Bari Weiss has been largely out of sight inside CBS News, where she has spent much of the past two weeks holed up in a secured sixth-floor suite at the Manhattan headquarters while David Ellison personally moves to calm rattled “60 Minutes” staffers. The unusual setup has left Weiss physically separated from most of the newsroom even as the upheaval around her continues to spread.
Weiss has mostly bunkered down with a small circle of lieutenants, including deputies Adam Rubenstein and Charles Forelle, inside a suite that is locked to most CBS News personnel and can be entered only with special key card access. Tom Cibrowski was notably absent, with his office in another part of the building, underscoring how far the operation has been pulled away from the rest of the news division.
The isolation is unfolding amid unprecedented turmoil at CBS News over the last two weeks, driven by Weiss’ overhaul of “60 Minutes.” Paramount brass is also becoming more involved in trying to clean up the situation, a sign that the concerns inside the company have climbed high enough to draw in the top level of ownership.
The arrangement is highly unusual for a news chief and recalls the way boss Chris Licht moved his office off the newsroom floor and into a separate upstairs corridor before he was later ousted by Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav. At CBS News, though, the comparison only goes so far: Weiss remains in place, Ellison is still personally engaged, and the newsroom is now waiting to see whether that intervention brings a reset or only confirms how deep the divide has become.
