A focus on wellness, nutrition, longevity and cosmology, mixed with more than a sprinkling of conservative ideology, appears to represent Bari Weiss’s vision to revitalize CBS News, and regain the trust of the network’s lost viewers and employees.
Editor-in-chief Weiss on Tuesday unveiled a curious list of 19 individuals – including podcasters, influencers, restaurateurs, an astrophysicist and a number of other opinionated writers – who will be paid contributors offering their wealth of wisdom and insight that will help CBS become, in her words, “fit for purpose in the 21st century”.
It is unclear in which context, or how often, any of them will appear. But in seeking to carve out a new direction for the troubled network, Weiss, alternately described by observers as a “millennial media maven” or a prolific “hawker of rightwing bile”, has assembled an extraordinary and eye-opening cast.
The network’s takeover by David Ellison, a billionaire ally of Donald Trump, and the appointment of Weiss, raised fears that CBS News could pander to the administration. Here is a look at some of the new contributors Weiss has recruited.
Elliot Ackerman
A former US marine and Purple Heart turned bestselling New York Times author, Ackerman’s military-themed novels reflect his combat service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He has called for bringing back the US military draft and has described Donald Trump, a five-time draft dodger who slurred troops of Nato allies, as a “combat leader” who “will figure out how to bring the country together”.
Peter Attia
Depending who you talk to, Attia is variously “the internet’s favorite doctor”, with a loyal podcast following of millions, or a wellness grifter whose “expertise” in longevity stems from only rudimentary medical training, and is offered to premium members for $19 a month.
The Canadian expounded on his anti-ageing strategies, and buzzwords, in a 2023 Guardian interview on the publication of his bestselling book Outlive.
“Longevity is such a bastardized term. It sort of smells of snake oil and elixirs and, you know, false promises. What I don’t think gets enough attention is health span,” he said.
Clare de Boer
Weiss is taking a deep stride into the “lifestyle space” with de Boer, a seemingly apolitical chef, restaurant owner and, with her husband Luke Sherwin, founder of a company selling hand-crafted classic furniture they bill as “a love letter to the American home”.
De Boer, born in Britain, is the “ultimate multitasker”, according to the Albany Times Union. She owns three restaurants, writes for the New York Times and Vogue, has a thriving recipe-based Substack, is a part-time fashion model, and parents four sons under six.
Niall Ferguson
During a lengthy career as a firebrand conservative political commentator and historian, Glasgow-born Ferguson has railed against “wokeism” in higher education, and argued that US military might deters crimes against humanity.
In 2018, he resigned from a free speech program at Stanford University after leaked emails revealed that he urged Republican students to conduct “opposition research” on a student with progressive views.
Andrew Huberman
A “wellness bro” and neuroscientist with a YouTube channel and podcast followed by more than 13 million people, Huberman extols the benefits of dietary supplements sold through partner companies on his website.
But critics say that many of his theories are pseudoscience and that the jovial, carefully crafted “masculine minimalism” of his podcasts hides a darker personal background, brought to the fore by a viral 2024 New York magazine profile that alleged multiple infidelities and narcissism.
Coleman Hughes
A “young, Black conservative” with a YouTube following of almost a quarter-million, Hughes, 29, opposes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and has spoken out against reparations for slavery.
His essay casting doubt on some of the key established facts of George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis by the police officer Derek Chauvin appeared on Weiss’s new media Free Press platform in 2024.
Mark Hyman
A decades-long friend and confidant of Robert F Kennedy Jr, Hyman – who built a lucrative wellness empire built on “functional medicine” – shares the health secretary’s promotion of alternative practices and skepticism of vaccines, certain of which he believes are linked to autism, a long-debunked theory.
According to the New York Times, Hyman’s combined businesses, including a podcast, media appearances, numerous books and an online store, brought in $28.8m in revenue in 2023, and his supplement company has 300,000 customers.
Janna Levin
A theoretical cosmologist and astrophysicist, Levin explores many of the mysteries of the universe in her avant garde Higher Dimensions Substack. A September post focuses on “the delicate balance of hot bodies that keeps us alive” and offers what some see as a curious explanation for the climate emergency, although Levin is a vocal advocate for climate science.
“Our current climate crisis is caused by an unstable interplay of hot bodies, each a vibrating quantum system radiating beautifully at a peak color, as though emanating an aura,” she wrote in the essay, which she described as a “meditation on a transcendent, universal law of physics that connects us, a warming planet, and the universe”.
Reihan Salam
As president of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative thinktank, he wrote an obsequious January 2025 analysis for the Economist arguing that the second Trump administration would be considerably more “pragmatic” than the first and that it would take “a more selective approach to immigration”, an assertion shattered by recent events in Minneapolis and elsewhere.
He is another author previously published on Weiss’s Free Press, penning a disparaging essay describing New York’s new democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, as a “bourgeois bohemian failson”.
