Former staff writer and opinion editor for the New York Times Bari Weiss (shown) dropped truth bomb after truth bomb in a fiery resignation letter to the newspaper’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. Among other things, Weiss claimed that she was the victim of targeted harassment by the paper’s new “woke” generation of employees.
It’s the second editor the Times has lost in just over a month. On June 7, editorial page editor James Bennet was forced out for allowing an op-ed written by Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, which encouraged President Trump to use military force against rioters, to be published.
Both Bennet and Weiss were hired in 2017 in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, which the Times utterly failed to predict or understand. Both were hired in an attempt to gain some insight into America beyond the Hudson River. According to Weiss, the newspaper never learned those lessons and has moved even further left than it already was.
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“But the lessons that ought to have followed the election — lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society — have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”
Weiss, a Jewish woman, complained of an environment of “bullying” by colleagues and anti-semitism, where she was often accosted by members of the staff for “writing about the Jews again.” Weiss claims she was publicly humiliated on the company’s internal communications channels, while the paper’s publisher did nothing about it.
“My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.”
Weiss stressed that the paper writes exclusively to an audience of narrow-minded left-wingers and has the same exclusionary parameteres as Twitter. In fact, she said, the social-media platform Twitter has become a de facto editor as Twitter’s “woke” standards of expression now jibe completely with those of the Times.
“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.”
Weiss accuses Sulzberger and others in charge of the Times as being somewhat two-faced in their dealings with her. “I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.”
If Weiss’s read on the subject is correct, she won’t be the last one to leave. According to her, the new direction that the newspaper is headed in will eventually weed out anyone whose thought strays from a strict, woke, far-left ideology.
“Part of me wishes I could say my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity — let alone risk taking — is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideological kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so, self-censorship has become the norm.”
Weiss is not stating anything that people who regularly follow the New York Times don’t already know. But her ouster, along with Bennet’s a month earlier, is clear evidence that the publisher and the editorial staff don’t even wish to feign objectivity anymore. The “newspaper of record” has completed its journey into the abyss and has now become the “propagandist of choice” for far-left extremists.
Image of Bari Weiss: Screenshot of video by Fox News
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects. He can be reached at [email protected].
