Newsroom critics are reportedly unhappy with CBS News’s handling of the Iran war so far, accusing recently installed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of carrying out a “propaganda-palooza” on behalf of the Trump administration’s military campaign.
Insiders told the news site Zeteo they’ve been concerned over multiple instances, including Weiss tweeting a fire emoji above a segment where a guest slammed leftist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for criticizing the war.
Another source told the site that a recent summary of U.S.-Iran relations from CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil, which neglected to mention the 1953 U.S.-backed coup in the country, was the “craziest s*** I’ve ever seen.”
The Independent has contacted CBS News for comment.
The war is seen in media circles as perhaps the strongest test yet of how Weiss’s own right-leaning, pro-Israel views will influence the network’s coverage.
Staffers told Semafor that Weiss has been more engaged in Iran-related coverage than almost any other subject.
Her political stances, as well as those aired in her anti-woke news outlet, the Free Press, are thought to have helped her elevation in October to lead the storied news network, despite lacking a TV background. She was reportedly seen as a palatable choice to the network’s new owner David Ellison, son of the billionaire Oracle tech mogul, Israeli army donor, and Trump supporter Larry Ellison.
When the fighting broke out, CBS quickly dispatched Dokoupil to the region, reportedly nabbing one of the final U.S. flights to Jordan before air space was shut down across the Middle East.
For a time, he was the only major U.S. news anchor broadcasting on the ground during the initial moments of the conflict, and he has secured multiple high-profile interviews, including a sit-down with the country’s President Isaac Herzog.
Before the war, Weiss has attracted scrutiny for other moves at the network, including a decision to delay airing a segment about the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a gulag-like Salvadoran prison called CECOT.
Prior to his top billing on CBS Evening News, Dokoupil gained headlines for a combative 2024 interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates about his book The Message, which criticizes the Israeli occupation and compares its treatment of Palestinians to Black people under Jim Crow.
Dokoupil said the writings “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” comments which later reportedly earned him a rebuke from prior CBS leadership.
Last June, Weiss spoke to Fox News and praised Israeli strikes on Iran as a “profound opportunity for total realignment” in the Middle East.
“One of the key lessons that Israel and perhaps the world has learned since the massacre of October 7 is to take these enemies not just figuratively, not just seriously, but literally,” she said. “When they say they want a second genocide, they want a nuclear holocaust, they mean it.”
