Who is Bari Weiss? CBS News' new editor-in-chief is a vocal critic of legacy media

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Paramount announced Monday that it is acquiring The Free Press — a provocative news site known for criticizing mainstream media and left-leaning "woke" culture — and installing the publication's co-founder, Bari Weiss, as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News.

"As of today, I am editor-in-chief of CBS News, working with new colleagues on the programs that have impacted American culture for generations — shows like 60 Minutes and Sunday Morning — and shaping how millions of Americans read, listen, watch, and, most importantly, understand the news in the 21st century," Weiss wrote in a Monday letter to readers.

It's a significant step in the meteoric rise of the 41-year-old journalist and entrepreneur, who spent years as an op-ed editor at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times before her emphatic disavowal of traditional media organizations.

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Weiss left the Times in 2020 after many in the newsroom expressed outrage over its publication of a controversial op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, in which he called for a military response to protests over George Floyd's murder. In a lengthy resignation letter, Weiss accused her colleagues of harassment and argued that the Times was too influenced by its left-leaning critics online.

Weiss, along with her sister Suzy Weiss and her spouse Nellie Bowles, started The Free Press as a newsletter (originally titled Common Sense) the following year, calling it a "new media company … built on the ideals that once were the bedrock of great