LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Paramount

Skydance ( PSKY ) CEO David Ellison has named Bari Weiss

editor-in-chief of CBS News, as part of a deal to acquire the

online news site she founded, The Free Press.

Monday's deal capped months of talks between Ellison and

Weiss. The newly minted media baron first floated the idea at

July's Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, a frequent staging

ground for major media mergers, the New York Times has reported.

Weiss resigned as an opinion writer for the New York Times

in July 2020, in a 1,500-word open letter in which she described

being the subject of "constant bullying" by colleagues who

disagreed with her views.

In 2022, she founded her new media company on a credo of

"honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence."

Major media and tech companies are now controlled by

supporters of President Donald Trump or billionaire business

leaders who lined up behind him during his inauguration, donated

to his inaugural fund or visited the White House with gifts.

The Free Press has earned a reputation for challenging

conventional narratives.

Notable articles include a first-person essay from a

then-senior editor at NPR, who accused the public radio network

of liberal bias that cost it listeners' trust.

Another offered a whistleblower account of the Washington

University Transgender Center at the St. Louis Children's

Hospital, where it reported vulnerable teenagers with mental

health problems rushed into life-altering treatments.

The son of longtime Trump supporter Larry Ellison, David

Ellison, helped secure regulatory approval for his company

Skydance Media to buy Paramount, with the promise that the CBS

network would reflect "a diversity of viewpoints from across the

political and ideological spectrum," according to a statement

from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr

announcing the deal.

Prior to the deal, Paramount paid $16 million to settle a

2024 lawsuit Trump filed over a "60 Minutes" interview with

former Vice President Kamala Harris, which he claimed gave a

distorted view of his rival for the White House.

The FCC has said the settlement and regulatory review were

unrelated. In early September, the company announced the

appointment of its new ombudsman, Kenneth Weinstein, a former

president and CEO of the conservative Hudson Institute.