A Tuesday report from Status claims that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was personally involved with a widely criticized story that linked Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The CBS piece, which was published on Monday, drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers and progressive journalists for saying that El-Sayed “may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack” due to past innocuous statements he’d made about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

According to Status’ sources, Weiss “personally directed” that the story’s headline be changed to “specifically mention that El-Sayed, who is vying to become the first Muslim American senator, had deleted tweets referencing” the attacks.

The two deleted posts highlighted in the story were far from scandalous, however. In the first post, El-Sayed called on Americans to unite in a common purpose to combat the Covid-19 pandemic just as they came together after the 2001 attacks, and in the second one he drew attention not just to the victims who died on 9/11, but to all the people who died afterward as a result of the US War on Terror.

Status also reported that Weiss “praised the story during the network’s daily editorial meeting Monday, signaling her support for the piece to the entire network.”

Weiss’ endorsement of the El-Sayed story came despite the fact that senior staffers at CBS raised concerns about it with the network’s standards department, Status added.

“They took a small nugget of news, forced it into something much larger, and messed up,” one staffer said.

Another staffer told Status that the story is “shameful” due to its “overt” racism.

One anonymous CBS News staffer similarly told Zeteo media columnist Justin Baragona on Monday that the Weiss-endorsed story was “trash” and “horribly Islamophobic.”

Weiss was installed as CBS editor-in-chief last year after David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a megadonor to President Donald Trump, acquired network parent company Paramount.

In that time, CBS ratings have collapsed to record lows and Weiss has overseen a mass purge of reporters and staffers at the network’s legendary news program “60 Minutes.”

Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley, who was fired by CBS earlier this year, subsequently accused the Weiss-led management team of instructing him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”

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