‘Not puff pieces and kid gloves’: why Bari Weiss is hiring British journalists at CBS News

I n the six years since she very publicly resigned from the New York Times , and in her tumultuous eight months as editor-in-chief of one of the US’s most prestigious television networks, Bari Weiss has become renowned as a media disruptor and challenger of what she regards as an overly “woke” journalistic consensus. As Weiss continues to face bitter internal and external opposition to her leadership of CBS News , she has been turning to figures from UK journalism in her attempts to tackle what she sees as US newsroom “groupthink”. Earlier this month, the Guardian reported that Weiss’s CBS News was hiring Trevor Phillips, an influential British broadcaster who has held prominent public positions, as a senior global affairs correspondent. She also recently hired Josh Boswell, a British investigative reporter, from the Daily Mail. Soon after her appointment of Phillips at CBS , it was announced that the British conservative writer Douglas Murray would be writing a regular weekly column for the Free Press, the “anti-woke” outlet Weiss set up after her New York Times exit. Weiss has also met with Justin Webb, a presenter on the BBC’s lead news radio show, Today, though it is understood the pair did not discuss a specific position at CBS. Weiss’s senior executives at CBS News are understood to have reached out to other prominent UK journalists. A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment when asked about Weiss’s interest in British journalists. …