After George Clooney said he felt that newly-named editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was “dismantling CBS News as we speak,” Weiss has responded by inviting him to visit the CBS newsroom.
“Bonjour, Mr. Clooney! Big fan of your work. It sounds like you’d like to learn more about ours. This is an open invitation to visit The CBS Broadcast Center, where I’m spending the holidays working to relaunch the Evening News with my colleagues. Tune in January 5,” Weiss said in a statement shared by Paramount Skydance. The “bonjour” was presumably a reference to Clooney, his wife Amal and their twins becoming French citizens this week.
In a wide-ranging interview with Brent Lang about his career and his latest film “Jay Kelly,” Clooney also touched on the upheaval at CBS News, politics and his activism.
“Am I worried about film studios? Sure. It’s my business, but my primary loyalty is to my country. I’m much more worried about how we inform ourselves and how we’re going to discern reality without a functioning press,” he said.
Clooney also addressed President Trump’s lawsuits against ABC News and CBS News in Variety‘s interview. “If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ we wouldn’t be where we are in the country,” Clooney says. “That’s simply the truth.”
Weiss, who took over CBS News in October, recently came under fire for abruptly pulling a “60 Minutes” report on El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
The response from Weiss was first reported by the New York Post.
