Oracle’s Larry Ellison speaks at the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Veteran CBS broadcaster Dan Rather slammed CBS News for hiring Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief, calling the move a symptom of the network’s transformation under its new billionaire owner, Skydance CEO David Ellison — a shift he described as turning the network into “Trump-approved news.”
On Thursday, in his Substack newsletter Steady, Rather wrote that David’s father and the co-founder of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison, and his son “believe CBS News is broken. And like their friend Donald Trump, they’re convinced the cure for a fracture is a sledgehammer.”
Weiss has “never worked in television news,” Rather noted, yet will report directly to David Ellison rather than CBS News leadership. He described her as “anti-woke, anti-DEI and pro-Israel,” with a reputation for being “abrasive and disorganized.” According to Rather, Weiss opened her tenure by telling staffers to “cover the f***ing news,” a remark that reportedly drew “smirks and eyerolls.”
The Ellisons’ $8 billion purchase of Paramount Global, CBS News’ parent company, included a $150 million deal for Weiss’s The Free Press, which Rather described as “a conservative online commentary site, not a hard-hitting news outlet,” in exchange for her new position as editor-in-chief.
Rather also pointed to political entanglements surrounding the sale: Paramount settled a $16 million lawsuit from Trump before the deal’s approval, and Skydance installed Trump ally Kenneth Weinstein as ombudsman. “This signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent,” Rather warned, calling Weiss’s appointment “a dark day in the halls of CBS News.”
The post ‘Trump Approved News’: Dan Rather Blasts CBS News Hiring Bari Weiss first appeared on Mediaite.
