What Bari Weiss May Inform Us About Paramount’s Politics — or Not

David Ellison retains saying he isn’t fascinated by politics. The brand new Paramount CEO/proprietor says it in interviews, to employees, to regulators.

However over the past yr, as Ellison maneuvered to purchase the corporate and since he acquired it, Paramount has made a collection of strikes that positive make it seem like he is fascinated by politics. And people politics seem like they’re on the precise facet of the spectrum.

Ellison has promised regulators, for example, that his firm will not have interaction in any form of DEI practices — practices that had turn out to be commonplace concern in company America earlier than the return of the Trump administration. Ellison additionally promised to put in an ombudsman to watch complaints about bias — and that ombudsman turned out to be somebody with conservative credentials.

Just a few weeks earlier than Ellison closed his deal to amass Paramount, the corporate introduced it was canceling “The Late Present with Stephen Colbert,” one of the crucial overtly anti-Trump reveals on late-night TV.

And now Paramount has acquired The Free Press, the media startup based by Bari Weiss, a former editor and author at The New York Instances. Weiss will now be editor in chief of Paramount’s CBS Information unit, reporting on to Ellison.

Weiss’ followers — and there are many them, together with Mathias Döpfner, who owns the corporate that owns Enterprise Insider — will typically describe her as a centrist who calls out extra on either side. Weiss likes to explain herself that means, too.

However The Free Press is not impartial. It was constructed as a counterweight to what Weiss describes as doctrinaire liberal groupthink in mainstream newsrooms — first at The New York Instances, which she left in 2020, and now throughout institution media extra broadly. In 2022, shortly after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Musk invited Weiss to root across the firm’s inside information so she might produce tales essential of the earlier administration’s woke regime.

This does not imply Ellison has turned Paramount, whose reps did not reply to remark for this story, into Fox Information.

Earlier than Ellison finalized his Paramount acquisition, he signed off on a $1.5 billion deal to lock down “South Park” — a franchise that has gleefully mocked Trump, and went out of its means to take action after the current payday.

And whereas numerous observers, together with Stephen Colbert, consider Colbert’s present was canceled to appease Trump, no smoking gun has emerged to show that declare. There’s additionally no proof of Ellison’s hand shaping the politics of every other Paramount output thus far.

Nonetheless. Even when the day-to-day programming hasn’t shifted, the indicators matter. There’s been chatter about whether or not Paramount overpaid by spending $150 million on The Free Press — a small, subscription-based startup — particularly because it’s slicing employees elsewhere. However that debate misses the purpose: This is not a monetary guess, it is a cultural one. Ellison is not shopping for income; he is shopping for alignment.

So what’s he aligning with? That is the exhausting half to parse.

Possibly Ellison, who beforehand supported Democrats — or his father, Larry Ellison, an open Trump supporter — genuinely believes the media is just too liberal and must be moved rightward. Possibly he is merely appeasing Trump and his allies, like FCC chair Brendan Carr, who had actual energy to gradual or cease his merger. Both clarification matches the information.

However that is precisely the issue: We won’t inform which one is true. And that uncertainty is what defines this second in American enterprise and media.