Bari Weiss ‘Personally Directed’ Controversial Headline in Abdul El-Sayed Article to Mention 9/11: Report

AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss “personally directed” the September 11, 2001 terror attacks to be included in a headline for a controversial article about Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat, Oliver Darcy reported in his Status newsletter Monday.

The article in question, titled “Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks,” was written by Zak Hudak and was published on the CBS News website Monday morning.

In the article, Hudak reported on several now-deleted tweets in which El-Sayed compared the growing death toll from Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic to the nearly 3,000 people who were killed on 9/11 and called for the U.S. to fight “a war for public health & against poverty” as it had the War on Terror, urging that “We could save lives rather than take them.” The article also mentioned how El-Sayed had campaigned with Hasan Piker, a progressive streamer who said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11.” Piker later issued a retraction, and El-Sayed has explicitly rejected that comment as well.

The article, its headline, and the overall framing of the reporting drew many outraged responses, including accusations of Islamophobia and racism.

Weiss was a key driving force in the shaping of Hudak’s article, reported Darcy.

El-Sayed’s posts were viewed as “likely innocuous,” wrote Darcy, noting how “top politicians, including then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and mainstream news organizations, including CBS News itself, had pointed out at the time that the pandemic was killing more Americans than 9/11.”

But for Weiss, this was a “scandal worthy of attention from a national news outlet,” Darcy added.

According to the Status report, Weiss “praised” Hudak’s story during CBS News’ daily morning editorial meeting, “signaling her support for the piece to the entire network,” and “even personally directed that the headline be tweaked to specifically mention that El-Sayed had deleted tweets referencing the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

Darcy cited multiple anonymous sources within CBS News who expressed that Hudak’s report “was not received so well,” with staffers “view[ing] the story with disdain, believing it served as yet another blemish calling into question the organization’s objectivity under new ownership.”

Senior CBS News staff complained about the story to the standards department, but that came to naught “given Weiss’ enthusiasm for the story,” wrote Darcy.

“They took a small nugget of news, forced into something much larger, and messed up,” one CBS News employee told Status.

Another source, identified as a “former senior CBS News staffer who remains in touch with former colleague” offered a blunter critique, blasting Hudak’s article as “shameful,” adding, “The racism is overt.”

“CBS News took those old posts, stressed that El-Sayed had deleted them (even though his campaign had previously said he deleted all posts prior to 2023, not just these ones), and framed them around the upcoming anniversary of 9/11,” wrote Darcy. “The obvious implication was that there was something sinister about the manner in which the prominent Muslim candidate invoked 9/11, even though his posts themselves were mundane.”

Weiss’ tenure leading CBS News has been rocky, including a bumpy and low-rated start for Tony Dokoupil to anchor CBS Evening News, complaints that she has wielded a heavy thumb on the scale of the show’s journalism, and Anderson Cooper rejecting an offer to take the evening anchor gig and even declining to renew his contract. 60 Minutes has faced ongoing upheaval amid staff resignations, accusations that Weiss has meddled in stories, and the firing of veteran anchor Scott Pelley.

This latest incident amplified the concerns CBS News staffers have been carrying about the direction in which Weiss is steering the network, Darcy reported.

“After all,” he continued, “this was not a story that slipped through the cracks and for which the network addressed after facing criticism. Weiss herself praised it in the morning meeting, throwing her weight behind the piece. In other words, the episode offered yet another window into the type of stories the network’s editor in chief wants CBS News to be doing—whether sound journalism or not.”

A source familiar with the process told Mediaite Tuesday that Weiss’ edit was focused on adding a mention of El-Sayed’s deleted tweets, framing it as an effort to “strengthen and clarify” the headline. According to this source, the original headline was “For Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, Sept. 11 commemoration invites scrutiny of past remarks.”

Read the full report at Status.

This article has been updated with additional information.

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