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Zvika Klein, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, declared in an article this week that newly-installed CBS News chief Bari Weiss was “doing more for Israel than most of us.”
In an op-ed titled, “Bari Weiss and the Power Shift Inside CBS News,” Klein praised Weiss as “one of the bravest journalists out there” who is “actually making a change instead of just talking about it.”
Klein also praised Weiss’ “willingness to blow up conventions and try something different,” before championing the CBS News chief as “an American Jew and an American Zionist who’s doing more for Israel than most of us.”
The Jerusalem Post editor commended Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison – a reported close associate of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – for putting Weiss in charge of CBS News, acknowledging that “media owners shape the prism through which you will be consuming your news.”
“They influence the culture, the hiring, the risk tolerance, what stories get pursued, and which ones get killed. Everyone knows this,” he wrote. “Nobody likes admitting it because it punctures the myth of editorial independence.”
Addressing the staff revolts at CBS News over Weiss’s leadership, Klein observed, “They did revolt. Weiss is still there. That tells you who has power.”
“Study what Weiss did. Then go do your own version of it,” he concluded.
Zeteo editor-in-chief and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan reacted on social media, “Pretty sure if anyone in the US said this they’d be accused of antisemitism. But it’s the Jerusalem Post in Israel saying it.”
Weiss was installed as editor-in-chief of CBS News last year after the Trump administration approved the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media, to be run by Ellison as Paramount Skydance. Shortly after the merger, Ellison purchased Weiss’s company The Free Press for $150 million.