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Bari the Hatchet

No one said that turning around a legacy news institution in the age of inexorable decline, shattered attention spans, and staff revolts was supposed to be easy. But as Mark Thompson, Will Lewis, and Bari Weiss are proving, you can’t move forward without taking the lead.

bari weiss
On Tuesday, Bari Weiss, the embattled and overexposed CBS News chief, made a formal plea to her staff to ignore the mishegas surrounding her early missteps, embrace change, and get on board with making the network “fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.” Photo: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press
Dylan Byers
January 28, 2026

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On Tuesday, Bari Weiss, the embattled and overexposed CBS News chief, made a formal plea to her staff to ignore the mishegas surrounding her early missteps, embrace change, and get on board with making the network “fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.” Pursuing that mission would first require admitting that CBS News had failed to adapt to consumer demand. “We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves,” she said in a network-wide town hall. “We are not producing a product that enough people want.”