Behind the Scenes of Bari Weiss’s Latest Pro-Israel Purge of CBS News
Plus, Politico’s owner tells staffers support Israel or leave. And, is Disney finally taking a stand against Trump amid Kimmelgate 2.0?
Good evening, and welcome to this week’s ‘Ragebait.’
Justin Baragona here, bringing you the latest media dispatches from the right-wing industrial outrage complex and Bari World. In tonight’s edition, we take a behind-the-scenes look at how Bari Weiss blew up CBS News’ international news coverage. Plus, another prominent news outlet is telling its staffers to love Israel or leave. Also, is Disney showing some backbone during Kimmelgate 2.0, and where does Trump’s America rank in terms of press freedom?
On top of that, if you haven’t already, please check out my deep-dive profile on the face of Bari’s CBS – Tony Dokoupil. I spoke to a lot of people for it!
Blindsided by Bari
Earlier this week, CBS News staffers were shocked to learn that well-respected London bureau chief Claire Day – who has spent nearly 25 years with the network – was leaving the company at the end of the month amid a broad editorial restructuring of CBS’s international coverage.
While network president Tom Cibrowski claimed in a memo to staff that Day’s departure had been a mutual decision, both the New York Post and Status quickly reported that she had effectively been “ousted” from her role following simmering tensions with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss over the bureau’s Middle East coverage.
The Post, specifically, noted that an unnamed freelance cameraman and editor had accused Day of running the bureau like a “Hamas cell,” while Status reported that Weiss – a self-avowed “Zionist fanatic” – at one point griped that London was so biased against Israel that “they might as well be Hamas.”
Speaking to several CBS sources, I’ve since learned that Weiss may have gained some of her perception about Day’s supposed anti-Israel bias from her conversations with Cameron Stewart, a freelance cameraman who has been working out of CBS News’ London bureau since late 2019.
According to three sources, since Stewart first drew Weiss’s attention last fall, he has repeatedly boasted that he has a “direct line” to the CBS News chief and has claimed to speak to her regularly.
In the end, before emotionally addressing her pending departure with the bureau’s staff on Monday, Day asked Stewart to leave the room. “It was very awkward,” one staffer who was in attendance told Zeteo. Additionally, some staffers believe that Stewart may have hoped to score a full-time staff position in the United States by ingratiating himself with Weiss.
Stewart has not responded to requests for comment.
Multiple CBS News staffers noted that before her departure, Day regularly pushed back against certain narratives and claims made in the daily editorial calls. These sources added that it was generally in a respectful manner, but could have also led to increased friction with Weiss and her deputies.
Another source of tension in recent weeks was the London bureau’s plan to send a foreign correspondent to report from within Iran at the start of the war after obtaining a visa to travel inside the Islamic Republic. As Status first reported, Weiss ultimately nixed the plan, citing security and safety concerns.
Weiss, who has openly cheered Donald Trump’s illegal war, was also concerned about any backlash CBS would receive for a trip that required Iranian government permission, especially since the White House had blasted CNN for doing the same thing and accused the cable network of peddling pro-Iran propaganda.
Though Weiss had likely formulated her opinion on Day and the London bureau as being overly sympathetic to Palestine and biased against Israel early on, she also never reached out directly to Day to discuss any of this, two sources told me.
While Weiss may have been privately planning to replace Day for months, two sources said that Day was still left “blindsided” when she was informed two weeks ago that she was being fired and replaced by Shayndi Raice, a deputy Middle East bureau chief from the Wall Street Journal.
The problem for CBS, however, was that Raice was brought on for a new role of foreign editor – a position that had not been publicly posted. Weiss, using this new position as the basis to remove Day as bureau chief, apparently violated UK employment law for wrongful dismissal, particularly since Day wasn’t being fired for cause.
Ultimately, two sources said, Day quickly reached a severance agreement with the network’s lawyers before Monday’s memo from Cibrowski stating that Day and CBS had “mutually agreed” that the London bureau chief “will leave” the company on May 1.
Day declined to comment.
Raice, who previously worked with Weiss’s handpicked managing editor Charles Forelle, was officially announced by Weiss as the network’s new foreign editor on Wednesday. “All our international coverage will be led by the foreign editor,” Weiss wrote in a memo to staff. “She’ll set priorities, deploy producers and correspondents, and bring together all the exceptional work our overseas teams do.”
Much like many of the folks Weiss has recently hired or promoted, Raice’s stance on Israel and Gaza largely aligns with that of the CBS News chief. A graduate of Yeshiva University who is married to a rabbi who is an associate professor of Jewish studies, Raice has spent the past few years in Israel for the Journal – and has taken heat for the paper’s reporting on the war between Israel and Hamas, particularly a disputed report about UNRWA workers’ alleged ties to Hamas.
