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The Fallout of Bari Weiss’ Resignation from the NYT & the Issues of Freedom of Thought & Expression

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The Fallout of  Bari Weiss’ Resignation from the NYT & the Issues of Freedom of Thought & Expression

By: JV Staff

Bari Weiss, an opinion editor at The New York Times, quit her job on Tuesday with a public resignation letter that alleged harassment and a hostile work environment created by people who disagreed with her, as was reported by the AP.

Andrew Sullivan, another prominent journalist who expressed concern that a “woke” dculture is crowding out dissenting opinion, similarly announced his resignation from New York magazine.

According to the AP report, Sullivan is a conservative columnist and Weiss is considered conservative by some, although she labels herself a centrist.

“I have no beef with my colleagues, many of whom I admire and are friends,” Sullivan tweeted. “The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident.” But he expressed solidarity with Weiss: “The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thought crimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”

“Intellectual curiosity is now a liability at The Times,” said Weiss, who was also a writer at the newspaper.

AP reported that she was brought to the Times in 2017 by James Bennet, the opinion editor who lost his job in the aftermath of an op-ed published by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton that advocated using federal troops to quell unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Some Black reporters at The Times said they felt endangered by the piece and they were supported by dozens of colleagues.

She wrote that she was hired to attract new voices to the Times in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election, but that lessons from that time hadn’t 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,” she wrote.

She said she was openly smeared and demeaned by colleagues who didn’t fear their behavior would be checked.

In her resignation letter, which she also posted on her personal website, Weiss said the paper was choosing to “satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.”  She said her opinions and any opinion which is not considered mainstream matters very little, while the number of ‘clicks’ a written piece received took on primary importance.  “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” she wrote, in the nearly 1,500-word piece.

“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.”  Weiss, who writes she had to be “brave” to be truthful about her views, says the paper has become politically correct at a price.  “If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.”

Weiss also strikes a blow at the Times, writing, “As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere.”

Former New York Times editor Jill Abramson said Wednesday that Weiss’ resignation  does not signal a silencing of moderate or conservative voices at the paper, according to a Fox News report.

Speaking to Harris Faulkner of Fox News, Weiss said, “And before my departure, I spent an awful lot of my time as executive editor – when I would speak publicly – defending the Times from charges that it was a big supporter of the Iraq war and was carrying water for George W. Bush’s administration So, that was a ridiculous charge now. And, the idea that The New York Times is edited by a cabal of left-wing journalists is just not true at all.”

According to a Fox News report, when asked what she would say to Weiss today, Abramson said, “You know, I would say to her, as I just said to you, that I am very sorry if she was bullied by any of her colleagues. That should not be tolerated in any organization. You know, The Times does not tolerate it. They have a set of written rules of the road which prohibit that kind of behavior.”

The Fox News report indicated that Abramson added that “Bari Weiss is someone – she has thousands of Twitter followers herself. She has been in there, on Twitter, throwing some punches herself at people she disagrees with.”

“I’m not saying she is a bully, but if you are going to dish it out, you’ve got to be ready to take it,” Abramson concluded. “I learned that a long time ago.”

The Washington Post reported that some conservative lawmakers also seized upon Weiss’ resignation letter.  Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas said of Weiss’ letter, “eloquent, profound, incisive – and true.”  

Saying that the way in which the New York Times treated Weiss was “unconscionable”, Atlantic staff writer Caitlin Flanagan tweeted, “It’s not civil, It’s not in the reader’s interest, and the well-documented culture of extreme harassment will, I hope, now come to light. This is the biggest media story in years.”

Also weighing in on the implications of Weiss’ resignation letter was controversial television talk show host, Bill Maher. He wrote:  “As a longtime reader who has in recent years read the paper with increasing dismay over just the reasons outlined here, I hope this letter finds receptive ears at the paper. But for the reasons outlined here, I doubt it.”

As was reported by the Washington Post, acting editorial page editor Kathleen Kingsbury said, “We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion.” A spokesperson for the Times said that publisher A.G. Sulzberger does not plan to issue a public response to Weiss’s letter.

 

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