MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Hit With Furious Staff Backlash

Key Points:

• CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss faced internal backlash after pushing a story linking Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, focusing on El-Sayed’s deleted social media posts about the tragedy.
• Staffers criticized the story as “shameful” and racially motivated, arguing that Weiss’s intervention and the headline change damaged the network’s credibility and unfairly targeted El-Sayed, who is Muslim.
• El-Sayed had previously compared COVID-19 deaths to 9/11 and called for a public health response akin to the post-9/11 war on terror, but deleted those posts to avoid misinterpretation ahead of his campaign.
• CBS sources defended the story, noting that reporting on politicians’ deleted posts is common practice and that El-Sayed later provided a comprehensive on-camera response to the coverage.
• Critics argue that the story’s framing was influenced by El-Sayed’s religion and that similar scrutiny would not have been applied if he were not Muslim, especially since he did not endorse extremist views related to 9/11.