Bari Weiss Has Been Revered and Reviled — Why Do People Seem to Hate Her So Much?

Now that the long-awaited merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media is finally complete, CEO David Ellison has wasted no time in making some big moves. His first directive was letting all Paramount employees know that starting in January 2026, they must return to their offices five days a week, per the Los Angeles Times.

Thanks to Ellison, Paramount quickly reached a $7.7 billion deal for UFC rights, secured a four-year deal with the Duffer brothers of Stranger Things fame, and approved the Stephen Colbert cancellation, reports Puck News.

Evidently, Ellison is also in talks with Bari Weiss to acquire The Free Press, the center-right online publication she founded with her wife in 2021.

This news was met with a lot of negative reactions online. Why do people hate Bari Weiss? Here's what we know.

There are no reasons why anyone hates a public figure like Bari, who has been accused of being anti-woke and too pro-Israel. Some people categorize Bari as a bit of a hypocrite who is critical of ideological thinking while also commenting on antisemitism.

It's possible some people are still unhappy over the fact that Bari questioned whether or not the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh could keep him off the Supreme Court, making the point that he was a teenager at the time.

While speaking with Stephanie Ruhle on , Bari said she believed the allegations brought against Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford, but questioned the ethics behind their ability to stop him from serving on the Supreme Court.

"Brett Kavanaugh has a reputation as being a prince of a man, frankly, other than this," said Bari, adding that she believed Ford, but it's her word against his.

Most of the anger directed towards Bari on social media appears to revolve around her pro-Israel stance and the pro-Israel content published by The Free Press. If you plug Bari's name into X, you'll inevitably be met with a ton of rage surrounding her so-called Zionist views.

In October 2024, on the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, Bari wrote a long-form piece about where she was emotionally and included a link of all of the outlet's coverage until that point.

Bari joined The New York Times in 2017 as an Op-Ed staff editor and writer. The outlet was looking to broaden its "ideological range" following the election of Donald Trump for the first time.

Two years later, Vanity Fair did a profile on Bari, that included a ton of praise from her peers and coworkers, who were confused by the negative attention even then.

"She is the subject of more unexamined hatred in our profession than almost anyone I can think of," said Tariro Mzezewa, who worked under Bari.

A little more than a year after the Vanity Fair piece dropped, Bari resigned from The New York Times, essentially saying it was driven by the ideological few. In a letter published on her website, Bari wrote that X (formerly Twitter) had the outlet's ultimate editor.

"Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions."

Bari also alleged that she was being bullied by some of her colleagues. "They have called me a Nazi and a racist," she wrote. "Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers."

She said this treatment created a hostile work environment. At the end of the day, Bari left because she wanted the kind of freedom that used to be afforded to the press, before social media turned everything into a minefield.