Embattled CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss told staff during a much-anticipated all-hands meeting on Tuesday that they should leave if they don’t think she’s the “right leader” for the network, letting them know it’s a “free country.”
She was – perhaps surprisingly – joined in that clarion call by CBS Mornings co-anchor Gayle King, who has been the subject of multiple stories that she may soon be on the chopping block due to her age and massive salary.
“If you don’t want to be here, if this is not the place, it’s OK,” King declared at the end of the question and answer session of the meeting. “But for the rest of us who would like to be here, who’d like to do a good job and figure things out along the way, this is a very bumpy time for all of us.”
King, in a recording of the meeting obtained and reviewed by The Independent, also took a swing at the “leakers” in the building who would inevitably share comments made by her and Weiss with the media.
“I also want to say to the leakers in the building, I thought you made it very clear if you’re not the leader for them,” the morning host said to Weiss. “I would like to think that we can have conversations, and that we could talk candidly with each other, and it’s not going to friggin be in the paper. I am so sick of that!”
Representatives for CBS News, King, Weiss and Paramount did not respond to requests for comment.
The staffwide meeting, which was initially scheduled for last month, served as Weiss’ unveiling of the strategic path she has in store for the troubled news channel she took over in October. In her first few months atop the Tiffany Network, Weiss’ tumultuous tenure has been marked by plummeting staff morale and heavy scrutiny over her editorial decision-making.
Weiss, a former New York Times opinion columnist who founded the center-right “anti-woke” site The Free Press, has recently faced intense backlash over her last-minute decision to spike a 60 Minutes segment about Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to the violent El Salvadorian prison CECOT.
She’s also come under fire for the “MAGA-coded” reboot of CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil, which has been beset with poor ratings, technical mishaps, behind-the-scenes chaos and cringeworthy pro-Trump segments.
On top of that, many of the network’s staffers were already on edge heading into Tuesday’s meeting as it was reported that she intended to announce significant cuts along with laying out her long-term vision for CBS News. Those expected layoffs would come on the heels of last fall’s 10 percent payroll cut by Paramount boss David Ellison, which led to the shuttering or gutting of several news programs and teams.
While Tuesday’s meeting didn’t feature an announcement of layoffs and instead saw Weiss suggesting that many employees instead leave if they are disgruntled, she did officially reveal that she was bringing on a slate of podcasters and opinion writers to serve as contributors for the network.
Kicking off the meeting to the tune of “Happy” by Pharrell Williams,” Weiss decided to address the elephant in the room – which is the tsunami of reporting over the past few months about the chaotic rollout of her tenure as editor-in-chief.
“Let me start by saying: I get it. I also get why, in the face of all this tumult, you might feel uncertain or skeptical about me or what I’m aiming to do here,” she declared.
“I’m not going to stand up here today and ask for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers,” the “heterodox” 41-year-old added. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers as a journalist: transparency, clarity, straight talk.”
Saying that she’s “here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century,” Weiss eventually said that “we are not producing a product enough people want” and that the network needs a “singular editorial vision” to “create the wave and then ride it.”
CBS News “is for the center, we’re for the center-right, and we’re for the center-left. And that is the vast majority of the company — that’s who we need to reach,” she noted at one point, celebrating that the network had recently booked right-wing radio host and former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch to appear on CBS Mornings.
Notably, in November, Weiss had cited Loesch – along with Alan Dershowitz – as a “charismatic” example of a partisan pundit that represents the type of guest she’d like to have on the network.
She also seemed to downplay television ratings as antiquated while pushing for the need to fight the “Wild West of social media,” noting that while Walter Cronkite “only had two competitors,” CBS News in 2026 has “two billion, give or take.” Therefore, the network needs to appeal to a broader community of new consumers in the digital age.
“Our strategy until now has been cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. I’m here to tell you that if we stick to that strategy, we’re toast,” she said. “Starting now we have to focus on what we’re building, not on what we’re maintaining.”
Part of that strategy, Weiss maintained, was building up “podcasts, newsletters, live journalism, events and more,” adding that they should be “investing in our talents by building brands around them” in order to compete with the “creator economy” in media.
