. CBS Evening News has lost 7% of viewers year-over-year, placing it “on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic,” while CBS Mornings plummeted 13% and “is pacing toward its lowest-rated quarter on record in both total audience and the key demo.” Meanwhile, the audiences of competitor shows at ABC News and NBC News grew over the same period.

The ratings collapse is a devastating indictment of the strategy Ellison and Weiss are executing at CBS — and a blaring warning for CNN if Ellison is able to complete his takeover of that network and let Weiss run the same playbook there.

Meanwhile, new data from the Alliance for Audited Media show that while average daily print circulation among major audited newspapers saw year-over-year declines across the board in the six months running through the end of September 2025, the biggest drops came at The Washington Post, which fell 21.2%, followed by the Los Angeles Times, down 19.8%. Their billionaire owners — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and biotech mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong, respectively — had responded to Trump’s return to the White House by trying to shift their papers to the right.

None of this should come as a surprise.

Ellison and Weiss have suggested that the core problem for American media is that the public does not trust news outlets, and that the reason for this is that the public perceives those outlets as too far left and too critical of the right. They propose to win over a larger audience by deliberately course-correcting in the opposite direction.

“We are not producing a product that enough people want,” Weiss said at a CBS News staff town hall in January. Weiss attributed this to two factors. “First: Not enough people trust us. Not you. Us. As in: the mainstream media,” she said. “Second: We are not doing enough to meet audiences where they are. So they are leaving us.”

Weiss is correct that trust in traditional media has fallen dramatically in recent decades, particularly among conservatives — indeed, this is a banal truth that everyone remotely connected to the media knows. But her strategy of conceding that potential viewers are correct to distrust journalists and seeking to “meet audiences where they are” by signaling that coverage will now be deliberately shifted to the right has had the obvious result of driving away the existing audience without adding a new one.

CBS News’ viewers either liked what they were already watching or they liked what watching Edward R. Murrow’s old network said about them. When the network’s new ownership and management proposed taking its programming in a dramatically different direction in search of a different audience — as the wildly unpopular president cheered — the existing viewers could see that, and some decided that CBS is no longer worth their patronage.

Weiss’ theory of the case is that these losses could be made up by new viewers with more right-leaning views. But the decline in public trust for traditional media among Republicans stems at least in part from a decades-long strategy pursued deliberately by the GOP and conservative movement. That effort revolves around simultaneously denouncing news outlets as liberal propaganda while encouraging conservatives to instead patronize new, deliberately right-wing news sources. And it’s been taken to another level under Trump, who relentlessly attacks the press while using state power to reduce its influence and lift up the MAGA media operation.

That dynamic makes it wildly implausible that the shift Weiss enacted would win over a sizable new segment of viewers. Her version of CBS may garner praise from Trump, but people who might be swayed by his comments already have — and are likely already patronizing — a plethora of pro-Trump outlets. You could imagine a scenario where some slightly more right-wing viewers of the ABC and NBC news shows switched to watching the new CBS. But instead, the data Darcy cited suggests, CBS appears to be shedding viewers who are instead watching its competitors — or exiting broadcast television altogether as their news source.

As for Bezos’ Post and Soon-Shiong’s Times, when the owners similarly bet on trying to make their outlets more acceptable to Trump, their existing audiences looked for the exits and were not replaced. The efforts may win over the likes of Tucker Carlson or even the president himself, but MAGA isn’t rushing to buy subscriptions.

For Ellison, Bezos, and Soon-Shiong, the declines in their news outlets may be a small price to pay to win over Trump. Each owner has massive business holdings outside of the press and can afford the losses from tearing down their news outlets if it wins the Trump administration’s support for their desired mergers, contracts, or patents.

The journalists facing layoffs from their outlets — and the public who lose access to their reporting — are the ones who will actually suffer from this doomed strategy.

### Why Conservatives Love Trump's Attacks On Journalists

02/27/17

### Paramount is mangling CBS — and CNN may be next

02/17/26

### The year the media oligarchs bowed to Trump

12/03/25

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MMA

CBS’ leadership in broadcast news climate coverage is chipping away under Bari Weiss | Media Matters for America

In recent years, Media Matters' climate studies have found that CBS has played a leading role in broadcast journalism on the issue, routinely airing the highest volume of climate segments, featuring more climate scientists and experts than its peers, and devoting greater attention to climate solutions. That leadership has functioned as an anchor within the broadcast ecosystem, helping to sustain climate visibility even as other networks have fluctuated.

Now, tectonic shifts at the network, sparked by new ownership and Trump’s campaign targeting legacy media, means its leadership on climate coverage could be slipping away, with notable changes in tone and volume of coverage already underway. Even in 2025, as corporate broadcast news reporting on the climate crisis dropped to just over 8 hours — a significant decline from its 2022 zenith of nearly 23 hours — CBS still accounted for nearly half of that time. But the vast majority of its coverage aired before Bari Weiss was installed as its editor-in-chief, with only 20 minutes of climate coverage airing across 7 segments between Weiss’ takeover in October and the end of 2025.

