Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has named Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News as part of a deal to acquire the online news site she founded, The Free Press.
The companies did not disclose the deal value in Monday’s announcement.
A source familiar with the matter said it was for $US150 million ($A227 million).
In an essay announcing the deal on Monday, Weiss, 41, said the deal provides “a chance to help reshape a storied media organisation – to help guide CBS News into a future that honours those great values that underpin The Free Press and the best of American journalism”.
The announcement capped months of talks between Ellison and Weiss.
The newly minted media baron first floated the idea at July’s Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, a frequent staging ground for major media mergers, according to media reports.
Weiss resigned as an opinion writer for the New York Times in July 2020, in a 1500-word open letter in which she described being the subject of “constant bullying” by colleagues who disagreed with her views.
In 2022, she founded her new media company on a credo of “honesty, doggedness and fierce independence”.
In a letter to Paramount employees on Monday, Ellison wrote that the company is a steward of one of the world’s most iconic news organisations.
“We are challenging ourselves to do better – recognising that we have the ability to reach a broad audience and demonstrate constructive, respectful, and bipartisan dialogue in our own work,” he wrote.
Weiss “brings a passion for reaching broad audiences through rigorous, fact-based reporting and a relentless commitment to amplifying voices from all corners of the spectrum,” he wrote.
In a letter to CBS News employees, Weiss said that CBS was part of her family tradition.
“Whenever I hear that tick, tick, tick or that trumpet fanfare, it sends me right back to our den in Pittsburgh,” Weiss wrote in the letter seen by Reuters.
“The opportunity to build on that legacy with you – and to renew it in an era that so desperately needs it – is an extraordinary privilege.”
Weiss said she wanted to hear from the staff at CBS News about what is working and what is not, with the goal of making CBS News the most-trusted news organisation in the United States.
She promised to listen with “an open mind, a fresh notebook and an urgent deadline”.
The Free Press has earned a reputation for challenging conventional narratives.
Notable articles include a first-person essay from a then-senior editor at US broadcaster NPR, who accused the public radio network of a progressive bias that cost it listeners’ trust.
Another offered a whistleblower account of the Washington University Transgender Center at the St Louis Children’s Hospital, which reported vulnerable teenagers with mental health problems rushed into life-altering treatments.
In a 2023 essay in Tablet magazine, Weiss argued for the dismantling of institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, writing that the movement “threatens not just Jews – but America itself”.
Weiss will report directly to David Ellison and help set an editorial course for CBS News.
The network’s evening news broadcast is in third place behind its US television peers.
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