CBS staff accuse network of ‘overt racism’ over Abdul El-Sayed 9/11 story
CBS News is facing internal backlash over its coverage of Muslim US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, with current and former staffers accusing the network of poor journalism and “overt” racism.
The controversy erupted after CBS published a story highlighting old social media posts by El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
El-Sayed, who could become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, had deleted posts in which he compared the mounting Covid-19 death toll with the nearly 3,000 people killed on 11 September 2001 and called for Washington to mobilise against poverty and the pandemic as it had after the attacks.
“We could save lives rather than take them,” he wrote.
Another post mourned those killed on 9/11 as well as those killed during the wars that followed.
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Yet CBS framed the posts as potentially exposing El-Sayed to “renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack”, while describing him as part of a political movement that “capitalised on anger over anti-Arab sentiment”.
Deranged, fanatically pro-Israel operative aggressively intervened in CBS News coverage to smear Muslim Senate candidate https://t.co/jLGN2oKYqC
— Borzou Daragahi 🖊🗒 (@borzou) September 1, 2026
According to media newsletter Status, CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss personally pushed for the headline to explicitly reference 9/11.
Senior staffers subsequently raised concerns with the network’s standards department.
“They took a small nugget of news, forced it into something much larger, and messed up,” one CBS staffer told Status.
A former senior employee called the story “shameful”, adding that “the racism is overt”.
Bari Weiss personally directed CBS to tweak its headline so it slaps “Sept. 11” next to Abdul El-Sayed.
— 𝓙𝓲𝓶𝓶𝔂 𝓙 (@JimmyJ4thewin) September 1, 2026
This isn’t journalism. It’s a coordinated smear. pic.twitter.com/Ozqy8pFtX2
A campaign marked by anti-Muslim smears
The CBS report comes after months of increasingly hostile attacks on El-Sayed, whose Muslim and Arab identity has repeatedly been invoked by political opponents during his Senate campaign.
El-Sayed overcame more than $30m in spending by an Aipac-linked super Pac backing his Democratic primary rival.
Following his victory, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville said Democrats had “voted to send a terrorist to the Senate” and called El-Sayed a “radical Islamist”, while Republican Representative Nancy Mace claimed that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse” and a threat to national security.
CBS/Bari Weiss joins GOP Rep Randy Fine's war on erasing Muslims from American politics. That is how I view the goal of tying Abdul El Sayed to 9/11. It's despicable. pic.twitter.com/h8bdsWcYGu
— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) August 31, 2026
A source familiar with the editing process defended the report to the Daily Beast, saying CBS routinely covers politicians who delete old social media posts and arguing that Weiss’s intervention improved the headline.
Middle East Eye has reached out to Bari Weiss and the CBS Network for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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