Jacob Nelson on the CBS News Shake-Up: Why a New Editor Might Not Change Public Perception
When reports first surfaced that Paramount Global CEO David Ellison was considering acquiring the online media outlet The Free Press and naming its founder Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News, many wondered how such a shift might transform one of America’s most established news networks.
In an opinion piece for The Conversation, Associate Professor Jacob Nelson offers a deeper look at what such leadership changes might mean for CBS News and, perhaps more importantly, what they might not mean for the network’s audience.
A Change in Vision—But Not in Trust
Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor who left the paper in 2020 citing a culture resistant to “intellectual curiosity,” founded The Free Press as an alternative to traditional journalism. The outlet gained attention for its critiques of legacy media and its challenges to mainstream narratives. If Weiss brings that same editorial vision to CBS, Nelson writes the network’s journalism “would look radically different than it does now.”
Yet, according to Nelson, even a dramatic overhaul may not move the needle on public trust. “Even if Weiss dramatically changes people’s experience watching CBS News, it is unlikely those changes will affect how the public feels about CBS News,” he writes.
That’s because, as Dr. Nelson’s research shows, people’s views of journalism are less about individual reporters or organizations and more about skepticism towards the profession. “It’s profits over journalism and over truth,” one interviewee told him—a sentiment that Nelson has heard in his studies with University of Oregon Professor Seth Lewis. Their work, soon to be published by MIT Press, examines how American’s distrust of journalism stems from the belief that the news industry is driven by corporate interests rather than civic ones.
Profit Over Politics
Contrary to the common assumption that media trust falls along partisan lines, Nelson argues that the public’s disillusionment is rooted in concerns about economic—rather than political—biases. “People are less likely to see the shift [at CBS News] as a sign that those running CBS News now believe what they believe,” he explains. “Viewers are more likely to see it as a sign that the wealthy few who run CBS News are simply charting a new path toward monetizing the audience’s attention.”
No matter who sits in the editor’s chair, audiences may continue to view the network through the same skeptical lens—one focused on the corporate faces behind the newsroom rather than the journalism produced within it.
A Follow-Up in the Washington Post
Shortly after The Conversation article was published, the speculation became reality: Bari Weiss was officially named editor in chief of CBS News. In a Washington Post piece announcing her appointment, Nelson was quoted, offering a measured forecast.
“My hunch is that there will be a rightward shift ideologically in what CBS News is focused on, in terms of the political reporting,” he said. “So rather than CBS being representative of legacy news media, it will be more representative of exactly the type of antagonistic approach to traditional media that The Free Press has come to emblemize.”
“So even if Bari Weiss totally reinvents CBS News,” he told the Post, “I’m not convinced that’s going to do anything to change how people view CBS News.”
Understanding a Stubborn Public
Nelson’s work reminds us that in an area of fractured audiences and declining trust, changing the face of a newsroom may be easier than changing the minds of its viewers. As he and Lewis have found, people’s perceptions of journalists are remarkably resilient, shaped less by who delivers the news than by what they believe about the institutions that produce it.