Bari Weiss isn’t messing around, according to a Semafor report on CBS News’ coverage of Abdul El-Sayed.
The outlet reveals that several CBS staffers spoke with them about how they are looking into potential familial links between El-Sayed and the Muslim Brotherhood, which could be a connection that could impact his chances in November.
“In 2012, Abdul El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, described ‘an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early ’70s.’ Republicans and members of the media have since pressed El-Sayed, an American of Egyptian descent, to answer whether he has ties to the Islamist movement, which was founded in Egypt and whose offshoots include US-designated terrorist groups,” the report explains. “The subject is of particular interest at CBS News, where Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has repeatedly encouraged the network’s journalists to dedicate serious resources to finding a potential link.”
“In recent weeks, Weiss has personally advocated for CBS News journalists to pursue numerous story angles related to El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood, and was directly involved in a controversial story about his previous posts comparing the COVID-19 death toll to 9/11,” it continues.
“Bari’s ideas routinely come from social media influencers or from opposition research that’s been placed in conservative outlets, and those stories usually leave out important context and facts,” one staffer said while speaking to Semafor. “She seems more suited to editing at publications like City Journal, The Free Press, or The [Washington] Free Beacon, which take a clear side on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and match her views.”
A CBS spokesperson issued a statement to Mediaite defending the outlet’s coverage:
CBS News has been delivering best-in-class breaking news and exclusive, impactful reporting on immigration, Cornell, the Iran War, the Russia-Ukraine war, and much more.
Our Middle East reporting and coverage of the midterms has been just as rigorous. We’ll let our journalism – not baseless accusations – speak for itself.
Speaking to MSNOW’s Ali Velshi on Saturday, the Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan dismissed the accusations without outright denying them.
“Look, at the end of the day, the whole reason this question is being asked is to insinuate that somehow I have dual loyalties,” he said. “But I also know that I tread a long history of this: when John F. Kennedy ran for president, he was asked about whether or not his allegiance would be to the Constitution or to the pope and the Vatican… and he had to remind people he was not running to be the first Catholic president; he was running to be the next president of the United States. I’m not running to be the first anything — I’m running to be the next senator from my state.”
“It’s a crazy thing to assume that somehow I’d have dual loyalties, as somebody who is avidly running to protect the right to choose, who’s running to protect LGBTQ rights, who’s running to protect religious freedom, and who’s running to protect the rights of people who choose not to pray,” he added.
