‘Not puff pieces and kid gloves’: why Bari Weiss is hiring British journalists at CBS News

In the six years since she very publicly resigned from the New York Times, and in her tumultuous eight months as editor-in-chief of one of the US’s most prestigious television networks, Bari Weiss has become renowned as a media disruptor and challenger of what she regards as an overly “woke” journalistic consensus.As Weiss continues to face bitter internal and external opposition to her leadership of CBS News, she has been turning to figures from UK journalism in her attempts to tackle what she sees as US newsroom “groupthink”.Earlier this month, the Guardian reported that Weiss’s CBS News was hiring Trevor Phillips, an influential British broadcaster who has held prominent public positions, as a senior global affairs correspondent. She also recently hired Josh Boswell, a British investigative reporter, from the Daily Mail.Soon after her appointment of Phillips at CBS, it was announced that the British conservative writer Douglas Murray would be writing a regular weekly column for the Free Press, the “anti-woke” outlet Weiss set up after her New York Times exit.Weiss has also met with Justin Webb, a presenter on the BBC’s lead news radio show, Today, though it is understood the pair did not discuss a specific position at CBS.Weiss’s senior executives at CBS News are understood to have reached out to other prominent UK journalists. A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment when asked about Weiss’s interest in British journalists.According to several figures familiar with her thinking, however, the hires are no coincidence. “She’s been looking at various Brits that might add a bit of opinion/attitude diversity to US media, instead of the dominant, predictable Columbia Journalism School uniformity. Not a bad idea,” said Andrew Neil, the former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, who supported her hiring of Phillips.Trevor Phillips has been hired as a senior global affairs correspondent. Photograph: David Hartley/Rex/ShutterstockAnother acquaintance said: “She has very good UK connections … She knows the UK very well. She’s here pretty often.”One of Weiss’ key deputies, Charles Forelle, the CBS News managing editor, also has experience working in the UK and is thought to have aided the process.A CBS News source, describing Weiss’s interest in British journalists, said: “They do the kind of things that Bari is looking for; it’s not puff pieces and kid gloves.”Several allies said she had developed a network of what she regards as like-minded UK thinkers who she believes reject an overly woke, liberal consensus on topics such as Israel and trans issues.Last summer, she held a party at the Groucho Club, a familiar media industry haunt in London’s West End. There, she laid on drinks and canapés and mixed with a crowd described as “part of the heterodox world” – in other words, figures who push back at what they see as a woke consensus.“She has always been great at having contacts,” said one invitee. “In the US, the political divides between left and right are very black and white in the media. Here, things are a bit more grey, as is the case with Trevor and Justin.”The Today presenter Justin Webb has met with Weiss. Photograph: SHP/AlamyWeiss has also made close British friends in the media in recent years, while a Briton is the deputy editor at the Free Press – Oliver Wiseman, formerly of the Spectator, the conservative British magazine.Sources said she was close to figures including Murray and Neil Blair, JK Rowling’s agent. The Free Press published an influential podcast called The Witch Trials of JK Rowling in 2023.Michael Gove, the former Conservative cabinet minister and current editor of the Spectator, is said to be among her acquaintances, as is the current Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch.The loose network also includes Konstantin Kisin, a libertarian podcaster who argued that the former prime minister Rishi Sunak was not English owing to his “brown Hindu” background.Asked about why she was recruiting British journalists, one ally also pointed out they were generally cheaper than their US counterparts.Announcing the appointment of Phillips, who had anchored the flagship political show for Sky News, Weiss said his career had been “a masterclass in seeing beyond groupthink”.Phillips was previously suspended from the Labour party over alleged Islamophobia, once commenting that UK Muslims were “a nation within a nation”. He was later readmitted.Webb is bound by the BBC’s impartiality rules, though he writes a column for Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper the Times. In 2024 a complaint against him was partially upheld after he used the phrase “trans women, in other words males” when discussing a story. The corporation’s complaints unit concluded that it “gave the impression of endorsing one viewpoint in a highly controversial area”.The appointment of Phillips and some of Weiss’s other UK hires have raised questions about the editorial direction she is taking the network in.A CBS News staffer who was not authorised to comment said: “If her goal is to push CBS News to the right, including in global coverage, then these steps make sense, because in no other universe would they.”