Bari Weiss “meddled” in an Israel-related story on a new front at CBS News: CBS Sunday Morning.
The MAGA-curious editor-in-chief involved herself in an April 5 story about Israeli archeological digs in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory that Israel has been occupying for 69 years, Zeteo reported on Wednesday. Four sources told the outlet that Weiss made edits and script changes shortly before the report went to air.
“Oh yeah, she definitely meddled,” a senior CBS News staffer said of the anti-woke opinion journalist, who had no prior television broadcasting experience before being named head of the newsroom.
A network insider added that Weiss, who has described herself as a “Zionist fanatic,” had “never jumped in editorially on a Sunday Morning story until this one.”
The Sunday Morning report had been in the works before Weiss took over as editor-in-chief last October.
A CBS reporter weighed in that “this piece is the first time she’s pulled like a CECOT on the show,” referring to Weiss’ last-minute delay of a 60 Minutes report on the notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent deportees.
The Daily Beast has contacted representatives for CBS News and Weiss for comment.
A network spokesperson told Zeteo: “We aim to inform audiences, not satisfy story subjects. That’s what this piece did. We encourage everyone to watch it and judge for themselves.”
Sunday Morning generally covers more human-interest stories than political ones, unlike 60 Minutes, where Weiss has been wielding editorial influence, reportedly to the concern of departing correspondent Anderson Cooper.
Weiss, 42, has also been overhauling CBS Evening News, now anchored by Tony Dokoupil, to make it more appealing to conservative audiences. CBS staffers have bristled at the changes, and ratings have slipped dramatically.
Adding to the drama about the Sunday Morning story, titled “How archaeology turns political in the West Bank,” is how one interviewee confronted a CBS News producer about how he was portrayed in the finished product.
“I am deeply troubled by my portrayal and the omission of key facts in the segment in which I participated in good faith,” Zaid Azhari, a cultural heritage researcher, wrote to CBS News producer Sari Aviv, Zeteo reports. His interview, he claimed, was “selectively edited to falsely portray [him] as someone who erases Jewish history.”
Azhari added that his interview contained “the same historically grounded narrative we share with all visitors, yet the final edit suggests otherwise.”
Azhari leads the “Save Sebastia Campaign,” which is a self-described effort “to protect the archaeological site of Sebastia from an Israeli scheme aiming to seize vast areas under the pretext of ‘protecting the heritage.’”
CBS correspondent Seth Doane interviewed Azhari and Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, the far-right politician who in 2023 suggested that Israel use nuclear weapons in the Gaza Strip.
“This is exactly the mess they wanted from the beginning. Okay, I am from Sebastia. I am an activist, working on cultural heritage, but I am not a historical specialist,” Azhari told Zeteo.
“I am not an archaeologist. I am not someone who studied history. I am just like representing the local community of Sebastia, representing the organization that is working to develop tourism and cultural heritage,” he went on. “That’s my point. I talked about it from that way. But when you are hosting six Israelis, you need to host at least one Palestinian archeologist or the Ministry of Tourism, anyone of these people who can really tell the Palestinian opinion, or the Palestinian story about it.”