CBS has historically led its broadcast counterparts in climate coverage

For the fifth consecutive year, CBS has led corporate broadcast climate coverage. In 2025, CBS accounted for 48% of total broadcast climate minutes. Both its nightly news program, CBS Evening News, and its Sunday morning political show, Face the Nation, led their counterparts in climate programming.

But volume of coverage is not the only indicator cementing CBS’ role as the top climate communicator in corporate broadcast news. While networks underreported the Trump administration’s attacks on climate science and action overall, CBS accounted for more than half of the segments that did discuss the Trump administration’s climate actions. As in prior years, the network also led on solutions-related climate segments and coverage that included climate scientists.

Shifts at the network put CBS’ future climate leadership in question

In October 2025, months after the Trump administration greenlit Skydance Media’s acquisition of CBS’ parent company, Paramount Skydance installed Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press, as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The newly created position granted Weiss broad authority over editorial priorities, and soon after her appointment, CBS dismissed most of its dedicated climate team as part of a newsroom restructuring, removing much of the institutional capacity responsible for the network’s climate coverage portfolio. According to Heated, a memo announcing the layoffs from Paramount Skydance head David Ellison indicated that the network was “‘phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities.’” Heated further reported that “today, the only person remaining at CBS News to cover climate change is national environmental correspondent David Schechter, who no longer has a dedicated producer.”

The editorial implications of this shift are consequential. Under Weiss’ leadership, The Free Press has consistently elevated climate skeptics and contrarians, published content downplaying or misrepresenting established scientific findings, and employed rhetorical frames long associated with right-wing media coverage of climate change.

While journalists and staff exit CBS, Weiss is bringing on influencers who may not adhere to the same journalistic standards. One hire, Peter Attia, a controversial longevity influencer, has already resigned due to backlash over lewd emails he exchanged with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a less-reported exchange, Attia shared an article with Epstein from prominent British climate skeptic Matt Ridley, who has argued that “global warming is good for us.”

Early signs that CBS is abandoning its leadership role in producing consistent and quality climate coverage

CBS’ climate output has already shown a discernible decline since its change in leadership. After Weiss assumed editorial control in early October, CBS aired only 7 climate segments through the end of 2025, marking an immediate contraction in the network’s climate reporting footprint relative to earlier months in the year and as compared to the same period in 2024.

One segment about youth climate anxiety aired during the December 29 episode of CBS Evening News elevated and echoed right-wing media’s approach to minimizing climate risk by laundering a narrative long used to shift attention away from climate consequences and responsibility toward cultural debates about individual life choices.

In 2025, CBS aired 54 minutes of climate coverage in January, making it the network’s peak month. This year, the network aired only one climate segment in January — a headline report on the evening news lasting approximately 20 seconds on the surprising health of polar bears, despite the loss of sea ice, in the Norwegian Arctic. While the report may seem innocuous, it is not breaking news; a similar study appeared on a climate skeptic site in 2015, and the argument has been used by climate deniers to claim that alarmists were wrong about the severity of climate change and its impacts — in this case, on the “symbol of climate change,” the polar bear. The new study was also shared on climate denier Marc Morano’s site. With a seeming nod to the climate skeptic community, Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil concluded: “Experts say the bears are still in trouble long term, but hey, the experts have been wrong before.”

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From the January 29, 2026, edition of CBS Evening News

But the segment was not just a nod toward skeptics. It represents a choice on the part of CBS to report an outlier of the climate crisis rather than any number of studies or events that support the overwhelming consensus on global warming. These newsroom changes in quantity and quality of coverage, which bear the fingerprints of Weiss’ contrarian approach to news, signal a looming void in the national climate information ecosystem.

Conclusion

Broadcast news remains a central agenda setter, shaping not only national narratives but also the priorities of policymakers, regulators, and institutional decision-makers while continuing to reach large audiences. A sustained reduction in climate coverage risks leaving the public less prepared to understand the stakes of climate policy decisions, the material consequences of regulatory changes, and the growing disparities in climate risk across communities.

Within this broader contraction, changes at CBS News carry outsized significance.

If CBS retreats from its prior role as the corporate broadcast climate-reporting leader, responsibility for sustaining rigorous, science-based, and context-rich coverage will fall more heavily on NBC and ABC. To meet that responsibility, broadcast networks must increase reliance on climate scientists, policy experts, and frontline communities; integrate federal climate actions and regulatory changes far more consistently into climate coverage; move beyond episodic weather reporting toward sustained examination of systemic drivers and solutions; and resist political and market pressures that undermine the visibility and credibility of climate journalism.

Without such shifts, the contraction in climate coverage documented in 2025 risks deepening in 2026, at a moment when climate impacts are accelerating, federal policy is in retrenchment, and voters are approaching a consequential midterm election cycle with diminishing access to the kind of clear, comprehensive climate information needed to make informed decisions.

### How broadcast TV networks covered climate change in 2025

03/04/26 10:06 AM EST

### Corporate broadcast news fumbles January jobs report

02/12/26 4:45 PM EST

### Mainstream news coverage almost totally ignored Bannon’s extensive ties to Epstein

12/11/25

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Anderson Cooper’s ‘F*ck You’ to Bari Weiss

Zeteo's media newsletter, 'Ragebait,' is back with the behind the scenes of Weiss's latest blunder at CBS News, why Stephen Colbert dgaf, and the billionaire eyeing CNN who has staffers there on edge.

