Is jealousy of Bari Weiss behind bitter spat between media power-players?

Everyone loves a media catfight. Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly back in the day. Or Don Lemon and Kaitlan Collins BTS-style. And more recently, we brought you the eyewitness account of a Jim Acosta and Michael Tracey argument that nearly devolved into fisticuffs. 

Still, nothing is better than a media war declared on the eve of Sun Valley. This year, podcasting superstar Kara Swisher took aim at Puck’s Dylan Byers after the media reporter called her expansion into election coverage an “attempt to play the political influencer.” That prompted a social media post from Swisher that  struck some as Olbermann-esque.

“I usually ignore the junior varsity digs from this pro-power media reporter for Puck — who is frequently wrong but never in doubt about typing the nonsense the owners/media execs dictate to him,” she wrote. 

But Byers may have simply been hit by a stray in a much more interesting proxy war. Sources tell Page Six Hollywood that Swisher’s real feud is with CBS News boss Bari Weiss. Adding to the intrigue, Swisher once dated Weiss’ wife, The Free Press co-founder Nellie Bowles.

We hear that Swisher and Weiss have never met in person, but they once exchanged texts over the latter’s 2018 opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” which laid the bedrock for anti-woke ideology. 

Depending on who you talk to, Weiss thinks Swisher, who once palled around with the tech oligarchs, went “too woke,” while Swisher thinks CBS News has become a journalistic dumpster fire under Weiss. 

It’s worth noting that Swisher took issue with Byers’ reporting that he has heard from “quite a few people at CNN who think the Bari angst is overblown, and who remain cautiously optimistic” ahead of the near certain Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.

For what it’s worth, we’ve also talked to CNN sources at the network who are embracing the possible Weiss takeover there for various reasons. After all, it’s a big company with thousands of staffers and differing agendas.

But Swisher wasn’t having it and hit back at Byers, writing, “No one of any actual talent or journalistic quality at CNN is ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the possible new regime from Paramount given the CBS News record so far which is an embarrassment.”

One insider who is familiar with the parties believes jealousy motivated Swisher’s recent attack on CBS News at a time when the anti-Weiss news cycle had largely moved on, at least for the summer. 

“Kara was Bari at one point — that new person who was challenging the establishment,” says one insider. “Go 15 to 20 years later, Kara is now the establishment, where it works to be leftist. And Bari did very well for herself sticking to her ideology.”

(Paramount bought Weiss and Bowles’ Free Press for $150 million. But Swisher is also very well compensated. She and podcast co-host Scott Galloway reportedly turned down a $40 million deal over four years and instead signed a 70/30 deal with Vox Media that could yield $100 million in revenue over the same span.)

And if all that drama isn’t enough, Taylor Lorenz also took to social media to criticize Byers’ characterization of Swisher as an “influencer,” calling it “so misogynistic.”

When asked about her beef with Byers, Lorenz told Page Six Hollywood: “Dylan Byers continually uses his platform to post false claims in the service of billionaires and people in power. He is effectively already working in PR, so he should spare all of us the pretense.”

It’s a good thing Lorenz and Swisher are not in Sun Valley for the annual Allen & Company confab or things might get déjà-Acosta.

(Swisher has attended in the past, but was notably absent from this year’s guest list. Lorenz never has made the trek but frequently critiques the gathering to her massive social media following.) Weiss and Bowles made the cut as did top Silicon Valley moguls (or villains?) like Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Tim Cook (as well as his soon-to-be Apple successor John Ternus).

Naturally, Byers is posting his dispatches from the mountainside Versailles.

Swisher, Weiss, Bowles and Byers all declined comment.