Bari Weiss Is the New Head of CBS News, but What Political Party Is She a Part of?

Following the news that Bari Weiss has been named the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, there was plenty of discussion online about her politics. Bari is best known for being an editor with The New York Times who left the paper to start The Free Press, an independent publication that has become remarkably successful in the years since.

Along the way, Weiss has become known for a very particular set of views, and now, many want to know which political party she's a part of. Here's what we know.

Weiss has never been firmly associated with either political party, and it's also fair to say that her views on things seem to have shifted over the years. In 2019, during an interview with Joe Rogan, she described herself as a "left-leaning centrist."

In 2020, though, Weiss publicly quit her job at The New York Times in part because she claimed that the paper had become increasingly censorious.

In the years since, The Free Press has developed a reputation for spending more of its time attacking the left than the right, although the publication is supposed to represent a plurality of different viewpoints.

The publication has spent plenty of time being "anti-woke," and is also staunchly pro-Zionist, and it has taken a measured (though not uniformly positive) view on Trump himself.

Bari's political affiliations are a bit nuanced, then, but as Vox argued following the news that Bari Weiss would be named CBS's executive editor, this seems to be a move designed to bring Paramount Skydance in line with the Trump administration. David Ellison, who owns the company, has long been known as a conservative, so it's fair to say that Bari is not being brought in to take the newsroom in a more anti-Trump direction.

Although Bari Weiss is joining CBS, The Free Press is coming along with her, and in a note to her subscribers, she credited them with helping her to build something that has become hugely successful.

"From day one, the promise — and the business proposition — of this publication was simple: We would marry the quality of the old world to the freedom of the new. We would seek the truth and tell it plainly. And we would treat readers like adults capable of making their own choices," she writes.

She explained that the audience for The Free Press is "curious" above all else, and doesn't ascribe to "political tribalism."

"Most of all, Free Pressers are people who want to face the truth. Because we understand that knowing it is the only way to improve lives — our own and those of our fellow citizens," she writes.

Whether Bari can manage CBS and what it will mean for the future of both CBS and The Free Press are both questions without definitive answers. For now, all we can say is that Bari Weiss has found great success outside of the walls of The New York Times.