Here We Go Again: Unnamed CBS Employees Attack Bari Weiss

Yesterday, Variety published a story in which ten unnamed employees at CBS News attack Bari Weiss as a failure after three months on the job.

Ten people familiar with the workings of CBS News say the Paramount Skydance unit is veering toward dysfunction, with a management team led by Bari Weiss that doesn’t value the standards held by veteran journalists — and a staff that views its editor-in-chief and her hand-picked senior staff with great skepticism, owing to her lack of experience managing mainstream media assets.

These people suggest a cascade of recent errors at CBS News — rushing incoming “Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil into his job without a longer period to promote his arrival, airing a town hall with Erika Kirk without mainstream ad support, pulling a “60 Minutes’” segment after it had already been announced — have eroded CBS News’ value and credibility, and can only be fixed if producers and reporters challenge Weiss more regularly.

That’s really all the story has to offer. This boils down to the idea that things are changing at the number three (out of three) news network and a few old hands don’t like it. Mostly, what they don’t like is that the media mean girls are mocking their gig.

Now CBS News’ internal struggles are becoming national jokes. Host Nikki Glaser raised laughs and eyebrows at the Golden Globes when she poked fun at the esteemed news division — on its own network, no less — with a monologue zinger calling CBS News “America’s newest place to see BS news.”

Conservatives have criticized CBS for decades and none of these people ever cared. But now that Nikki Glaser (Who?) is making the same statement at the Golden Globes it’s a big deal to them. They are being shunned by the cool kids.

It’s impossible to come away from the story with anything but the impression these ten people complaining anonymously to Variety don’t like Weiss for reasons that go beyond her performance over the past 90 days on the job. Jennifer Sey, former president of Levi’s said in response to the Variety story that all of this felt very familiar to her.

When I became the Chief Marketing Officer at Levi’s, at about 2 months in, I had some mid-level know it all come into my office to tell me everyone hated me, I was steering the ship into oblivion. She told me everyone knew I was doing a terrible job. (The brand had been in… https://t.co/L3eeaJV2Ue

— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) January 21, 2026

When I became the Chief Marketing Officer at Levi’s, at about 2 months in, I had some mid-level know it all come into my office to tell me everyone hated me, I was steering the ship into oblivion. She told me everyone knew I was doing a terrible job. (The brand had been in decline for over 10 years.) 

What I had done in my first two months:

1) Say no one could go on trips anymore unless they had a role at the photo shoot or event. No more boondoggles. 

2) No drinking at events or concerts we were hosting. We were there to work, not party. 

2) Say Marketing needed to feature actual product in the ads.

3) Say we needed to move away from dark and moody and into the realm of fun – because people have fun in jeans. 

Awful, right?!

She wanted me to know, she said, she was trying to help. (She put her feet on my desk while saying this.) 

Needless to say, this was not a person who was very good at her job. And I wasn’t doing mine to be liked so I didn’t care if “everybody hated me”. I was trying to turn a business around that had been flailing. I took the responsibility seriously. 

Six years later, we had a very successful IPO. 

2 years after that I became the brand president. 

These people complaining about new leadership are lame. They always do it. They want it how it was, even if how it was wasn’t working. And it’s even lamer that @Variety writes about this like it’s news. 

Keep going @bariweiss

.Megan McArdle says the sniping sounds like politics.

Bari may have made some mistakes–it would be surprising if she hadn’t, taking over the helm of a large organization like CBS News. But a lot of the sniping is people who don’t like her politics. And Sey is right that this always happens in turnarounds: people fight to keep… https://t.co/8WPlqYMx1F

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) January 21, 2026

Bari may have made some mistakes–it would be surprising if she hadn’t, taking over the helm of a large organization like CBS News. But a lot of the sniping is people who don’t like her politics. And Sey is right that this always happens in turnarounds: people fight to keep things like they were, even if it wasn’t working.

Hugh Hewitt makes a great point. The opinions of these 10 anonymous people should be put side by side with the opinions of the millions of people who stopped watching CBS News. It’s not hard to see which opinions should be more important.

This is such an absurd premise. 10 people render an anonymous judgment. You know who else knows @CBSNews? The audience that left it by the millions in recent decades. News divisions, like NFL teams, have records —audience totals and win totals. You are what your record says you… https://t.co/5tuElaGMhy

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) January 21, 2026

I’d say the main takeaway from this article is that there are at least 10 more overpaid people at CBS News that Bari Weiss needs to fire. As the saying goes, no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

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