“At various points since Oct. 7, there have been internal tensions and friction within the Journal over the paper’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza,” Semafor reported in 2024, adding: “Reporters covering Gaza in the Middle East bureau were concerned about deputy Middle East bureau chief Shayndi Raice’s leadership and privately discussed asking editors to remove her from leading coverage.”
CBS staffers I spoke to pointed out that, much like Weiss before she was hired by David Ellison to run the Tiffany Network, Raice has no experience in broadcast television news. “We all know why Shayndi Raice has that job,” one senior staffer told me. “It’s because she’s a Zionist.”
A representative for CBS News did not respond to a request for comment.
Politico’s Boss Tells Staff That Loving Israel Is ‘Essential’
Speaking of media bosses pushing their overt pro-Israel stance onto their employees, Mathias Döpfner – CEO of Politico’s parent company Axel Springer – rejected the publication’s staffers’ warning that his “repeated use of POLITICO to promote his political agenda” risked “taking on the appearance of editorial slant.”
During a Monday meeting with staff in response to their letter expressing concern that he was “undermining” their reputation with his opinion pieces for the outlet, Döpfner doubled down that the company’s core values include “support for Israel’s right to exist.” And if staffers disagreed with these “essentials,” according to Jewish Insider’s recording of the call, they should quit.
“Nobody should work for Axel Springer despite the essentials or in disagreement with one of the essentials,” Döpfner declared, with Politico executives expressing “alignment” with him. “If the essentials are not attractive, if the essentials are not a magnet, if the essentials are not a reason why to work for this company, I can only recommend to work for other companies.”
The Mouse That Roared
Is Disney, which kowtowed to Trump as he returned to the White House and further capitulated to him in the ensuing months, finally taking a stand against the president’s authoritarian bullying of the media?
Amid Team Trump’s bad-faith campaign to once again cancel Jimmy Kimmel, this time ludicrously claiming the anti-MAGA comic called for the president’s assassination with an age-related joke two days prior to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner attack, the Mouse House decided to do something it hadn’t done before: fight back.
With the president’s handpicked FCC chairman (and media attack dog) Brendan Carr suddenly challenging ABC’s broadcast licenses as an obvious retaliatory action to the latest Kimmelgate ginned up by MAGA, Disney – the parent company of ABC – told the FCC they’d see them in court. (The FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, meanwhile, said the commission was “clearly not behaving independently” and “doing the bidding of the White House.”)
“We have received the Federal Communications Commission’s order initiating an accelerated review of the licenses held by ABC’s owned television stations,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
“ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information, and public‑interest programming,” the spokesperson added. “We are confident that the record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment, and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels. Our focus remains, as always, on serving viewers in the local communities where our stations operate.”
It should be noted that Disney named Josh D’Amaro its new CEO just a few weeks ago. With this being his first Trump test, D’Amaro is likely looking back at the damage caused to the company’s brand when it suspended Kimmel in September during the MAGA ragefest over comments the late-night comic made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
The backlash over Kimmel being pulled from the air amid government pressure – Carr had threatened to take action against the network prior to the “indefinite” suspension – made the comedian a free speech hero, leading to a ratings surge when ABC reversed course and brought him back on the air.
Of course, what makes D’Amaro’s decision-making easier this time around is that not only have other institutions and media companies prevailed in court against the administration’s authoritarian push against the press, but Trump is also historically unpopular right now.
And though much of MAGA media and Trump loyalists are parroting the president’s call for ABC to fire Kimmel while cheering on the FCC’s action, some conservatives have criticized the administration’s heavy-handed approach. Even the right-wing provocateurs who are trying to stoke outrage over Kimmel’s joke are finding that some of their viewers aren’t buying what they’re selling.
“It is not government’s job to censor speech, and I do not believe the FCC should operate as the speech police,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) fumed, while far-right pundit Glenn Beck tweeted that “the government should stay completely out of this controversy.”
‘Land of the Not-So-Free Press’
Ahead of Reporters Without Borders’ release of its 2026 World Press Freedom Index tomorrow, the organization unveiled a billboard on the highway between Mar-a-Lago and the West Palm Beach airport, hinting at its conclusions.
“Land of the not-so-free press anymore,” the sign reads, showing journalists covering a protest getting bombarded with tear gas.
In last year’s index, which covered the calendar year 2024, the United States was ranked 57th in press freedom, and its score – which takes into account abuses against journalists and the responses of press freedom specialists – found the US was in a “problematic” state.
With this year’s report being the first to account for Trump’s war against the press, which has seen him sue multiple news outlets, defund PBS and NPR, limit the Associated Press’s access to the White House, sideline the Pentagon press corps, and try to dismantle Voice of America, I asked Clayton Weimers – Reporters Without Borders North American director – what we should expect in tomorrow’s release.
“I think anyone who’s been paying attention to the press for freedom space for the past year is not going to be surprised by the results of the index when it comes to the United States, given Donald Trump’s continued war on press freedom,” he flatly declared.