Exclusive | Bari Weiss caught in dysfunctional Cold War power struggle with CBS News president: Two feuding parents

CBS News boss Bari Weiss has been locked in a power struggle with the network’s president that critics claim is hamstringing the newsroom — and staffers are wagering that one of them gets ousted if ratings continue to flop this fall, The Post has learned.Weiss — a 42-year-old opinion writer who was named editor-in-chief last October — has a mandate from her boss David Ellison, CEO of CBS parent Paramount Skydance, to push the left-leaning network toward a common-sense middle.Sources say Weiss has an eye on restoring the home of Edward R.

Murrow and Walter Cronkite with hard news and enterprise reporting.She has been at odds with CBS News President Tom Cibrowski — a TV veteran from ABC News who spent years producing the top-ranked “Good Morning America” and “World News Tonight”.Sources said the 58-year-old executive favors softer coverage that’s more squarely aimed at Middle America, including weather reports and feel-good animal videos.CBS News employees feel like they are “caught in the middle” of “two feuding parents” with conflicting editorial visions, according to a CBS source.

The result, according to sources, has been day-to-day confusion — with staffers often freezing up and doing nothing. “It’s a Cold War,” one prominent network staffer told The Post.“We just want one side to win so we can do our jobs.”A quirk of the conflict is that, as was the case in the Cold War, there’s no overt hostility between Weiss and Cibrowski in the newsroom, according to sources.

Indeed, an insider said it’s not a personality clash per se and that in some cases the pair “work together very well”.“Tom likes Bari,” a network source close to Cibrowski said.“He thinks she’s smart and has good ideas.”At the end of the day, however, multiple sources speculated that this fall could descend into an episode of “Survivor,” where Weiss is giving Cibrowski “enough rope to hang himself” so she can replace him with a mor...