Trump-friendly CBS News editor Bari Weiss had to be held back from overhauling the network’s most prestigious news show while it was still on air.
Weiss, 42, the network’s anti-woke editor-in-chief, has already personally intervened in pulling an episode of flagship current affairs show 60 Minutes just hours before it was due to screen.
A new report has revealed that Weiss had to be talked out of reshaping 60 Minutes while it was still screening.
However, Status claims that Weiss is now poised to strike once the program, which first aired in 1958, takes a mid-season break in May.
“No one knows what to expect,” one staffer told Status about the internal mood in the 60 Minutes office about the possible changes.
Status claimed Weiss was held back from her plan to immediately rework the program by CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, and other senior network leaders, who advised her against immediately re-purposing 60 Minutes and to wait until the May break.
The changes Weiss is keen to introduce are unclear; one source said the MAGA-coded boss plans to “blow it up as soon as the season is over.”
The Daily Beast has contacted CBS for comment.
Under Weiss’ guidance, 60 Minutes has already seen one of its most high-profile hosts quit.
CNN star Anderson Cooper, who has been a 60 Minutes correspondent for nearly 20 years, announced he would be departing the CBS show earlier this year.
Cooper had reportedly been “uncomfortable” with the “rightward direction” of CBS under Weiss and billionaire David Ellison, CEO of CBS’s parent company, Paramount.
In January, a 60 Minutes piece on the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador was delayed for weeks because Weiss demanded it include “critical context” and input from the Trump administration.
The changes at CBS have caused uproar within the news organization, with journalist Sharyn Alfonsi claiming Weiss had spiked the story three hours before it ran.
“We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote at the time.
Weiss has also been criticized by the former president of CBS News.
Wendy McMahon resigned as CEO and president of CBS News and Stations last May after its parent company made concessions to President Donald Trump.
When asked about the current state of the network, McMahon referenced Weiss’s lack of experience as a reporter.
“What we can’t have is institutions collapse and, as a result, have newsgathering commitments—to international coverage, to local coverage, to investigative journalism—go away,“ she said.
“So much of what we see in the opinion space is built off the reporting of institutions. So what happens when that reporting is not there?”
