CBS News is thrusting its new lesbian editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, into the spotlight with a televised town hall featuring Erika Kirk, the widow of recently assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The program, airing December 13 and first reported by The Guardian, will be recorded in New York and framed as a conversation about grief, faith, politics, and more. The broadcast is Weiss’s first major on-air appearance since taking over the newsroom this fall after Paramount Skydance acquired her outlet, The Free Press. Her appointment is historic; she is among the few out queer journalists to lead a major U.S. network newsroom, but also deeply polarizing within LGBTQ+ communities.
As The Advocate has noted, Weiss has built her reputation by criticizing woke politics, opposing gender-affirming care, and elevating voices that LGBTQ+ advocates say marginalize trans and nonbinary people. She rose to national prominence in 2020 after resigning from The New York Times with a letter alleging ideological conformity, later expanding The Free Press into a hub for so-called heterodox journalism. Featuring Kirk, now CEO of Turning Point USA, in Weiss’s first CBS broadcast underscores the ideological tensions surrounding her leadership, even as the network pursues an editorial reboot.
