CBS News’s MAGA-curious editor-in-chief is putting her personal podcast on pause to put out fires at her new job.
Bari Weiss, the former opinion journalist installed as the head of the national news organization despite having no prior television experience, announced on Thursday that her Honestly podcast will take a break.
“As you may have heard if you have an internet connection, I’ve also taken on a new role, and that’s as editor-in-chief of CBS News,” Weiss, 41, said. “It’s a huge responsibility, and it’s an extraordinary opportunity to bring the values that drive this show, and that drive The Free Press into a much bigger arena.”
“So, here’s the news: Honestly is taking a little bit of a pause," she added, saying that it would return in “just a few short months.”
The new editor-in-chief then plugged her brand’s other podcasts and content, including an impassioned plea for listeners to watch the ratings-challenged CBS Evening News with new host Tony Dokoupil.
Weiss, installed at CBS News by nepo-billionaire media baron David Ellison, launched her Honestly podcast in May 2021 as a branch of her independent, Substack-based news outlet, The Free Press. As of January, there are more than 350 episodes of the show.
Since she was catapulted into the cockpit of one of the pillars of American broadcast news in October, the former New York Times columnist’s reign at CBS has cultivated quite a bit of controversy.
The network, at Weiss’s orders, halted the airing of a 60 Minutes segment last month at the last minute, with Weiss claiming it lacked ”critical context” without a comment from Trump administration officials.
The segment in question, titled “Inside CECOT,” examined the administration’s practice of deporting Venezuelan nationals to the Terrorism Confinement Center, an El Salvadoran megaprison.
Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Sharon Alfonsi declined to make changes to her report and called Weiss’s decision to shelve it “corporate censorship” in an email sent to colleagues.
The segment finally aired Sunday night, after Alfonsi and 60 Minutes staff went to the White House to interview an administration official, like Kristi Noem or Tom Homan, though a sit-down never actually happened.
Weiss’s installation of Dokoupil as the new anchor of CBS Evening News in January has also ruffled feathers due to a number of early mishaps.
Throughout his short tenure on the evening news broadcast, Dokoupil, 45, has been ridiculed by the public and media figures for asking softball questions to President Donald Trump, who mocked his anchor salary, employing a cringeworthy sign-off, and insulting renowned CBS anchor Walter Cronkite.
The evening broadcast, CBS News’s signature program, saw a significant ratings dip following Dokoupil’s appointment. Within his first week, Dokoupil lost as much as a fifth of the most important part of his audience, and has seen diminishing viewership since.
