Bari Weiss sparks outrage after suggesting CBS News needs ‘charismatic’ voices like Alan Dershowitz
CBS News head Bari Weiss once again found herself under fire this week after she argued that the network would benefit from hearing ‘charismatic’ voices like disgraced lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
Weiss, 41, who took over as editor-in-chief at the Tiffany Network in October, made the shocking claim at the Jewish Leadership Conference earlier this month.
She said in a panel discussion that a recent debate her anti-woke The Free Press hosted between the 87-year-old former lawyer and former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch was emblematic of her vision for the future of CBS News.
‘Now these are people that have wildly different opinions on the Second Amendment, and yet showing that they could have good faith, very passionate, very charismatic disagreement and still like each other at the end of the day, we think it’s important,’ Weiss told the audience.
She went on to call Dershowitz and Loesch ‘center left and center right,’ and claimed they represent the views of most Americans.
Podcasters like Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, on the other hand, ‘don’t represent our values and the world views of the vast majority of Americans,’ Weiss argued.
‘And so this is an opportunity to speak for the 75 percent, for the people that are on the center left, the center right,’ she continued.
‘That still believe passionately in the American project, that still believe in all of the things that everybody in this room believes in – which is liberty and freedom and individual responsibility.’
New CBS News head Bari Weiss argued at the Jewish Leadership Conference earlier this month that the network would benefit from hearing ‘charismatic’ voices
She specifically mentioned disgraced defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz (pictured in 2022)
She went on to say that her goal at CBS is to ‘get back to that normalcy,’ as she acknowledged that ‘centrist news’ has failed ‘because it’s like trying to force feed spinach down someone’s throat.’
‘It’s felt like an absence of charisma and of identity, and as nostalgic as people may be for an era in which 30 million Americans watched Walter Cronkite every night and saw him as the voice of truth – and I understand why they’re nostalgic for that – we’re not going back to that.’
Instead, she said mainstream media can earn Americans’ trust back by ‘redrawing the lines of what falls into the 40-yard line of acceptable debate and acceptable politics and culture.
‘I don’t mean that in like a censorious, gatekeeping way, I mean having people that are clearly identifiably in the center left or the center right in conversation with each other,’ Weiss said as she brought up Dershowitz and Loesch’s gun control debate.
‘And so for me, it’s always about the curation – like who’s in the room, how are you showing centrist news not as the absence of disagreement and the absence of charisma, but explicitly charismatic and disagreeable.’
As her comments spread online Monday, after a clip of her speaking at the conference was shared by Drop Site, many online slammed Weiss as being out of touch.
‘I’m not sure an alleged pedophile and a confirmed gun nut is where Americans are,’ Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts posted on X.
Many online slammed Weiss for being out of touch as her comments spread on social media
Others openly mocked Weiss, with a columnist for MSNOW joking: ‘The kids demand Alan Dershowitz.’
‘I saw some teens today. I asked them who represents them best. They told me that Gen Alpha and Zoomers are on TikTok and Instagram demanding more and more clips of Alan Dershowitz,’ Southern Poverty Law Center researcher Hannah Gais piled on.
‘They can’t get enough of him,’ she continued. ‘He is the voice of their generation. The voice America needs.’
New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac also wrote that it was ‘so funny to take a populist “we need to elevate the voice of the common man” position and then immediately follow it with’ Dershowitz.
Others sarcastically shared their support for Dershowitz, with an Al Jazeera producer writing that it ‘would actually be such a blessing if Bari Weiss spends all of CBS’s time and resources elevating Alan Dershowitz.’
Podcaster and former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor also shared his thoughts.
Some pointed out Dershowitz’s cozy relationship with sex pest Jeffrey Epstein
‘So Bari Weiss’s plan to restore trust in media is to elevate Jeffrey Epstein friend and apologist Alan Dershowitz and gun zealot Dana Loesch who said journalists are “the rat bastards of the earth. They are the boil on the back side of American politics,”‘ he wrote.
‘Sounds good!’
But Vietor wasn’t the only one who brought up Dershowitz’s longtime friendship with Epstein, as former Bernie Sanders spokeswoman Briahna Joy Gray quipped: ‘While you have him, is there any other newsy topic you should ask Alan Dershowitz about?’
Controversial podcaster Glenn Greenwald, meanwhile, claimed that the voices Weiss feels are ‘mainstream enough… always [have] one thing in common: love of Israel.’
‘Conversely, everyone Bari Weiss thinks is too extreme to be included always has one thing in common: opposition to Israel,’ he wrote.
In a follow-up post, Greenwald noted that the gun control debate between Dershowitz and Loesch ‘has so far been watched by a grand total of 860 people in the five hours since posting,’ he wrote Monday night.
Weiss took over as editor-in-chief at the Tiffany Network in October
Former Intercept journalist Ryan Grim suggested that Paramount chief David Ellison was swayed to name Weiss the new head of CBS News based on the argument she laid out at the conference
Yet former Intercept journalist Ryan Grim suggested that Paramount chief David Ellison was swayed to name Weiss the new head of CBS News based on the argument she laid out at the conference.
‘As you’re watching this, consider that she likely made this exact pitch to David Ellison and he said “Yes, precisely, here is $150 million and the top job at CBS News.”‘
As the editor-in-chief at the network, Weiss has been given broad authority by Ellison to tame liberal impulses in a bid to boost ratings and win back viewers’ trust.
She has said she is determined to rebrand CBS as ‘radically centrist’ and has already planned a makeover for the flopping night show, CBS Evening News.
CBS Evening News anchor John Dickerson dramatically quit his role in October, without any explanation, and sources told the Wall Street Journal they plan to ax co-anchor Maurice DuBois.
Without the co-hosts, Weiss is stuck finding a fresh face for the show – and has already shared two polar opposite choices.
As the editor-in-chief at the network, Weiss (pictured in 2023) has been given broad authority by Paramount chief David Ellison to tame liberal impulses in a bid to boost ratings and win back viewers’ trust
The fiery editor-in-chief has had her eye on CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Fox News’ Bret Baier, sources told WSJ.
CBS attempted to poach Cooper but he said he ‘wasn’t interested’ and preferred ‘his contributing role on 60 Minutes,’ WSJ reported.
Weiss has even had conversations mentioning Fox News start Baier for the weeknight anchor position, Status first reported.
Landing either high profile anchor would be extremely challenging even if they wanted to leave their positions.
Both Cooper and Baier make whopping salaries, with Baier raking in $14 million annually and Cooper bringing in a stunning $18 million.
Still, Mediaite’s Colby Hall expressed her support for Weiss’s vision for the network, arguing on X that her ‘alternative’ to centrist news ‘isn’t moderation. It’s transparency.’
‘Put people with genuinely different world views in the same studio and let them argue with full force, in good faith, on air, where viewers can see how arguments are made,’ Hall urged, calling it ‘actual pluralism, not neutrality theater.’
