John Oliver skewers Paramount for hiring ‘irresponsible’ Bari Weiss to run CBS News

John Oliver is sounding the alarm over Paramount’s hiring of contrarian pundit Bari Weiss as CBS News’ new editor-in-chief while purchasing her anti-woke digital media outlet The Free Press for $150 million, warning that Weiss has engaged in “irresponsible” and “deeply misleading’ journalism in recent years.

The HBO late-night star also took particular aim at Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison, noting that he’s just the “latest in a string of billionaires who have taken over our journalistic institutions” and made “worrying changes,” all while observing that Ellison could soon be his new boss.

Ellison, the son of Oracle founder and close Trump ally Larry Ellison, is exploring a bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, the media conglomerate that owns HBO and CNN. It was reported over the weekend that WBD rebuffed Paramount Skydance’s initial merger offer, stating that the $20 per share price was too low.

Ellison’s attempt to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which would have the backing of his ultrawealthy father, comes just two months after he closed on the $8 billion Paramount merger following a politically strained process that has sparked a Democratic-led probe into possible anti-bribery violations.

Besides the $16 million payoff Paramount made to Donald Trump to settle a “meritless” lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview and the president’s claim he reached a secret “side deal” with Ellison, Democrats are also looking into Skydance’s pre-merger assurances to Trump’s handpicked FCC chair Brendan Carr.

This included the installation of an ombudsman to field “complaints of bias” at the news network. Weeks after the merger was complete, Paramount announced that Kenneth Weinstein – a former Trump appointee and conservative think tank leader who has never worked in journalism – to serve as CBS News’ ombudsman.

During his “main story” on Sunday night’s broadcast of Last Week Tonight, Oliver spent more than a half-hour running down Weiss’ journalistic history while dissecting her heterodox website The Free Press, which included digging into several stories it’s published that have sparked controversy over their disputed or outright false claims.

“She’s been given editorial control of a massive news organization even though she’s never run a TV network, has no experience directing television coverage and, as one 60 Minutes producer pointed out, is not even a reporter,” Oliver pointed out. “That is true. She didn’t come up through the news side of a newspaper but through the opinion pages, which are a very different thing.”

Noting that The Free Press has devoted itself to the “pronounced theme” that “the left has gone too far,” he added that Weiss has also been extremely outspoken against diversity hiring policies. Notably, just before the Paramount-Skydance merger was approved, Ellison assured Carr that the new company would eliminate all DEI practices.

“Basically whatever issue you feel that is true for — Israel, campus politics, DEI or police reform — you’ll find articles there to reinforce your opinion,” Oliver remarked. “And look, I’m not saying the left never goes too far or that it’s immune from criticism at all. But it can sometimes feel like the Free Press’ conclusions can get out ahead of its evidence, which brings us to the fact that some of its pieces can be pretty poorly fact-checked, and in ways that feel important.”

Oliver particularly referenced three articles that the site published whose facts have come into question or were outright debunked, such as a piece this year alleging that malnourished children in Gaza weren’t suffering from starvation because they had other health issues. Or a story claiming that crime rates in Austin had spiked under a progressive prosecutor, when in fact they’d gone down. Or the 2023 report from a supposed “whistleblower” of a gender clinic, which was repeatedly refuted by the families who attended the clinic.

He also took aim at Weiss’ pre-Free Press tenure at The New York Times, which he said saw her engage in “some weapons-grade whataboutism” while simultaneously making amateurish mistakes – like the time she cited a “well-known hoax site” and the official Antifa Twitter account. At the same time, Oliver mocked Weiss over her history of self-aggrandizement, such as likening her resignation from the Times to the infamous quitting scene in Jerry Maguire.

Ultimately, after spending the bulk of his show eviscerating Weiss’ journalism credentials while questioning the legitimate value of The Free Press, Oliver defended why he was spending so much time talking about the former New York Times op-ed writer.

“The truth is, we wouldn’t even have done this story were it not for the fact that Bari Weiss has just been named editor-in-chief of CBS News, and that feels different because there are many opinion-heavy outlets out there from left to right and with low to high editorial standards,” Oliver proclaimed. “This show is, among other things, an opinion outlet, and while our staff works incredibly hard to research stories before we write something and vigorously check our facts afterwards, we’re also not the news.”

He added: “And I wouldn’t want anyone who led a pure opinion outlet, not even one that I happen to agree with, to suddenly be running CBS News. But it is especially alarming to have someone doing it who has spent years putting out work that, in my opinion, is at best irresponsible and at worst deeply misleading.”

He then turned his attention back to Ellison and how the billionaire has his sights on the parent company of Oliver’s show and cable network, wondering what that means for the media industry at large.

“And look, it is not just about Bari Weiss being at CBS. It is about the fact that CBS is now under the control of someone who thinks that she and her editorial sensibility make her a good fit for the job, and who, incidentally, is now preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, home of CNN and, uh-oh, HBO,” he said, before quipping: “Which isn’t ideal. Although, I’ve got to say, if what he likes about Bari is that she forces him to have hard conversations that get a bit uncomfortable, maybe he’ll like this?!”

After asserting that other long-respected legacy news organizations have seen billionaire owners grow increasingly meddlesome with their editorial direction, Oliver expressed concern that this will soon become the norm across the American media landscape.

“It is worth keeping an eye out for subtle changes there, because while I’m sure many of CBS News’ good journalists will continue to do great work, if you start seeing people resigning or getting fired, or you start seeing stories that seem off in some way, especially if it involves the left going too far on a topic Bari Weiss cares about,” he concluded. “It’s worth asking yourself why that might be. Because unfortunately, the much bigger answer might be that a billionaire has chosen to inject contrarian, right-leaning opinion journalism into an American icon.”

Meanwhile, it would definitely appear that many of the journalists and reporters at CBS News aren’t exactly thrilled with the prospect of working for Weiss, who describes herself as a “radical centrist” and “politically homeless.”

Even before Ellison officially named her as the Tiffany Network’s top editor, staffers were “literally freaking out” over the possibility of Weiss running the show, largely over her lack of broadcast network experience and stridently pro-Israeli stance.

During her first week on the job, she has prompted literal eye rolls from staff with her Sorkinesque call to arms to “do the f***king news” while also going full Elon Musk by asking employees to give her a breakdown of their workday.

“We’re all being DOGE’d. And she’s also looking out to see who will kiss up to her,” one staffer told The Independent, referencing the Department of Government Efficiency missive that Musk once spearheaded.