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Producer Alicia Hastey departed CBS News Wednesday, saying the work she came to do was “increasingly becoming impossible,” as stories were now evaluated “not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

Whoseideological expectations was Hastey referring to? Would it be impertinent for me to suggest it’s the sociopath in the Oval Office?

Hastey’s criticism came a little over two weeks after Bari Weiss, the anti-“woke” opinion journalist who became editor-in-chief at CBS News, unveiled her “21st century” vision at a town hall meeting.

Weiss told producers and staff they were free to leave if they didn’t like it. Since then, at least six out of 20 “CBS Evening News” producers have accepted buyouts.

At that town hall meeting Weiss also named a bunch of new contributors — including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia. In the latest tranche of Epstein files, Attia appears over 1,700 times, including in an email in which he tells Epstein that “p----- is, indeed, low carb.”

In a missive to the newsroom, Weiss declared that “We love America” should be a guiding principle for the relaunch of the “CBS Evening News.”

Meanwhile, Weiss has replaced “Evening News” anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil — who was best known for hassling the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his “extremist” belief that apartheid is morally wrong.

In one of his first broadcasts, Dokoupil accepted without question Israel’s justification for violating the terms of the ceasefire when it killed three journalists in Gaza, reporting only that “Israel said it was targeting a group operating a drone affiliated with Hamas.”

Weiss faced blowback in December when she shelved a “60 Minutes” report about Venezuelans being deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison hours before it was set to air.

Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, had accused CBS News of pulling it for “political” reasons. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a note to the CBS News Team. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

The segment later aired on January 18, drawing over 5 million viewers.

The story CBS posted about Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis reported that “the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.”

No identifiable source was given for CBS’s assertion of “internal bleeding.” A CBS News staffer reported “huge internal concern” that the source was an anonymous leak by the Trump administration meant for an outlet they could trust to run it, no questions asked.

Weiss doesn’t exactly report to Donald Trump, of course. Trump runs CBS News the way he runs Venezuela — with a widely understood threat that he’ll wreak havoc if it doesn’t do what he wants.

As Trump told Dokoupil recently in a rambling nearly 13-minute interview, if Kamala Harris had won the presidential election in 2024, “you probably wouldn’t have a job right now.” HUH?

Perhaps CBS News didn’t edit Dokoupil’s rambling interview with Trump because, moments after it ended, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt conveyed Trump’s threat that “if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your a-- off.”

You see the way Trump now controls CBS News. Dokoupil is Bari Weiss’s newly minted anchor. Bari Weiss is David Ellison’s newly minted head of CBS News. David Ellison is his father’s (Larry Ellison) newly minted head of Paramount, which is the new owner of CBS. Larry Ellison is a pal of Trump’s who contributes to Trump’s super PAC. And Trump? He allowed Ellison to buy CBS and now has the power to take the prized Warner Bros Discovery out of the clutches of Netflix and deliver it to Ellison as well.

Among David Ellison’s first moves at CBS was to gut DEI policies, appoint right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein to a new “ombudsman” role, and appoint Weiss.

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow (who also revealed to America the danger of Joe McCarthy) and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS. And when the top management of CBS felt they had responsibilities to the American public that transcended making money for CBS’s investors.

America can survive without a “60 Minutes” it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of The Washington Post — whose owner, Jeff Bezos, has demanded it reflect right-wing capitalism and whose newsroom he just gutted.

But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.

Here, in contrast to the Trump suck-up CBS News has become, is, from April 13, 1954.

:{:{*Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.}:

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'Pathetic': CBS host pilloried over fawning interview with Trump

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CBS Evening News inverts its network's own reporting on ICE arrestees’ low rates of violent criminal histories

CBS reported that less that 14% of people in ICE custody have charges or convictions for violent criminal conduct, but CBS Evening News distorted the data to suggest the opposite

Written by John Knefel

Published 02/11/26

A CBS Evening News segment wildly distorted CBS News’ own reporting, incorrectly suggesting to viewers that a much higher percentage of people held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have violent criminal histories than is actually the case.

On February 9, CBS News published an exclusive report under the headline: “Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump's 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows.” The article stated that although roughly 60% of ICE arrestees had criminal charges or convictions, “the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are not for violent crimes.” For example, about 1.4% of people held by ICE have been accused or convicted of sexual assault, and about 0.5% have been accused or convicted of homicide. By contrast, 7.6% percent of ICE arrestees with a so-called criminal history simply have a DUI.

The Department of Homeland Security data undercuts a central, load-bearing myth deployed by right-wing media and the Trump administration to justify its nationwide crackdown on immigrant communities — namely, claims that ICE and Border Patrol are going after the “worst of the worst.” In fact, nearly 40% of people in ICE custody have no violation other than a civil immigration infraction.

Viewers of CBS Evening News on February 10 got an entirely inverted picture, one that more closely aligns with the Trump administration's preferred narrative.

