By Josef Adalian, who has covered the television industry since 1992 and writes Buffering, a newsletter about streaming

On Weiss’s watch, CBS News underplayed the year’s biggest story yet. Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images

During a much-publicized town hall Tuesday, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was asked what she would say to critics who argue the division has become a “right-wing network” under her leadership. “Look at the coverage that CBS News has put out since I started,” she said, insisting she wants only to be a “mouthpiece for fairness and pursuit of the truth.” If he were still alive, Roger Ailes — who sold Fox News with the slogan “Fair and balanced” — would surely have smiled at her gall.

Even if the Weiss-led CBS News has not been anywhere near as craven as Fox News in attempting to sell right-wing propaganda as objective journalism, the division’s sudden sharp turn toward the right since she arrived has been unmistakable to anyone paying attention. As Status’s Oliver Darcy correctly observed, writing about the CBS Evening News this month, “One could indeed look at the coverage — of the January 6 anniversary, the softball Pete Hegseth interview, or the bizarre salute to Marco Rubio, among other recent notable moments — and reasonably conclude the network has, in fact, shifted rightward.” There’s also the way Weiss abruptly pulled a *60 Minutes *segment about the Trump administration’s relationship with El Salvador’s CECOT prison camp over bogus concerns about “fairness,” only to just as abruptly — and with virtually no advance notice — reschedule the same segment, barely changed, so it would air opposite NBC’s most-watched NFL divisional-playoff game ever, all but guaranteeing low ratings. And the list of new contributors Weiss revealed this week that, despite the presence of a few nonpartisan journalists and personalities, is dominated by right-coded intellectuals and academics, including a Brexit-embracing Black journalist who worked for the U.K. equivalent of Fox News, three medical voices often aligned with RFK Jr.’s MAHA movement (Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman, Mark Hyman), and thepresident of the right-wing Manhattan Institute. (Helping fund these new paid talking heads: offering veteran journalists buyouts ahead of another round of layoffs.)

But there are more subtle signs that this is no longer the CBS News of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, even Scott Pelley. The most glaring came this past week as events unfolded in Minnesota. Much of the world was rocked by what no less than Chuck “Both Sides” Todd termed the “cold-blooded assassination of an American citizen” by the U.S. government. But from Saturday through Monday, the CBS Weekend News and* CBS Evening News* downplayed this drama and instead emphasized coverage of … a snowstorm. Granted, it was a very big storm, and on Sunday, ABC’s World News also led with the weather system’s aftermath. Still, after giving the Minnesota story less than three minutes’ airtime Saturday (even as NBC Nightly News spent eight minutes on it; ABC’s World News didn’t air nationally because of NBA coverage), CBS was the only big-three broadcast network that kept the killing of Alex Pretti out of the lead spot on *both *Sunday and Monday nights; it also devoted notably fewer minutes to the situation than its rivals. Only when the news changed from outrage over the killing to the Trump White House (allegedly) shifting tactics did CBS and its new chief anchor, Tony Dokoupil, decide this story was the most important of the day. By Wednesday, CBS was back to leading with the weather, while spending two minutes on the official rollout of “Trump Accounts,” with Dokoupil unironically quoting Trump’s description of the initiative as “one of the most transformative policies of all time.” ABC and NBC found it so transformative they didn’t cover the event at all on their nightly newscasts.

Obviously, if you believe, as Weiss seems to, that CBS News was hopelessly left-wing before she arrived, perhaps the changes she’s now touting may seem rational, even overdue. And to be clear, CBS hasn’t suddenly morphed into Fox News: Dokoupil was the only big-three anchor who reported from Minnesota after the killing of Renée Good earlier this month, and some critique of Trump policies can still be heard on the network. But during her town hall Tuesday, Weiss argued that she was blowing up CBS News because it needed to “meet audiences where they are,” while accusing her predecessors of “clinging” to the broadcast-news model. “If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast,” she said.

Yet the thing is CBS News has absolutely *not *been burying its head in the sand the past few years regarding the very real declines in broadcast viewership. It was the first network to launch its own streaming news service, all the way back in 2014, and has invested millions into reshaping operations to prioritize local and streaming. CBS News has also pushed aggressively into podcasts and into aggregating its content across platforms, which is why 48 Hours is regularly among the biggest podcasts on YouTube, even as its library can be seen on FAST channels, cable channels, and just about anywhere you can find video.

Obviously, there’s still plenty of room for growth, but nothing Weiss said this week about rethinking news hasn’t been said a million times before by other execs at CBS News and its linear rivals. She may bring youthful energy and fresh eyes to the network, but since she arrived at CBS in October, the only actual new ideas Weiss has brought are that “woke” is bad — and that she knows best. To paraphrase a CBS News employee with far more gravitas than Weiss, or myself: Good night, and good luck with that.

The Gospel According to Bari