cofounder

Paramount has acquired The Free Press, a four-year-old digital news platform, and will make its co-founder Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, the company announced Monday.

The official announcement came after months of speculation on the deal and Weiss’ high profile role within the news division. Weiss, 41, will report to Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison, who personally courted the former New York Times journalist.

“We are thrilled to welcome Bari and The Free Press to Paramount and CBS News. Bari is a proven champion of independent, principled journalism, and I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News,” Ellison said in a statement. “This move is part of Paramount’s bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects — directly and passionately — to audiences around the world.”

Paramount said Weiss will “shape editorial policies, champion core values across platforms and lead innovation in how the organization reports and delivers the news.”

The union of The Free Press and CBS News will be one of the most closely watched lab experiments in the modern media era. Weiss has no experience in television or running an editorial operation on the scale of CBS News, which has more than 1,000 employees.

Paramount is paying around $150 million in cash and stock for The Free Press, a feisty, upstart operation that generated attention through opinion pieces and podcasts with a strong point of view. Its favorite targets are the excesses of progressive left and purveyors of so-called “woke” policies.

CBS News is a traditional mass appeal network TV operation with a proud legacy of journalistic excellence and the home of popular franchises “60 Minutes” and “CBS Sunday Morning.” But the division has struggled to deal with the shifts in audience habits brought about by streaming video and social media.

Weiss is a provocateur who famously resigned from her high profile role in the opinion section of the New York Times in 2020, citing bullying by her colleagues and a hostile work environment as the reasons.

Weiss acknowledged the division’s legacy in a note sent to CBS News staffers after her appointment was announced.

“Growing up, CBS was a deep family tradition,” Weiss said. “Whenever i hear the tick, tick, tick or that trumpet fanfare, it sends me right back to our den in Pittsburgh. The opportunity to build on that legacy — and to renew it in an era that so desperately needs it — is an extraordinary privilege.”

Weiss also ascends at a time when Trump has threatened news operations with lawsuits and regulatory action, such as pulling station TV licenses over what he believes is unfair criticism of him and his administration. Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit making the dubious claim that a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris was deceptively edited to aid her 2024 presidential election campaign against him.

CBS News has never had an executive with the title editor-in-chief before naming Weiss to the role. It still has a president — Tom Cibrowski — a former ABC News executive hired earlier this year who will remain in his role and continue to report to to Paramount TV Media President George Cheeks.

In her note, Weiss told her staffers her goal in the coming weeks is to learn “what’s working and what isn’t, and your thoughts on how we can make CBS News the most trusted news organization in America and the world. I’ll approach it the way any reporter would — with an open mind, a fresh notebook, and an urgent deadline.”

The Free Press, which has around 170,000 paid subscribers, will continue as its own independent brand, with its own podcasts and live events business.

Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, has resigned after nearly fifty years, accusing parent company Unilever of silencing its stance on Israel’s war on Gaza. The decision follows years of tension, including a 2021 move to halt sales in the occupied West Bank.

Mick Ralphs, the guitarist and co-founder of stylish ‘70s rockers Mott the Hoople and the supergroup Bad Company, has died. He was 81.

Ralphs’ death was confirmed in a statement from his representative, though no exact date or cause of death was given.

“Our Mick has passed, my heart just hit the ground,” Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers said in a statement. “He has left us with exceptional songs and memories. He was my friend, my songwriting partner, an amazing and versatile guitarist who had the greatest sense of humour. Our last conversation a few days ago we shared a laugh but it won’t be our last. There are many memories of Mick that will create laughter. Condolences to everyone who loved him especially his one true love, Susie. I will see you in heaven.”

Born in 1944 in Herefordshire, England, Ralphs co-founded the Doc Thomas Group in the mid-1960’s, which signed to Island after some lineup changes and revamped as Mott the Hoople. Ralphs’ songwriting and guitar work in that band helped move rock ‘n’ roll out of the psychedelic ‘60s and into the struts and arty pomp of ‘70s glam. The band’s raucous live shows won a devoted following — future collaborator David Bowie and Mick Jones of the Clash were early fans — but chart success eluded them.

At Bowie’s behest, the group changed management and got a career jolt when he gifted them his song “All The Young Dudes,” which made their 1972 LP of the same name a global hit. The band’s follow-up, “Mott,” was also a smash, sporting singles “All the Way From Memphis” and “Honaloochie Boogie.”

Yet Ralphs had ambitions beyond the band, and departed in 1973 to join ex-Free members Rodgers and Simon Kirke and former King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell in a new supergroup.

Bad Company became one of the first acts to sign with Zeppelin’s Swan Song label, and immediately found global success. Its 1974 self-titled debut went five times platinum, on strength of hits like “Can’t Get Enough” and a retooled take of Ralphs’ “Ready for Love,” which he’d originally recorded with Mott the Hoople. A follow-up, “Straight Shooter,” featured the classic rock staple “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” and Bad Company remained chart fixtures until breaking up in 1982.

Ralphs joined Mott the Hoople for a reunion tour in 2009, and performed in several reunited incarnations of Bad Company and his own Mick Ralphs Blues Band until suffering a stroke in 2016, which confined him to bed in his final years. His last performance with Bad Company was in 2016, at London’s O2 Arena. That group will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later this year.

“He was a dear friend, a wonderful songwriter, and an exceptional guitarist,” said Bad Company drummer Kirke, in a statement. “We will miss him deeply.”

Ralphs is survived by partner Susie Chavasse, his two children and three step-children.

Ben Cohen among seven people arrested after interrupting testimony by US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and six other people have been arrested after disrupting a United States Senate hearing to protest Washington’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

The arrests of Ben Cohen and the other protestors on Wednesday came as US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was giving testimony to lawmakers on his shake-up of federal health agencies.

“Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the US,” Cohen said as he was escorted away by police.

The seven were arrested on charges of “crowding, obstructing or incommoding”, assault of a police officer or resisting arrest, US Capitol Police said in a statement.

Cohen was only charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, according to Capitol Police.

Cohen and his Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Jerry Greenfield are well known for their progressive activism, including opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

In an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier this month, Cohen, who is Jewish, said the US had a “strange relationship” with Israel that involved Washington “supplying weapons for its genocide”.

“Right now, what it means to be American is that we are the world’s largest arms exporter, we have the largest military in the world, we support the slaughter of people in Gaza,” Cohen said.

“If somebody protests the slaughter of people in Gaza, we arrest them. What does our country stand for?”

In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would no longer allow its Israeli licensee to sell its ice cream in the West Bank and Gaza, saying that doing so would be “inconsistent with our values”.

A US judge the following year rejected Ben & Jerry’s bid for an injunction to block the sales after finding that the company had failed to show that it would suffer irreparable harm.

Ben & Jerry’s, which was founded in 1978 in the US state of Vermont, and its parent company, Unilever, later settled their legal dispute on undisclosed terms.

In March, Ben & Jerry’s filed a lawsuit accusing Unilever of firing chief executive David Stever over his support for the brand’s “social mission”.

More than 51,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war, following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on the country.