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CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is taking heat from the left yet again, this time over a report urging her staff to probe Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s potential ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Semafor reported Sunday that Weiss “personally advocated for CBS News journalists to pursue numerous story angles related to El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The report cited two anonymous CBS News staffers who were aggrieved by Weiss’ directive. Anonymous CBS News staffers complaining about their boss to liberal media outlets has become commonplace in the media industry.
CONTROVERSY OVER ABDUL EL-SAYED’S FAMILY TIES TO MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IGNORED, DOWNPLAYED BY LIBERAL MEDIA
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss reportedly urged staff to investigate Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press; Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)
NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham believes disgruntled CBS News employees constantly offering anonymous quotes to liberal publications in an effort to smear Weiss “helps reinforce” the longstanding bias toward the left.
“She’s making them do difficult things,” Graham told Fox News Digital.
“Can we look into whether Abdul El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, like his family says they do? How dare you,” Graham quipped. “You’re not supposed to do stories that might make Democrats look bad.”
While Weiss’ defenders have suggested staffers are essentially irked that she asked them to do journalism, progressives lashed out against Weiss over the latest report.
“A rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim troll who has zero qualifications to be running national TV network is in fact running a national TV network and trying to get it to behave like a rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim troll,” far-left Zeteo founder and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan reacted on X.
“No self-respecting journalist should work for Bari Weiss,” The Nation correspondent Jeet Heer wrote.
“Nobody should respect or trust ANYTHING coming out of @CBSNews at this point,” far-left activist Shaun King exclaimed.
Notably, CBS News largely refrained from covering the controversy that blew up last week when unearthed social media posts from his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, claimed their family, including their mother, had ties to the controversial Islamist group after he flatly denied there was any connection to NBC’s Kristen Welker.
“Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect,” Abdelhadi wrote in a 2012 X post, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, had attended Egypt’s Alexandria University, which, according to a report from the Brookings Institution, had strong Muslim Brotherhood activity back in the 1970s.
In another 2012 post, Abdelhadi, a professor at the University of Chicago, wrote, “My family has long been MB, but I’ve always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively.”
In a third post from 2013, she wrote, “Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in #Egypt. Lie low, stay safe.”
ABDUL EL-SAYED GROWS AGITATED WITH REPORTER AFTER BEING PRESSED ON FAMILY’S ALLEGED MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD TIES
Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed denied to NBC’s Kristen Welker that his family had any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. (Matthew LaVere/NBC via Getty Images)
Graham feels that CBS News staffers who didn’t want to look into the El-Sayed story must find it “wildly offensive” to even consider a conservative point of view.
“They object [to] the idea that they have to be somehow a little bit fair and balanced,” Graham said.
As for El-Sayed, he recently doubled down on his denial during a contentious exchange with NBC’s Tom Llamas.
“It’s funny to me,” El-Sayed responded. “I was born in 1984 down the street in Rochester Hills. I was raised here in Michigan, went to the University of Michigan, rebuilt the health department in this city, led the health department in this county — and you want to ask me about what’s happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious?”
“I get it, but you were asked a question, and you gave an answer,” Llamas responded.
“I have no ties, we have no ties,” El-Sayed said, reiterating his denial.
CBS CHIEF BARI WEISS’ INVOLVEMENT IN VIRAL EL-SAYED REPORT SPARKS DEBATE AMONG CRITICS
The Democratic hopeful told Llamas he hadn’t had conversations with his mother about her alleged Muslim Brotherhood activity and accused the anchor of using “hearsay evidence from a tweet.”
“That’s just not serious,” El-Sayed said.
“But you’ve also gone after the president for truthfulness and when people ask you a question, do you expect the truth?” Llamas then asked.
“Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?” El-Sayed fired back.
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking,” Llamas responded.
“And I’m telling you that I was not,” El-Sayed told him.
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In an interview on MS NOW, El-Sayed likened the questions about his family allegiances to ones John F. Kennedy faced as a Catholic while running for president in 1960.