“ICE arrested nearly 400,000 people in President Trump's first year in office,” said anchor Tony Dokoupil. “Of those, nearly 60% had criminal histories, meaning charges or convictions, including many for serious crimes such as drug trafficking and child pornography, and several thousand cases involving rape or murder."

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Citation

From the February 10, 2026, edition of CBS Evening News

Dokoupil and his producers here are being wildly misleading. The relatively low percentages of ICE arrestees charged or convicted of murder or sexual assault are noted above. The CBS News article doesn’t specify the number of people accused or convicted of child sexual abuse material, though that would likely be captured in the data around sexual assault. The report also doesn’t list rates for drug trafficking per se, though it would presumably be a subset of charges or convictions for “dangerous drugs,” which it lists at 5.7%

Dokoupil then contradicted the very framing CBS Evening News led with. “At the same time, however, less than 14% had violent criminal records and nearly 40%, more than 150,000 people, had civil immigration offenses but no criminal history at all,“ Dokoupil said.

CBS Evening News here is attempting to have it both ways. The introductory copy and accompanying graphics paint a picture of the Trump administration prioritizing threats to public safety, and the subsequent clarification acts as little more than an afterthought. Immigrants are situated first and foremost as a threat, an impression barely mitigated with a little cover-your-ass language at the end.

Citation

From the February 10, 2026, edition of CBS Evening News

CBS Evening News’ mangling of its own reporting is less surprising taken in context. In October, “anti-woke” media figure Bari Weiss was named CBS editor-in-chief by David Ellison, whose Skydance Media had recently purchased Paramount, CBS’ parent company. His father, Larry Ellison, is a close ally of President Donald Trump and one of richest men in the world.

Weiss has a long history of controversy, and her short tenure at CBS’s helm has already produced more. In December 2025, Weiss pulled a 60 Minutes segment detailing torture and other horrific conditions at a prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration had rendered 252 Venezuelans. The segment ultimately aired the following month after a substantial backlash within CBS and from the broader public.

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Megyn Kelly on Bari Weiss and Tony Dokoupil: “This is a lesbian's idea of what women want”

Kelly: “Bari has zero television experience. Zero. It's called broadcast news for a reason. The broadcast piece of it matters, and she doesn't know what she's doing. It shows.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 01/15/26

Megyn Kelly on Bari Weiss and Tony Dokoupil: "This is a lesbian's idea of what women want"

January 14, 2026

Audio

Citation

From the January 14, 2026, edition of SiriusXM's The Megyn Kelly Show

MEGYN KELLY (HOST): Alright, Emily. SoCBS Evening Newsis officially launched with its new anchor, Toprah Dokoupil. That's what I call him because he's crying and constantly trying to therapize us through the news.

EMILY JASHINSKY (GUEST): Tony Markle.

KELLY: I've figured it out. So, like, Bari is — she's an out lesbian, and she's in a marriage to another woman.

JASHINSKY: I knew this was where you were going.

KELLY: I'm saying this is a lesbian's idea of what women want. Like, he's sweet. He's soft. Like, this is what -- this is gonna sell. No.No. No. No. No. No. No. We want someone with balls, with a spine, someone who will protect us, somebody who, like, when the burglar comes, will be the first out the door. They won't be hiding behind us. Like, they -- as we call it in my family, first defender.

…

KELLY: It's off, Emily. He thinks he's in podcast-landia and it's different. You know, I was very different doingThe Kelly Filethan I am doing this show, and certainly doing an evening news show, the attempt to Oprah-fy us is very off. It does not work, and it, hell no, will not work on CBS, which is where, like, the most serious, somber news consumers go for their news. They do not want Toprah. He's got to man up and stop doing this.

I'm sorry, but Bari has zero television experience. Zero. It's called broadcast news for a reason. The broadcast piece of it matters, and she doesn't know what she's doing. It shows.

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CBS News’ climate anxiety segment laundered right-wing climate framing as the network shifts its coverage under new leadership (https://www.mediamatters.org/cbs/cbs-news-climate-anxiety-segment-laundered-right-wing-climate-framing-network-shifts-its)

01/13/26

VID]

December 29, 2025, episode of CBS Evening News

CBS News downplayed climate risks to focus on personal decision-making

Throughout the segment, Evening News treated climate change as contextual background in a story explicitly framed around youth climate anxiety and individual reproductive choices. Global warming was presented as one influence among many, not as a driver of instability meriting examination on its own terms. The framing steered viewers to question whether climate is given too much weight in personal decision making, effectively displacing a discussion about the real, worsening, and existential impacts of climate change.

After citing a survey showing that climate concerns influence some young people’s reproductive decisions, the story pivoted to fertility and economic data suggesting that declining birth rates are driven by economic factors rather than climate change. Regardless of whether this is even accurate, the claim further narrowed the frame, positioning climate concern as secondary and contestable rather than as a rational response to worsening conditions and separating climate disruption from the harm it compounds.