“She seems very small,” a network employee reacted to Weiss’ remarks on Tuesday. “She can read talking points off the teleprompter, but it doesn’t really connect to what’s happening inside the organization.”
This brought her to the announcement of 18 new contributors to the network, many of whom are already Free Press writers, such as Patrick McGee, Coleman Hughes and conservative historian Niall Ferguson. Others she named are well-known podcasters, journalists and political figures – though some have also courted controversy throughout their careers.
Mark Hyman, a “functional medicine” adherent and close ally of HHS director and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has become a leading face of the MAHA movement, is one of the new contributors. So is popular science and health podcaster Andrew Huberman, who has faced criticism for peddling misinformation.
“Who wants to watch this crap, and where is the news in any of this?” one CBS News staffer told The Independent about the new contributor hires.
After announcing the new commentators at the network, Weiss turned her attention to the current staff – and let them know that if they are unhappy with the direction of the network and the vision she had laid out, they should look for the exit.
“If that’s not your bag, that’s OK,” she stated. “It’s a free country, and I completely respect if you decide I’m not the right leader for you or this isn’t the right place at the right time, there’s just too many exciting things to be spending your career doing.”
During the question and answer session, Weiss was pressed about her decision to pull the “Inside CECOT” report by 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, which the chief editor claimed needed additional reporting to get more comments from the Trump administration. In the end, the report ran largely unchanged this month after Trump officials once again declined to speak on the record.
Asked about originally spiking the report after it had already been promoted on air by the network, Weiss said that while it “is always going to be my prerogative as editor” to “push to get new information,” she vowed to be more involved early on going forward.
“Now, am I ever going to hold something again after it has been put out there with promos? I don’t want to make that exact same decision again. No, I do not,” she insisted.
As for concerns that she had been ordered by her boss – who is seeking favor with Trump as he builds his burgeoning media empire – to hold the “Inside CECOT” segment amid the president’s continued anger over 60 Minutes, Weiss claimed she “was not pressured by David Ellison or anyone else.” Weiss added that the only conversations she’s had with Ellison have been about “fairness” in news coverage.
At one point, Weiss was confronted by CBS Evening News producer Nicole Cutrona, who brought up a recent change in editorial standards – noting that Weiss had spent part of the meetings insisting that the network hadn’t changed its standards and practices.
Cutrona, who is transgender, noted that she’d actually been “the victim of one of the leaks,” which involved the “demonstrable change in the guidance from the fall to when we reported on stories in January” regarding the way the network talked about trans individuals. In the end, Cutrona wanted to know if Weiss had any role in the change in that guidance – which would see CBS now “use the term biological sex at birth” with “no quotes needed” when discussing trans athletes.
“I have a conversation with standards about all kinds of things throughout the day, throughout the week, and that was a conversation about whether or not the phrase biological sex should be in scare quotes or not. And I felt that we didn’t need to do that,” Weiss responded.
“Everyone is applauding her for asking an actual question to Bari,” one CBS News insider told The Independent.
The end of the meeting, however, was reserved for King to give a rallying speech to the CBS News troops, along with raging at any “leakers” in the newsroom. Interestingly, Weiss arguably burst into national prominence because she live-tweeted a 2020 New York Times editorial meeting that she famously described as a “civil war” inside the newspaper.
“I just want to say something about working at CBS. I think we’ve all been walking around with gasoline on our pants,” King exclaimed. “We’ve had a lot of incoming. People come and pet me like a puppy and say, ‘I’m so sorry that you’re leaving CBS. I won’t watch you guys again. And it’s not the same place.’ And when I come here, what I see everyday are people who really love what they do. We work really hard, we’re very proud of what we do here, and I don’t want anybody to lose sight of that.”
Snarking that she’s “curious to see how long it takes for this to get out, ’cause it’ll be somebody in this room,” King then reiterated Weiss’ plea to staffers to head for the door if they didn’t feel she was the right leader for the newsroom.
“If you don’t want to be here, if this is not the place, it’s OK,” she stated.
