Editorial Mea Culpas and Another Casualty at the Gray Lady

In the past week or so the NYT, the Washington Post, and CNN seem to have found some measure of journalistic integrity and are issuing long-overdue mea culpas for their collective decisions to protect a cerebrally diminished Joe Biden at all costs while ignoring the palpable misconduct of the Biden family’s corruption and its mendacious but lucrative association with the CCP.

I am encouraged by this sudden commitment to journalistic honesty and integrity which no doubt has been spurred on by the ongoing DOJ investigations into Hunter Biden, etc. However, I suspect America’s media will continue to circle the wagons around the Biden crime family. During the Biden presidency most news organizations have epitomized American journalism’s disturbing adherence to the Latin maxim: “audi, vide, tace,” (hear, see, and be silent).

A couple of years ago, I posted a piece about former Times opinion editor and writer Bari Weiss who resigned from the paper after she was bullied by colleagues because of her negative opinions of Black Lives Matter.

Here is the piece I posted. In it, I reprinted Bari Weiss’s resignation letter to Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger. I hope you will read it. Ms. Weiss demonstrates a genuine understanding of the way journalism should be practiced in America and the appalling and dishonest way it is practiced today. Her letter remains as relevant today as it was in 2020. Please read on:

During my career as a foreign correspondent, I knew a lot of New York Times reporters. Most were excellent reporters and good writers. Many, if not all, were from the East Coast and were graduates of Ivy League schools. I can’t recall many Times reporters who, like me, were products of the nation’s more plebian heartland and less prominent universities.

As a result, I always had the sense that reporters for the Gray Lady, as  The Times is sometimes called, considered themselves on a dais just above everybody else—even reporters who worked for the Washington Post, which has always been the Times’s number one competitor. Okay, I got that. I worked for the Chicago Tribune, which at one time was the nation’s third or fourth-largest newspaper.

Many times while covering some story in Asia or Latin America the New York Times correspondent would scurry into a hotel lobby, or a bar, or wherever and ask: “Have you seen the Post?”

Times reporters were always terrified that the Post correspondent would have a story they didn’t. I always wanted to respond: “No, but the Chicago Tribune is here, along with the Baltimore Sun and the Boston Globe.”

 Of course, I never responded that way. Today, I kinda wish I had.

Whenever I met a Times reporter I was always reminded of the old Saturday Night Live spoof in which Chevy Chase would introduce himself this way: “Hello, I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.” That might be a bit unfair of me, but that’s how I felt.

After all, the New York Times was considered the national newspaper of record and its supercilious motto was: “All the news that’s fit to print.”

Despite its smugness, I always had tremendous respect for the Times. Once upon a time, it was a great newspaper. Yes, it always leaned left, but even so, its stories were typically thoroughly reported, well written, and by and large fair. Sadly, that is no longer the case. It has lost its way. Today, the Times makes no pretense about where it stands in the battle between the forces of the left and the right.

All of this is my way of leading up to the extraordinary resignation letter Times opinion editor and writer Bari Weiss wrote to A.G. Sulzberger, the Times’ publisher. In that letter, she decried the “constant bullying by colleagues” who disagreed with her views on Black Lives Matter, the so-called “cancel culture,” and the inaction management took on her harassment allegations. Eventually, a war of words erupted between the paper’s vocal young “wokes” and those less “woke” and Weiss decided she had had enough.

Here is the complete letter Bari Weiss penned to Sulzberger. I think you will find it enlightening. As for me, I am saddened to see a once-great newspaper flattened under the weight of its own biases and dishonesty.

Dear A.G. (Sulzberger),

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times. 

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives, and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

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.

Bari Weiss

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. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. 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.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong. 

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.

Part of me wishes I could say that 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 ideologically 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.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. 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. 

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated, and caveated.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati. 

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned, and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry. 

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. 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. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper. 

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them. 

Sincerely,

Bari Weiss

 

About Ronald E. Yates

Ronald E. Yates is an award-winning author of historical fiction and action/adventure novels, including the popular and highly-acclaimed Finding Billy Battles trilogy. Read More About Ron Here

3 thoughts on “Editorial Mea Culpas and Another Casualty at the Gray Lady”

  1. Interestingly, Ms. Weiss’ departure from the NYT followed the in-house woke uprising in protest of the publication of an op-ed piece by Tom Cotton. The Op-Ed, written by a Republican representing Arkansas in the US Senate, argued for the federal government to invoke the Insurrection Act to facilitate the call up of the military to put down protests in cities across the country. Post-January 6, the woke seem to be leading advocates of calling in the military to discourage insurrection. Yet the woke credit neither Cotton nor Weiss for their prescience.

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