To reinforce that narrowing frame, CBS featured Alina Voss, communications director of the American Conservation Coalition, which CBS described as an “environmental nonprofit that promotes conservative values.” The ACC describes itself as a “pro-innovation,” limited-government organization that prioritizes market-based approaches to environmental issues. Voss told viewers that “the innovation is working” and, according to the correspondent, expressed confidence that “technology will protect families from the worst impacts of climate change,” a claim the segment did not challenge or contextualize. By presenting that reassurance without scrutiny, the segment also laundered technological optimism, a familiar narrative that downplays climate change.

CBS News echoed right-wing media’s approach to minimizing climate risk

Climate anxiety tied to decisions about child-rearing has repeatedly featured in right-wing media commentary. For example, a 2023 Fox News segment blamed “globalist” and “climate alarmist” propaganda for declining birth rates, accusing environmental advocates of teaching young people to fear having children and calling climate concern an “anti-human agenda.” In this framing, climate anxiety is cast as ideological manipulation rather than as a response to worsening material conditions.

The CBS segment followed this same narrative framing. By filtering the issue of climate risk through questions about family planning, CBS shifted attention away from climate impacts and accountability into lifestyle and cultural debates. The effect is consistent with right-wing media’s coverage more broadly: Climate change is treated as something for individuals to weigh or manage rather than as a public risk that demands corporate and political scrutiny. Whether the focus is natalism, consumption, or culture, the narrative maneuver is the same. Climate concern becomes a matter of judgment or preference, not a response to escalating harm.

This approach also aligns with well-established patterns documented in climate communication research showing how climate skeptics purport to accept the reality of global warming, even as they minimize its urgency. By emphasizing individual choices and optimistic solutions, while eliding discussion of current impacts and responsibility, this type of coverage reduces pressure for accountability — without necessarily disputing the science.

By emphasizing individual choices and optimistic solutions, while eliding discussion of current impacts and responsibility, this type of coverage reduces pressure for accountability — without necessarily disputing the science.

The segment aired amid a shift in editorial direction at CBS News

For several years, CBS News stood out among broadcast networks for its sustained climate reporting that foregrounded science, impacts, and solutions. That approach has been disrupted. In late 2025, newsroom restructuring eliminated nearly all of CBS’ dedicated climate reporting capacity. In light of these changes, the youth climate anxiety segment suggests that CBS News plans to use climate change as a backdrop — when it's mentioned at all — rather than as a subject of direct examination.

Reports from inside the CBS newsroom suggest Bari Weiss herself proposed the segment back in October using broad outlines that closely mirror the segment CBS ultimately aired, and the narrative framing is consistent with editorial patterns long present in The Free Press, the outlet she founded. Rather than interrogating climate disruption as a material crisis, The Free Press has frequently covered the story through a right-wing media lens that frames climate concerns as exaggerated and alarmist. Writers associated with the outlet like Lucy Biggers have argued that young people today were wrongly led to believe they have “no future” because of climate change, insisting that “no one should have climate anxiety.”

What this signals for CBS News' climate coverage in 2026

By rerouting climate coverage into questions about personal judgment and lifestyle choice, the segment reproduced a familiar right-wing move shifting attention away from emissions, policy, and industry responsibility toward whether people are overreacting.

This narrative framing has been increasingly used by the fossil fuel industry and its right-wing media allies to blunt climate action and accountability without explicitly denying the science. It works by narrowing the frame until the structural causes and effects of climate change disappear from view. Responsibility is redirected away from government and industry. Consequence is softened by treating climate as background context. Urgency is recast as excess.

When CBS News adopts this framing, it does not merely downplay climate risk. It allows a corporate and political narrative designed to shield power and avoid accountability to circulate as mainstream reporting. The effect is not subtle. It constrains what viewers are encouraged to question and who they are encouraged to hold responsible at precisely the moment when the Trump administration's policy choices and regulatory rollbacks carry immediate, measurable consequences in a world of rapidly escalating climate impacts.

### Media Matters weekly newsletter, December 5

12/05/25 10:49 AM EST

### The year the media oligarchs bowed to Trump

12/03/25 10:00 AM EST

### Under the leadership of Bari Weiss, The Free Press’ climate change coverage mirrors that of right-wing media outlets like Fox News

11/04/2

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Why the Right-Wing’s Online Media Ecosystem is Dying

The Humanist Report

union safety commies

bari w cbs paid ty trans benny bee ai slop

May 5, 2026 #HumanistReport #TheDailyWire #BenShapiro

With The Daily Wire facing another round of layoffs and Bari Weiss’ media ventures struggling to attract eyeballs, it’s safe to say online conservative media is in a really bad spot after years of dominance. In fact, the only conservative outlets doing well are the ones attacking Donald Trump. After taking over the country and implementing the radical right-wing reforms conservatives have been wanting for decades, it turns out conservative viewers don’t like the vision of the country that was sold to them. In this video Mike shares his theory as to why some conservative media outlets are seemingly imploding.

Sources: The Wrap - https://www.thewrap.com/media-platfor...IndieWire - https://www.indiewire.com/features/ge...Deadline - https://deadline.com/2026/04/jonathan...RawStory - https://www.rawstory.com/bari-weiss-2...

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an 12 25

Once you begin surrendering to Trump, he always wants more. You can’t appease a tyrant.

