At a CBS News staff meeting in January, Gayle King had a message for colleagues leaking internal disagreements to the press. Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss responded with a joke: "I'm sure someone's livestreaming it right now, Gayle." The joke captured a serious predicament for Weiss. Six years after leaving The New York Times, where she accused colleagues of ideological intolerance, she was facing resistance from journalists over her own efforts to redefine political balance.
This time, however, she was in charge. The rebellion has generated headlines and bitter arguments over editorial independence. Yet CBS Evening News averaged roughly 4 million viewers during the 2025-26 television season, down only slightly from the previous year.
More recent quarterly figures showed a modest increase, although changes in Nielsen's measurement complicate the comparison. Those numbers obviously do not amount to a ringing endorsement of Weiss, especially since CBS remains in third place among the major U.S. network evening newscasts, trailing behind ABC and NBC. The network's younger audience has weakened as well.
The data, however, exposes the central tension in Weiss' overhaul: While CBS journalists are openly fighting Weiss' changes, there is little evidence that viewers are abandoning the network in protest. Turns out, the battle (and, to some, resistance) over centrism is only among journalists. When Weiss resigned from The New York Times in July 2020, she accused colleagues of bullying her for challenging prevailing political assumptions.
"Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery," she wrote in a public resignation letter. The Times disputed her characterization and defended its commitment to diverse viewpoints. Six years later, Weiss finds herself in a strangely familiar fight—this time from the editor's chair.
At CBS, she has sought to broaden the range of political perspectives represented in its journalism, encountering resistance from within the institution she is trying to change. At the London bureau, foreign editor Shayndi Raice reportedly warned that disobeying editors could constitute grounds for dismissal. Veteran broadcaster Trevor Phillips defended her approach.
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