• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

The installation of Bari Weiss at the top of the pecking order at CBS News has elicited a predictable outcry.

Uh-oh, she’s conservative. Uh-oh, she’s an outsider. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. Suddenly, everybody’s worried about CBS News.

The right has long complained that CBS News is too liberal. The left has long said CBS News is not really liberal, just correct in the way they frame the news and report it.

Not surprisingly, CBS News has traditionally defined itself as neither conservative or liberal. It sees itself as a news organization characterized by objectivity, integrity and old-fashioned news values.

But the head of the new company that owns CBS News, David Ellison, thinks stodgy CBS News needs a makeover.  

So, he is bringing in Weiss, 41, to remake it. At the same time, he bought her news website, The Free Press, for a reported $150 million.

So, now, not only is Weiss the new editor in chief of CBS News -- a job that once represented the pinnacle of journalistic achievement -- but she also gets to continue managing The Free Press.

And she is now incredibly wealthy, having sold her company for nine figures just four years after she launched it. Evidently, this is a woman of high achievement and a force to be reckoned with. 

“As editor in chief of CBS News, Weiss will shape editorial priorities, champion core values across platforms, and lead innovation in how the organization reports and delivers the news,” said a press release from Paramount Skydance.

After the news broke earlier this week, the chattering and the hand-wringing began. Much of the reaction had to do with the “conservative” label many have hung on her, which would put her at odds with CBS News, say the naysayers.

On the issue of that label, Weiss herself begs to differ. An online search reveals that she has referred to herself at different times as a “radical centrist,” a “left-leaning centrist” and “politically homeless.”

She has been a critic of cancel culture and whatever we choose to group under the classification of “woke orthodoxy.” 

She is also considered to be socially liberal. She is pro-choice and in a gay marriage, note some of the stories about her.

So, she holds various views and opinions that make her hard to peg, which presents a problem for a world that prizes categorization. In today’s world, you are either conservative or you are liberal. You cannot be both.

On Monday, The New Republic actually said that Weiss’s position at the top of CBS News will “help destroy America as we know it.”

The phrase was part of a headline and explanatory text at the top of an opinion piece. “MAGA Lite: What ‘Bari Weiss Conservatism’ Is, and Why It’s Dangerous,” said the headline.

“The new CBS executive isn’t exactly MAGA,” said the text beneath the headline. “But her polite Trumpism will still help destroy America as we know it.” Wow! Who knew CBS News had so much power?

MSNBC said Paramount’s purchase of The Free Press “plus the elevation of Weiss is a clear signal [Ellison] wants to steer one of American journalism’s oldest and most respected institutions in a distinctly right-leaning ideological direction.” This remains to be seen.

According to The New Yorker this week, there are those who “fear a Trumpified Weiss is storming the citadel of objective journalism.” 

CBS News a citadel of objective journalism? I have as much respect for CBS News as the next person, but not everybody feels that way.

When commentaries start using words and phrases like “storming the citadel” and “destroy America,” my eyes tend to glaze over. 

My own belief is that the existence of the United States is not threatened by “polite Trumpism.” In fact, anything that is labeled “polite” in this day and age strikes me as an improvement.