Outrage is growing inside the newsroom at CBS after Bari Weiss reportedly put her fingerprints all over a story about Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, according to staffers who spoke to Jim Acosta.
The network is weathering a barrage of outside criticism over an article entitled “Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks” — a blatant political attack that many correctly saw as Islamophobic.
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The headline and the network’s tweet drew searing condemnation from prominent media and political figures.
Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter broke the scoop that Weiss was very hands-on with this story:
To most people, El-Sayed’s social media posts were likely innocuous. In fact, top politicians, including then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and mainstream news organizations, including CBS News itself, had pointed out at the time that the pandemic was killing more Americans than 9/11. But in Weiss’ eyes, the news organization had apparently uncovered a scandal worthy of attention from a national news outlet.
Indeed, Status has learned that Weiss praised the story during the network’s daily editorial meeting Monday, signaling her support for the piece to the entire network. In fact, I’m told that Weiss even personally directed that the headline be tweaked to specifically mention that El-Sayed had deleted tweets referencing the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Insiders who spoke to Jim Acosta paint a picture of a growing revolt.