David Ellison’s CBS — after gutting DEI policies there, appointing right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein to a new “ombudsman” role, and making anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News (despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms) — yesterday removed a segment from “60 Minutes” featuring stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador. Bari Weiss had demanded changes to the segment.

The Ellisons — fils et père — have been seeking Trump’s support for their hostile bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, but Trump has been unhappy with recent episodes of “60 Minutes,” even under its new management. Hence, the segment’s removal.

Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment that was removed, accused CBS News of pulling it for “political” reasons. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a note to the CBS News Team. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Here’s Alfonsi’s note in full:

News Team,

Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier.

I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.

Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now-after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.

We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.

If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a “kill switch” for any reporting they find inconvenient.

If the standard for airing a story becomes “the government must agree to be interviewed,” then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.

These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.

CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that “low point.” By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.

We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of “Gold Standard” reputation for a single week of political quiet.

I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.

Sharyn

Sharyn Alfonsi wins this week’s Joseph N. Welch Award for courage in the face of tyranny (named for the chief counsel for the U.S. Army who confronted Senator Joe McCarthy with the iconic question, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" which led to McCarthy’s demise).

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow (who also revealed to America the danger of Joe McCarthy) and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS. And when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.

America can survive without a “60 Minutes” it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of the Washington Post.But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.

We are coming to the end of only the first year of Trump II. He and the lapdogs and sycophants around him have done more damage to this nation in less than a year than I thought possible.

They have not been them alone in their destruction. They’ve had enablers in the form of billionaires such as Larry and David Ellison, along with quisling managers such as Bari Weiss, who confuse having money and power with possessing integrity and fostering the common good.

Here, in sharp contrast to today’s cowardly suck-up CBS News under Bari Weiss and David Ellison, is, from April 13, 1954.

*Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

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The Free Press

https://www.thefp.com › p › exclusive-daniel-penny-hired-at-andreessen-horowitz

EXCLUSIVE: Daniel Penny Gets Hired by Andreessen Horowitz

Feb 4, 2025Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the firm's founders, are among the high-profile Silicon Valley leaders who came out for Trump ahead of last November's election. "We believe in Daniel and are excited to have him as part of our team," said Ulevitch in the note. You can read our coverage of Daniel Penny's case here, here, and here.

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BARI?

AN 12 25

Trump rages against 'rotten apple' MTG and demands 'total apology' from CBS

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11 13 joe nocera the free press good on crypto corruption

WIFE LIAR VS DONZIGER?

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'Out of touch': Eric Trump blasted for $500 million Bitcoin brag

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On MSNBC’s The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses CBS' shifting coverage of Trump and how its a preview for what may happen to CNN

Carusone: “CBS has already conformed and aligned with Trump, and ... they're making very specific decisions to portray him in the best possible light, regardless of what Norah O'Donnell did”

Written by Media Matters Staff

:{:{Published 11/03/25}:

Video

Citation

From the November 3, 2025, edition of MSNBC's The Weeknight

ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): I have spent much time in an edit bay, watching back interviews that I have done and thinking to myself, which parts do I cut and which parts do I keep? So I understand that this always a challenge but this is happening in a broader milieu, right? You had CBS cave, you have the president then go on 60 Minutes to do this interview. You then have him almost in that interview daring them, right, saying, "I'm going to talk about this. I'm going to guess you're going to cut it later." And in fact, they do. What is the lesson in all of this for other institutions that are watching and thinking to themselves, to what degree is being compliant ultimately going to lead to self-preservation?

ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): I mean, look, I think it's a tough -- and CBS is in a tough situation, right, because their ownership changed as Trump boasted about. I mean, it went to an ally that was going to remake the network in much more of a Trumpian fashion or at least aligned with the Trump administration. So, you know, we're not talking about any lessons for any other media outlets. One lesson, don't let yourself get bought by Trump, you know, sort of alliance. But I think in terms of the broadcast piece, what I would say is this, don't fold from the beginning, especially when you don't have to. That's the real lesson here because that's where it all started. They never needed to settle with Trump in the first place, and by settling with Trump, they didn't just lose money or, you know, demonstrate that they're going to get rolled over. They did something worse.

They validated the lie that he was telling in the first place was that they did something wrong, and they emboldened him to continue to take that action against other news outlets and other news networks. So to me, that's the first thing, is that especially if you're a news outlet, don't fold. That's the first lesson. Otherwise, it's just going to keep rubbing your nose in it. The second is do your job. And there was a lot of follow-ups there that didn't happen.

...

SYMONE SANDERS-TOWNSEND (CO-HOST): The edit is a signal to the other institutions. The edit is actually, it is not like an aside. It is a main effect here, Angelo. The edit matters and what happened is a dereliction of duty here that if it were us, I would hope somebody would call us out. But it ain't never going to be me. I want to be clear.

