• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 10 hours ago

The announcements are coming out fast and furious from CBS News as mover-and-shaker Bari Weiss pursues her mission to bring fair and balanced coverage of hot-button issues to a network that some have accused of liberal bias.

Emboldened by the CBS News special “Town Hall With Erika Kirk,” in which Weiss starred as moderator and host, she is now using the show as a launchpad for even more town halls.

Weiss, the internet firebrand who Paramount CEO David Ellison hired to “blow things up” at CBS News, has even created a title for her upcoming town halls -- “Things That Matter.”

These “things that matter” include subjects such as immigration, capitalism, public health, criminal justice, foreign policy, artificial intelligence and the state of politics, according to a press release last week.

What about just enjoying life and having fun? The TV Blog believes these things matter just as much as those matters.

“The debates [on the various topics listed above] echo the country’s 250th anniversary, showing how the power of America’s earliest principles -- civil, substantive discussion free of rancor -- have immense value today,” says the CBS press release.

Whoa. Hold on there.

When exactly in the history of America was discourse “free of rancor”? Certainly not in the lead-up to the revolution and its aftermath. 

On the contrary, this country is the rancor capital of the world and has been since the beginning of its creation, if not before it. 

In the view of the TV Blog, rancor is one of America’s most endearing qualities. Without it, the United States as we know it would be unrecognizable.

The “Things That Matter” series -- whose tagline is “The people, conversations, and debates shaping America” -- is the first joint venture of CBS News and The Free Press, the political commentary website founded by Weiss that Ellison bought for $150 million just before installing Weiss as editor-in-chief at CBS News.

Weiss’s first such town hall show aired on Saturday, December 13, with guest Erika Kirk, widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and now chairman and CEO of the organization her husband founded, Turning Point USA.

CBS says live viewing of the show amounted to a total audience of 1.9 million with a tally of 265,000 in the demo, 25-54. 

On social media, however, the network claims the show was the most-watched interview in the history of CBS News.

“Things That Matter” will not only be made up of town hall-style conversations but also shows styled as debates. 

Upcoming town-hall guests include Vice President J.D. Vance and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Upcoming debate topics now in development include “Gen Z and the American Dream,” “God and Meaning” and “The Sexual Revolution.”

Airdates for these were not provided. Nor could it be learned whether Weiss, 41 (pictured above in the first “Town Hall” with Erika Kirk), would once again cast herself as moderator and star of all of these town halls and debates.

The locations for these exercises in civil, un-rancorous discourse were not given either in the CBS press release. It said only that they would be “held across the country.”

In fact, going out on the road to look for America is emerging as a guiding principle in the Bari Weiss era of CBS News.

Following up on the announcement earlier this month that newly appointed “Evening News” anchor would be going on the road for his first month on the job, a new press release came last week providing the details of the intrepid anchorman’s itinerary.

This January field trip will take him to 10 cities in 10 days -- Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

This “Live in America” series of urban whistlestops will have Dokoupil “sharing the most urgent, important stories with Americans, rather than talking to them [italics theirs],” the press release said.