NY Times Editor Rips Writer and Former Colleague, Bari Weiss

NY Times Editor Rips Writer and Former Colleague, Bari Weiss

By:  Ellen Cans

The New York Times’ executive editor publicly criticized former colleague Bari Weiss, who has since launched the independent news outlet “The Free Press.” As reported by the NY Post, Joe Kahn, who oversees all of the NY Times’ global newsroom operations, quipped about Weiss, telling Semafor  News, “she’s got a single note, and keeps playing it up over and over again.”  Weiss is also “missing a commitment to deeper reporting [at the Times] and a willingness to kind of look at issues from a 360 perspective that if you were only reading Bari Weiss’ version, you would expect never existed,”  Kahn  said.

Weiss worked as an opinion writer and editor at the NY Times from 2017 to 2020, and then left the Times and founded The Free Press in January 2021, expanding her Substack newsletter entitled “Common Sense”.  Weiss’ exit from the NY Times had made quite a stir, as the 40-year-old journalist had posted her resignation letter on her news organization’s website.

In it, she had criticized “the paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election,” which Weiss said “meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers.”  “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,” Weiss wrote, adding that “Twitter has become its ultimate editor” and the NY Times has become “a kind of a performance space.”

Weiss didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment regarding Kahn’s criticism.

Despite Kahn’s harsh words, he admitted to Semafor that he still reads The Free Press.

“She’s built a whole media organization around combating and what she sees is excess of The New York Times and elsewhere,” Kahn added of Weiss, noting that the site still has “valuable reporting.”  He added, “I think there’s some stuff that they’re doing that is worth paying attention to. Do I think she’s right about the [Times]? Not really, no.”

When asked about the upcoming election in November, and whether it’s his job to help Joe Biden win the matchup against GOP nominee Donald Trump, Kahn said that the NY Times is a “pillar” of democracy but not a tool of power. Kahn did admit, however that the Times presents “a much more favorable view of Biden’s conduct over foreign policy at a difficult time than the polling shows the general public believes.”  “I think the general public actually believes that he’s responsible for these wars, which  is ridiculous, based on the facts that we’ve reported,” Kahn told Semafor, adding that the Times doesn’t make a big deal about Biden’s age like other papers do.

AllSides, which measures media bias ratings for news organizations, has identified the NY Times as left leaning, meaning its content “aligns with liberal, progressive or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas.”  By AllSide’s standards, the Free Press has no lean and is categorized as “center”.