Media Must Expose Bari Weiss’s CBS Smear Campaign

Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, personally pushed her newsroom to pursue baseless smears against two Democratic Senate candidates in high-stakes midterm races. She advocated for a deeper dive into Abdul El-Sayed’s supposed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood — an organization El-Sayed has repeatedly and publicly denounced — and faced internal pushback for insisting that CBS link the first potential Muslim senator’s name to 9/11 “on very thin grounds.” The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis called it plainly: “It reads like a dog whistle.” Weiss also directed reporters to chase a thoroughly debunked smear about Texas candidate James Talarico. Both men are progressive candidates critical of Israeli policy in Gaza — a subject Weiss has covered with well-documented bias.

This is not editorial judgment. It is a news executive using a major broadcast network as a political weapon against specific candidates two weeks before an election. It follows a documented pattern: Weiss killed a 60 Minutes segment about El Salvador’s CECOT megaprison, was “very, very hands-on” with a story on Israeli settler violence, and has steered CBS coverage to reflect her own ideological commitments at the expense of her newsroom’s credibility.

We call on the media to cover Bari Weiss’s conduct at CBS not as an internal editorial dispute, but as what it is: a powerful media executive attempting to influence midterm elections through Islamophobic smears and debunked stories. The public deserves reporting that holds news executives to the same standard it applies to political operatives — because when they behave like operatives, they should be treated as such.