Scott Pelley’s bombshell interview with The New York Times over the weekend after his firing from “60 Minutes” has drawn even more scrutiny to the management style of Bari Weiss, who in October was installed to oversee CBS News. The former print journalist, who launched the “Free Press” website, had no TV experience when Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison appointed her editor-in-chief, and was known more for having preconceived views on several weighty topics, including declining trust in mainstream media and fervent support for Israel.
In an emotional exchange with the Times, Pelley said Weiss’ inexperience with the medium has undermined the work being produced by the Paramount Skydance news outlet. “We need adult supervision, and at the moment we don’t have it. We have people who’ve been installed in these jobs who through no fault of their own have no experience in television. They don’t know what they’re doing,” Pelley said. “And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at ‘60 Minutes’ before, or at CBS News before. So that is my hope: a return to sanity.”
CBS News, he added, is “on fire” under Weiss’ management.
CBS News has pushed back on Pelley’s allegations, but in the public arena, Weiss is likely to be under continued audit. In her most audacious maneuver, she ordered CBS News to lop off the senior management of “60 Minutes,” a flagship CBS property and one of journalism’s crown jewels. Nearly two weeks ago, CBS News ousted Tanya Simon, the executive producer of “60 Minutes”; Draggan Mihailovich, the show’s executive editor; correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega; and senior producers Guy Campanile and Matthew Polevoy. Within days, Pelley was also dispatched, following verbal sparring with the show’s new leader, Nick Bilton. The program, the most-watched news show in the U.S., is left with just three correspondents and a need to get stories ready to go for fall.
The entire staff of the newsmagazine is “unmoored,” says one person familiar with CBS News operations. “They want to know what does this all mean?”
Weiss is eager to push CBS News into social and digital frontiers, and some of CBS News’ challenges were in place before she began. But her management style has undermined her progress, according to five people familiar with CBS News operations, who describe Weiss as having a “very royal” or “very remote” demeanor. She has not struck close alliances with key talent or top producers, these people say, and unlike the typical TV-news chief, is not seen frequently around studios or control rooms. That has cost her support as she seeks to make very big changes to the business.
“There was skepticism” when Weiss joined the company, says one CBS News staffer. “There was harm done to both sides. There was leaking, and so everybody retreated. Now Bari sits in new offices on the sixth floor and is rarely seen in the newsroom.” Weiss in April began taking meetings with senior leaders at CBS News, according to a person familiar with the matter. And Paramount has held talks in recent weeks for a business executive who might help Weiss navigate processes with which she is not familiar.
Many insiders are left wondering if the news operation will still be around by the time she finishes tinkering with it.
“TV is dying — we get it,” says one of the people familiar with CBS News. “But there are still a lot of reporters doing reporting and trying to figure out their stories and asking questions of the White House.” CBS News staffers do not understand what Weiss and her team are doing to help them “while they are trying to do their jobs.”
The 2026 midterm elections typically bring bigger audiences and the advertising dollars that follow them to news programs. Weiss presides over a group of stalwart programs – “60 Minutes,” “CBS Evening News,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” “CBS Mornings,” “48 Hours” and “Face The Nation — that generated $362 million in 2025, according to Guideline, a tracker of ad spending. And despite ongoing erosion of ad support for broadcast-news programs that has been in place since the 2020 election, says Sean Wright, the company’s chief insights and analytics officer, “CBS has held steady, having stayed at 22% share of dollars for the last 5 years. Halfway through this year, CBS is still at 22% of the dollar share.”
But if CBS News is perceived as being partisan or lacking credibility, then marketers could move their support elsewhere. In the past, says one media buyer, who helps advertisers figure out where to place commercials, broadcast-TV news has been seen as less polarizing than what was on rivals from cable. “Folks were staying more with the broadcast news because they felt that was safer,” this buyer says. “Well, I don’t think it’s safer any longer.”
Weiss came to wider notice after leaving her role as an opinion writer at The New York Times, where she railed against a “woke” guard that pressured her not to post analyses that didn’t hew to their leftward agenda. She launched The Free Press, a digital site that has captured the interest of billionaires and politicians alike. Paramount CEO Ellison has launched an experiment of sorts, eager to see if an online provocateur can steer a mainstream TV-news division into the future.
Some of her efforts have captured attention. CBS News has snared timely interviews with everyone from U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to President Donald Trump. CBS News executives, a person familiar with the matter says, are proud of stories that examine hospice fraud in California and the Pentagon’s seeming lack of preparedness against an attack on a U.S. base in Kuwait.
Weiss’ lack of experience managing TV or her political beliefs don’t disqualify her from running a news organization, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at Yale University’s School of Management. The news business has been filled with atypical leaders, including Roger Ailes of Fox News or Tom Johnson of CNN, both of whom had more years in politics than in the newsroom.
What hurts Weiss, he says, is her seeming inability to make critical moves without volatility: “The issue is, she likes to create a storm.” Weiss may have been right to question a “60 Minutes” segment filed by Alfonsi that looked at how the Trump administration deported migrants to a harsh prison in El Salvador says Sonnenfeld. But she did it “at the 12th hour,” when the piece had already won multiple approvals. There was no controversy around the segment, which would have aired on a late-December broadcast, until Weiss ordered it held.
CBS News rivals are also making changes — but with considerably fewer theatrics. MS NOW has added an hour filled with the podcasts of Crooked Media to its weekend lineup and is readying a new streaming outlet that aims to get its community of viewers to spend more time with its content. Fox News struck a licensing deal with the principals of the conservative “Ruthless” podcast. CNN has launched programming that has some veterans aghast, including the 10 p.m. “NewsNight” roundtable show that centers on participants bickering with one another. One emerging CNN personality, data guru Harry Enten, would likely never have appeared so frequently in a different era. None of these moves have distracted the news outlets from their day-to-day work.
CBS News’ competitors can’t look away — but see little reason to emulate Weiss’ tactics. “Instead of ‘60 Minutes’ leading the news cycle for its journalism, it’s now known for its drama,” says one rival TV news executive.
People who have met with Weiss describe her as fiercely intelligent and full of interesting ideas. She comes up with unique angles on stories in the news cycle and is eager to engage with people who have provocative takes on issues. Some liken her to a college professor who has deep knowledge of a particular subject yet is unable to recognize that she lacks expertise in other areas that may be critical to her ability to succeed.
Managing “60 Minutes” is not for those weak of spirit. For decades, its producers and correspondents have enjoyed a freedom that is unknown in modern media conglomerates — until recently. With Paramount’s fortunes in decline due to TV viewers moving to streaming, and with President Trump focused on how various news outlets report on his policies, new layers of scrutiny have been placed on the newsmagazine.
And Weiss and her deputies, which include Adam Rubenstein, a CBS News deputy editor, and Charles Forelle, recently named managing editor, often have ideas for stories for various shows. “If we like them or they work for our audience, we take them. If we don’t, we don’t,” says the CBS News staffer. “I don’t think ’60’ is used to that. It has worked under this hermetic seal for many decades.” Some CBS News staffers think Pelley could have used a softer touch with Bilton and stayed with the show.
During a town hall with staffers that took place in January, Weiss vowed to act with great urgency. “We are not producing a product that enough people want. We can blame demographics or technology or fractured attention spans or ‘news avoidance’ — but these are all copes,” she said, noting that her mission was to “to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century.” In doing so, however, she seems to be losing her grip on the ability to manage the place right now.
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