:{:{CARUSONE: Okay, I'm glad you pointed out that it's not about Norah O'Donnell, right? I mean, there are a lot of exchanges that she asked really pointed questions about violence, political violence that did not make it in the broadcast version, right, where she did some follow ups. I think the question about whether or not he is going to run in 2028 was like the biggest thing that you could say, "Hey, you should not have done that. You should not be pretending that it's even an option or a question." So, let's stop playing that game. I think that's a fair critique of Norah O'Donnell, but as you point out, the edits ultimately are a much bigger thing. They're a reflection of the fact that CBS has already conformed and aligned with Trump, and that they're making very specific decisions to portray him in the best possible light, regardless of what Norah O'Donnell did.}:

And I think to me the biggest example of that that stood out is when he was pressed a little bit about some of these pardons that he did. His response was to get very nasty, right? I mean, that would -- ordinarily. that's the thing that you're going to lead with, is the president of the United States you're interviewing screaming like a baby because he's mad about a question that you asked, having a tantrum. That's the thing that you would promote because it's going to get attention.}:

:{:{But they didn't do it because they knew it would make him look bad. It would cut against the story that he's telling about himself, that he walked in there with a quiet confidence. He was comfortable and that he was sort of saying, I can now confront CBS, look how good of a job I'm doing. Look how capable I am at telling this story. They're not going to cut against his narrative by putting that in the broadcast edit. I'm surprised they put that in the transcript. Honestly, I think that's the one testament that there's a little bit of a beachhead of truth still at that network.}:

And I think the scary part about all of this that we shouldn't lose sight of, and it's something that Michael said before, is that this tells us where we're potentially going, because let's not forget that the same people that bought CBS are right now the lead bidders that, at least according to Trump, that he's their designated bidder for buying Warner Brothers. And what do they own? CNN. So, it is important that we talk about these things, not just to complain about the status quo in the past and to dissect it, but also because it tells us, it gives us a small keyhole view into what the future could be before it actually materializes. We still have the chance to change that and fight that. But that's what these conversations are for first and foremost.}:

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Under the leadership of Bari Weiss, The Free Press’ climate change coverage mirrors that of right-wing media outlets like Fox News

As the editor-in-chief of CBS News, Weiss will oversee the broadcast news leader in climate coverage

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 11/04/25

In early October, Paramount Skydance bought the The Free Press and hired its founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, a newly created position which will shape how the newsroom covers major stories which could include the climate crisis.

Notably, among the national broadcast networks, CBS has led coverage of climate change for at least the past four years, airing the most coverage, the most climate scientist guest appearances, and the most segments that discussed climate solutions as compared to ABC and NBC. But its role as network leader is already under threat. Reported by HEATED, as part of a series of layoffs at the network, the “majority of the five person team supporting CBS News’s climate coverage” were fired. In the memo announcing the layoffs, the new chief executive David Ellison said “he was ‘phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities.’”

And there are other changes that could compound this threat: On October 24, it was reported that Weiss was interested in poaching Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who has a troubling record on climate reporting to “potentially helm the *CBS Evening News.” Additional reporting suggests that she may also be interested in bringing on board another conservative voice, CNN contributor Scott Jennings. And on October 27, *CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson announced he was leaving the network at the end of the year.

Though Weiss infrequently focused her contrarian opinions on climate-related issues in her pieces for The New York Times and on her podcast, under her leadership as founder and editor-in-chief, The Free Press has published a number of articles undermining climate science and promoting contrarian views that mirror commentary from right-wing media outlets like Fox News.

The Free Press has undermined climate science

On August 19, The Free Press reported on a widely criticized climate study from the Department of Energy through an interview with one of its authors, Steven Koonin, a climate contrarian who has appeared on several right-wing media programs including several appearances on Fox. The interview included questions such as “what about climate change is real?” and provided a platform for Koonin to misrepresent a report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that affirmed the link between climate change and extreme weather events.

Koonin has made the same false claims on Fox, including on the August 10, 2021, edition of Special Report with Bret Baier, where he downplayed the findings of the IPCC’s sixth climate assessment. Koonin dismissed the connection between extreme weather and climate change, a key finding of the report, claiming that natural disasters are “on the face of it, weather. If they were climate, we would see trends over several decades in those phenomena, and we don't.”

In fact, climate scientists have been able to estimate how much climate change affects any given extreme weather event for years. Notably, researchers found that the heat wave that sent temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and Canada into triple digits just six weeks before the release of the 2021 report would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming.

In January of this year, The Free Press interviewed Koonin to downplay the role of climate change in intensifying the LA wildfires. Similar to right-wing media outlets like Fox, The Free Press misleadingly suggested that then-President Joe Biden and many climate scientists claimed climate change was the cause of the fires rather than a contributing factor to the intensity of the blazes.

In 2023, The Free Press published one of its signature contrarian pieces – titled “I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published” by Patrick T Brown. In the piece, the author, who works for Breakthrough Institute, which was founded by anti-renewable advocate Michael Shellenberger, claims to have purposely limited his research paper showing warming temperatures increased the likelihood of wildfire growth in California in order to prove that articles in scientific journals were “distorting the scientific process by focusing too narrowly on climate change.” As reported by The Washington Post, “The opinion piece quickly provoked backlash from scientists and the editor of Nature herself.”

The stunt by Brown reflects the decades-old right-wing media narrative that climate scientists are “cooking the books” or playing “fast and loose” with data in order to manufacture a climate crisis.

