• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 11 hours ago

The explosive new editor-in-chief who has promised to “blow things up” at CBS News is doing just that by bypassing CBS News talent to cast herself as the star of a prime-time news event also starring a prominent conservative newsmaker.

Ordinarily, a star anchor at the top of the CBS News food chain would be the headliner and moderator of an event such as this one -- a one-hour “town hall” with just one guest, in this case, Erika Kirk, widow of slain activist Charlie Kirk.

But CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss apparently decided to give herself the job as moderator and in the process, position herself as the star and face of CBS News.

A news executive superseding highly paid air talent on a prime-time news show is a new wrinkle in network news. 

It could also be that Weiss felt she could not rely on typical network news talent to be fair and balanced with the conservative Mrs. Kirk.

Indeed, a one-hour prime-time special with an activist on the right such as Erika Kirk is something most media observers would associate with Fox News Channel, not CBS News.

The one-hour special -- titled “CBS News Presents: A Town Hall with Erika Kirk” -- is scheduled to air on Saturday, December 13, at 8 p.m. Eastern, preempting the previously scheduled “Family Film and TV Awards,” which moves to the following Saturday.

Thus, this CBS News town hall is even disrupting CBS’s prime-time schedule, another sign of the clout Weiss has at CBS, thanks to the support of Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, who hired her and to whom she reports directly.

“Town Hall with Erika Kirk” will feature the participation of groups who are not ordinarily heard on CBS News and the other legacy networks.

The pre-taped special will have Kirk “fielding questions from young evangelicals, prominent religious leaders, and figures across the political spectrum,” CBS says. “The conversation will also focus on our country’s political divide -- and how we can find our way out.”

Kirk’s husband was assassinated last September at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, at age 31 as he was speaking to an audience estimated at around 3,000 people.

Since then, Mrs. Kirk, 37, has assumed the positions of chairman and CEO of Turning Point USA, the influential, conservative activist group that her husband founded in 2012.

“Like so many people around the world, I will never forget the moment that Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s killer,” Weiss said in a press release from CBS News.

"I am eager to speak to her -- and thrilled to be doing so in front of a group of Americans who I know will elevate the conversation,” Weiss said.

Giving Erika Kirk a prime-time showcase on network TV will almost certainly draw the ire of critics who will accuse CBS of steering rightward in an effort to please President Trump.

Trump and the company fought bitterly for months after Trump sued CBS News and “60 Minutes” and threatened to pull the company’s broadcast licenses. 

The president knew Charlie Kirk well and he awarded him with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom last October that Erika Kirk accepted on her husband’s behalf at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.