What Can CBS News Reporters Do Under Bari Weiss?

Over the weekend, CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford set off a media firestorm for her network. 

On X, Crawford saw a video of what looked like a relatively young Michigan voter asking Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the state’s Democratic nominee for Senate, if he would denounce the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a question El-Sayed has been fielding more often, as Republicans have been (baselessly, so far) attempting to sink El-Sayed’s chances by trying to link him to terrorism, “Sharia law,” and the Sunni Islamist organization.

“Sure,” El-Sayed said. He followed up his disavowal with an impassioned argument for freedom of religion, the Constitution, and how assumptions that he is connected to some radical Islamist group were really rooted in him being Muslim. Simple enough, it would seem. 

But perhaps not for conservative activists — or for Crawford. The tense video exchange ended up blowing up on social media. Republicans quickly and aggressively called it a gotcha moment and said El-Sayed was spiteful and hostile in responding to Tommy. Former representative Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s rival, would go on to CNN’s State of the Union the next day and say El-Sayed hadn’t disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood and was just trying to “get around” having to denounce the group. Democrats, of course, hailed the exchange as El-Sayed toughly and effectively responding to a direct question meant to trip him up. Journalists, meanwhile, were quick to point out that this Tommy figure (last name Teepell) was no random concerned audience member but actually a young Republican operative whose father was reportedly pocketing $250,000 to work against the El-Sayed campaign.

And then Jan Crawford waded into the discourse. “Tommy, thank you,” the journalist wrote in a now-deleted post on X. “I had to watch this twice to catch Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond ‘yeah absolutely’ response. His subsequent uninterrupted three-minute diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self own most ppl only dream about triggering. Congrats.”

Yes, “Congrats.” Crawford’s startlingly partisan tweet quickly got plenty of heat from media observers (among others) before she took it down and replaced it with an apology. 

“Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall. I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize,” Crawford wrote in her follow-up. However, Crawford never addressed why her tweet violated standards and seemed to hope people would accept that her mistake was simply posting the video rather than adding her own biased commentary.

The whole episode had media and political watchers wondering if in these charged times, would this obvious mistake warrant some sort of punishment from her superiors — suspension, perhaps, or at least the kind of stern reprimand that CBS News’ London bureau leader gave to her staff for simply mentioning Gaza’s death toll in a story about October 7? One would assume so — but perhaps not under Bari Weiss’s CBS News.

“I cannot recollect a time in my 34 years at CBS News where somebody would feel comfortable saying that in a social media post,” Guy Campanile, the former managing editor of 60 Minutes, told me. “It’s stunning to me that somebody would post something like that.”

“I’m stunned because Jan is an excellent reporter,” he added, “and she should know better. I wonder why she felt she had the permission structure to do that.” 

Other newsroom leaders were similarly stunned by the incident. 

“Oh my god,” Dan Okrent, the inaugural public editor for the New York Times said when I read him the tweet on Monday. “It’s outrageous a correspondent for CBS would describe a candidate’s speech in that fashion.”

Crawford’s tweet went beyond an editorial employee merely analyzing a political moment, and fellow journalists saw it as a complete faceplant, the type of thing that usually triggers at least some sort of punishment. Like most news outlets, CBS gives editorial employees very clear guidelines about refraining from posting personal political opinions on social media. Usually such behavior would trigger swift action by any nonpartisan newsroom and possibly a reassessment of whether they can objectively cover their beat. In a somewhat similar case this past June, ABC News’ Terry Moran tweeted a jab at Trump aide Stephen Miller — and was promptly fired after kicking off his own media brouhaha.

Bari’s Blurred Lines

Yet multiple CBS insiders told me that under Weiss, Crawford’s behavior seemed more like an indicator of what’s now acceptable at the network.
“What is it in the culture of the place where there isn’t a gigantic pause before posting something like that?” Campanile said. “Is there something in the atmosphere that people feel comfortable doing that?”

After all, Weiss is a former opinion journalist who founded the plainly biased Free Press and who has made her views on the Middle East very clear despite her position as editor-in-chief of CBS News. Coverage of Israel and Gaza in particular has been an especially sensitive flashpoint since Weiss took over. In April the network’s London bureau chief, Claire Day, was ousted after arguments with Weiss over the network’s coverage of the region. Day was replaced by Shayndi Raice of The Wall Street Journal, who herself has been under scrutiny for her directives on coverage of Israel, including her aforementioned “magic number” comment.

“It has to be confusing for reporters as to what they can and cannot say on social media and in reports,” a former top CBS News executive tells me. “Is Jan Crawford meant to adhere to standards while the editor-in-chief consistently ignores them?” 

But as of today it’s not clear what, if any, kind of consequence Crawford would face. A spokesperson for CBS sent me Crawford’s apology tweet in response to questions. 

Former CBS employees point out that Crawford is no stranger to scrutiny over her reporting. They pointed to times where Crawford has offered commentary, internally and publicly, that was well outside the bounds news organizations want their reporters to make as neutral journalists. Media Matters criticized Crawford for her reporting on memos by now–Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, which the organization said distorted her positions on abortion and gay rights. Commentators have also argued that Crawford’s reporting, at times, has given a more positive portrayal of conservative members of the High Court. In response to Crawford arguing that corruption among the Supreme Court is a false narrative, Chris Geidner of Law Dork wrote her claims were “shockingly devoid of substance.”

Media experts outside the organization, though, have been interpreting the Crawford affair as a clear sign that when personal views like Crawford’s match Weiss’s, things can slide. 

“Sadly, anti-Muslim bigotry and pro-GOP cheerleading is not unusual for the new CBS,” Sam Youngman, a former White House correspondent for The Hill who is now an adjunct instructor at USC wrote in a Substack post he authored with Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko. “But this weekend’s developments are powerful reminders of what we are up against as we try to win the midterms, confront rampant corruption and fight back against surging bigotry.”

Crawford’s tweet also called attention to some of Weiss’s interests as editor-in-chief. Semafor reported Sunday night that Weiss has directed the network to devote “serious resources to finding a potential link” between El-Sayed and “the Islamist movement.” Weiss, Semafor also reported, has even had the CBS investigative team dive into El-Sayed’s background in search of a link between him and the Muslim Brotherhood. Generally, Weiss has been moved to direct the network to pursue stories based on what comes up on X or through conservative media, the Semafor report said. In that report, two CBS staffers said Weiss seemed to fixate on critical coverage of liberals but does not direct the network to give that same type of coverage to conservatives.

“Bari’s ideas routinely come from social-media influencers or from opposition research that’s been placed in conservative outlets, and those stories usually leave out important context and facts,” a CBS staffer told Semafor. 

Weiss was also reportedly closely involved in a clumsily produced and controversial CBS News article that sought to cast suspicions on El-Sayed’s past tweets in which he noted that the COVID-19 death toll in America had exceeded that of 9/11. The story itself and a tweet from CBS promoting it faced widespread criticism. That episode did not result in any large-scale course correction by the network. Similarly, there is little indication there will be one here. Crawford did take down her own tweet, though, and there’s no sign that Weiss or the network is moving to double down here.

The question now among those witnessing what’s happening at CBS News, whether from inside the building or out, is what kind of news reporting makes Bari Weiss upset and what doesn’t. “What has changed in the atmosphere of CBS News where people think, I work in a place where this is okay?” Campanile asked pointedly. “It wasn’t like that when I was there. No fucking way.”