The Free Press elevates contrarian and conservative voices to disparage climate activism and action

In February of this year, The Free Press published a piece by Doomberg, an independent publication focused on energy, finance and geopolitics, titled “Everybody Freeze! It’s the Climate Police,” which used a proposed policy in the the city of Ottawa “limiting residents from using remote car starters to warm up their vehicles for more than one minute before driving” and reporting that a “Washington Democrat hopes to study the impact of medical anesthesia on climate change” as proof that efforts to address climate change have gone too far – and as a result caused a “global popular revolt” against climate action.

It is the kind of cherry-picked reporting Fox News does to paint the climate movement as out of touch and radical. And like with Fox’s coverage, it feels disingenuous in its failure to either acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis or present the mainstream efforts to decarbonize the economy through policies, like renewable energy deployment, that are both popular and effective.

:{:{In March, The Free Press published a story on the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to claw back $20 billion of congressionally appropriated climate funds titled “A $20 Billion Slush Fund—Paid by You to Progressive Nonprofits.” The piece largely represents the position of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin that the funds were somehow fraudulent. It also pushes the Fox News narrative that the funding is a slush fund for the left, including Democratic politicians, that was rushed out the door before Biden’s term ended like “gold bars” tossed “off the Titanic.”}:

The “gold bars” which Fox News has repeatedly mentioned are a reference to a video from Project Veritas — an organization built on deceitful tactics — in which a purported EPA employee was filmed with a hidden camera saying the Biden administration tried to quickly spend federal money before Donald Trump resumed office. He said, “We’re just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all,” comparing the effort to “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”}:

But, as Politico noted, the “EPA had already obligated the $20 billion in climate grants months before a conservative activist group shot that video.” In fact, the climate funds were not hastily approved as Biden left office – the funding was legally appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in 2022, and grants were awarded through established procedures, with public announcements made months before the election.

Additionally, as The New York Times reported, a lawyer for the EPA staffer who appeared in the video “has since said he was not referring to the $20 billion grant program.” The Washington Post also reported that the former employee “had ‘nothing to do with the evaluation and selection’ of the recipients, said a former EPA official briefed on the matter.” These facts were largely absent from the Free Press piece.

In 2024, The Free Press published a contrarian piece by a “retired sustainability influencer” who is also the social media editor for the outlet: “I Helped Make Standing Rock Go Viral. Now I Regret It.”

The author lamented that as an early social media influencer she presented the Native American-led protest against an oil pipeline as “black and white” or “good versus evil.” She claimed her opinion on the Dakota Access Pipeline and fossil fuels changed after she “began reading books and news sources that strayed from the progressive party line, titles like Unsettled by Steve Koonin, Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger, and Fossil Future by Alex Epstein. I realized that the environmental causes I had so breathlessly championed were much more complicated than good versus evil.”

Notably, the titles that she cited and their authors – Koonin, Shellenberger and Epstein – frequently appear across right-wing media to downplay the climate crisis, disparage renewable energy, and/or promote fossil fuel use.

Similarly, in 2023, a former member of Extinction Rebellion UK penned a piece for The Free Press, “Climate Activism Has a Cult Problem,” in which the author argued that the climate action organization, known for controversial direct actions, is run by a cult leader.

The piece was published at a time when right-wing media hostility against climate activists was at a fever pitch and some right-wing media personalities were cheering on calls for violence against climate groups.

Conservative journalists like Bret Baier could undermine CBS’ leadership in climate coverage

For at least the last four years, CBS has led its broadcast counterparts in volume of climate coverage. In 2024, the network accounted for 50% of total broadcast TV news climate reporting – 381 minutes of 771 minutes across all three national broadcast networks. The network also led in the number of climate scientist guest appearances it aired and the number of segments it ran that discussed climate solutions.

Meanwhile, the climate denial that has for decades been a staple of Fox News opinion shows has also appeared on the so-called straight news program anchored by Bret Baier. Fox’s flagship Special Report has repeatedly softened or distorted the stakes of global warming and climate action. From 2009 through May 2021, more than 87%of its climate segments contained misinformation or misleading narratives.

More recently, Baier conducted a nearly 10-minute interview with Trump EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in which Baier promised a “fair” and “balanced” conversation. Instead, he helped the administration justify repealing the endangerment finding — potentially the most consequential climate rollback in modern history.

While Americans may be changing how they consume the news, legacy media and broadcast journalism at networks like CBS still matter, as the entire media landscape still relies on traditional journalism as part of the beginning of the information food chain. This includes how anchors report on extreme weather events, climate action, and scientific reports and findings. If CBS under Weiss approaches this reporting like the outlet she founded or like the anchor she seeks to poach, the network will risk becoming another cog in the machinery of climate denial and delay.

### Trump celebrates CBS News’ new leadership as “the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press”

:{:{11/03/25}:

### CBS Evening News fails to cover Trump's pardon of cryptocurrency executive with ties to Trump business venture

:{:{10/24/25}:

### Bret Baier touts CBS News’ move toward “more balance” and “coverage that’s fair”

10/24/2

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yt maj report guest mentor benett quit? VID]

BRAZIL? WOMan? fraud?

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