Paramount to Buy TheFreePress, Bari Weiss to Join CBS

Paramount is preparing to shell out as much as $200 million for Bari Weiss’ buzzy media venture, The Free Press — and hand her the keys to help steer CBS News — in a move that’s rattling an already shaken news division still reeling from the $8 billion Skydance-Paramount mega-merger.

Weiss, the former New York Times opinion page editor who launched The Free Press in 2022, is reportedly in line for a senior editorial role at CBS News as part of a deal that would fold her outlet into the new Paramount, according to the Puck newsletter.

Paramount declined to comment, but Puck media reporter Dylan Byers pegged the potential purchase price between $100 million and $200 million, with sources saying the talks are in their final stages.

The deal comes on the heels of last month’s blockbuster merger between David Ellison’s Skydance Media and Paramount Global, which ended decades of Redstone family control and put CBS and CBS News firmly under Ellison’s watch.

The FCC signed off on the transaction after Ellison agreed to sweeping changes at CBS News, including installing an ombudsman to police bias, dismantling DEI programs and promising to elevate “viewpoint diversity.”

Those concessions have already rattled the newsroom. One CBS insider told Fox Business that the new ombudsman amounted to a “hall monitor,” while former anchors have publicly warned that CBS News’ tradition of independent reporting could be in jeopardy.

Now the prospect of Weiss — a sharp-tongued critic of progressive orthodoxy who quit the Times after blasting the paper’s “illiberal environment” — stepping into a leadership role has only heightened tensions, according to reports.

Weiss has carved out a reputation for challenging both the left and the right, building The Free Press into a high-profile, subscriber-driven platform that publishes essays, interviews and investigative work outside the traditional media lanes.

Her potential arrival at CBS News would mark her most prominent mainstream role since leaving the Times.

The timing is no accident. As part of the Skydance-Paramount merger, Ellison has been under pressure to prove he can modernize CBS News and reverse years of ratings decline.

His $8 billion takeover was billed as a bet on revitalizing Paramount’s content pipeline, but CBS News — long the crown jewel of American broadcast journalism — became the flashpoint in Washington during the regulatory review.

FCC officials grilled Ellison’s team over CBS’s coverage, ultimately conditioning approval on the creation of the ombudsman’s office and the elimination of DEI mandates.

The Paramount-Skydance merger was approved after Paramount agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump against CBS News over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris that he says was deceptively edited.

Paramount has not commented on the talks, and Weiss has kept quiet publicly.