Patterico's Pontifications

7/14/2020

Bari Weiss Leaving The New York Times

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:29 am



The story is at Vice:

Bari Weiss, a writer and editor for the embattled New York Times Opinion section, is leaving the paper.

When reached by phone, Weiss did not want to offer any further comment beyond confirming that she was out. According to an internal source, she was removed from the staff directory sometime in the past week.

Bari Weiss is a heterodox figure, associated with a group of independent public intellectuals known (somewhat tongue in cheek) as the “Intellectual Dark Web” or IDW. She’s not a great fit for a paper with an oppressive climate of hyper-wokeness — yet many of us were reassured by her continued presence there, keeping an eye on the insanity for those of us who are normal.

No word yet on whether this is voluntary. We’ll stay on top of it.

UPDATE: Should have checked Twitter first. Here is her resignation letter. Sounds like a mix between resignation (which is what it technically was) and termination:

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.

Read it all.

47 Responses to “Bari Weiss Leaving The New York Times”

  1. Bullying is allowed on both sides.

    DRJ (aede82)

  2. Absolute must read. And any who decide to quote the Times need to think long and hard about what is being published and pushed over there before doing so.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  3. who has the media, the schools, large tranches of corporate america, including their hr department, lets get real here, bennett was perhaps the first canary, for publishing cotton’s submission,

    narciso (7404b5)

  4. One, I hope Ms. Weiss has fully documented the offenses against her by so-called colleagues.
    Two, I hope she receives a nice fat settlement that will allow for a comfortable retirement. I’m sure she didn’t use “hostile work environment” without reason.
    Three, I hope she lands at a place where she can fully express her points of view without partisan political blowback. She’s an important voice to the commentariat.

    Paul Montagu (52bb2d)

  5. Bullying is allowed on both sides.

    “both sides”

    LOL

    beer ‘n pretzels (4d3c08)

  6. Dean Baquet is bound and determined to seize the crown as the single worst newspaper editor in the history of journalism.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  7. I think the post editor is close behind, although tarantos query applies to bezos,

    narciso (7404b5)

  8. @6. Dylan Howard has a lock on that– and would hock a crown before anybody could grab it, anyway.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  9. And he worked below a man named Pecker as well.

    urbanleftbehind (d97c30)

  10. https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-dies-in-darkness-but-dont-blame-trump-11594661547

    “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” which some have noted sounds like the working title for an inferior James Bond movie, became the daily front-page leitmotif of a major newspaper, its reporters bravely committed to holding aloft the flickering lamp of freedom amid the gathering gloom of tyranny.

    Four years on, it’s clear the warnings were justified. Consider the state of free speech in Mr. Trump’s America. Newspaper editors are forced to quit because of pieces they’ve run. Academics are removed from positions for daring to dissent from the dominant orthodoxy. Corporate executives have been fired for opinions written three decades ago that now fall outside the lines of acceptable public discourse.

    In classrooms, newsrooms and boardrooms across the country, you can almost hear the silence as people internally check what they say in the knowledge that if they cross the line they’ll be publicly denounced and very likely terminated.

    The darkness has indeed claimed democracy.

    But wait. It’s not Mr. Trump who’s silenced them…..

    Sammy Finkelman (c54485)

  11. While one can be sympathetic to Ms Weis, she appears to be just another writer at an elite media corp. who stood mute while their paper/network/site smeared and attacked not only conservatives but our country, the founding documents and greatest thinkers and only got indignant when they became a target.
    __ _

    Meanwhile, the Times’ error-filled 1619 Project gets further ingrained in the public schools so all the kids will learn that the most important founding principal of the United States of America is racism and slavery its mechanism for success of free market capitalism.

    “The Times project is an effort to alter the composition of the culture’s amniotic fluid, to bathe its most innocent creatures in something they will have no way of knowing is a slander.

    The effort is led by a massive corporation comfortably housing writers who are preaching the villainy of the United States on six-digit salaries. What we have here are people at the summit of the elite talking without irony about the injustices of the ­nation that has garlanded them with fame, influence and power.

    In misinforming the citizenry and thereby making it vastly more difficult for parents to raise their children as proud Americans who must continue the great experiment in liberty that ­began in 1776, the elite hypocrites behind the 1619 Project are damaging the very republic that has made them first among equals.“

    https://nypost.com/2020/03/02/what-the-1619-project-aims-to-teach-your-kids/
    _

    harkin (5af287)

  12. “ But wait. It’s not Mr. Trump who’s silenced them…..”
    __

    They’re blaming Trump for everything from the implosion of Democratic-run cities to the BLM riots.

    On Twitter you can see the term ‘Trump’s America’ being applied as the cause of every piece of a$$hattery caused by Leftists.
    _

    harkin (5af287)

  13. Dean Baquet is bound and determined to seize the crown as the single worst newspaper editor in the history of journalism.

    Where would he go for the hat trick?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  14. I’m sure the WSJ will make an offer. Or maybe National Review.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  15. Charlie Cooke over at NRO had, as usual, a great tweet about this:

    What Weiss apparently doesn't understand is that it was imperative that she be bullied, cajoled, slandered, and denounced by her colleagues lest the Times run the risk of becoming a hostile work environment. https://t.co/3koPplQENg— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 14, 2020

    JVW (ee64e4)

  16. That sounds like a really nasty environment to work in and a nasty one for the editors to have fostered. I’m surprised she didn’t take them to court for harassment.

    Nic (896fdf)

  17. I’m surprised she didn’t take them to court for harassment.

    I’m guessing that’s the next step, unless they offer her a very generous separation agreement.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  18. We haven’t heard a full accounting from Andrew Sullivan, but we know that New York magazine has determined that he isn’t the right guy to challenge progressive orthodoxy. First they told him he couldn’t write about the riots, and now they have apparently given him his walking papers:

    .@NYMag editor in chief David Haskell says he wants to hash out the liberal project, but that Andrew Sullivan is no longer "the right match" pic.twitter.com/XI3iexEcaT— Ben Smith (@benyt) July 14, 2020

    JVW (ee64e4)

  19. Maybe Ta-Nehisi Coates will be a better fit for critiquing the BLM movement.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  20. That resignation letter doesn’t go so far as to call the NYT a propaganda organ, but it might as well have.

    This election will be decided not by ideas and programs, but by a press that universally lauds one candidate and openly opposes the other. Trump says a lot of dumb things, and they are right to point them out, but their abject silence on the risible statements of Mr Biden and otherwise hagiographic coverage or all things “progressive” is a disgrace.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  21. I knew Andrew Yang was at heart a really good dude, his silly guaranteed income plan aside:

    If someone like @bariweiss feels like she can’t do her best work at the @nytimes they should make some real changes over there.— Andrew Yang🧢🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) July 14, 2020

    JVW (ee64e4)

  22. “I would remind you that extremism in ridding the White House of a noisome infestation is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in sending a demented orangutan back to his golf resorts is no virtue!”.

    nk (1d9030)

  23. 10… Democracy Dies in a Leftist Dystopia

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  24. not woke go broke

    mg (8cbc69)

  25. @19. ‘… better fit for critiquing the BLM movement’:

    “The Great Silent Majority”: ‘White people constitute the majority of the U.S. population, with a total of about 234,370,202 or 73% of the population as of 2017…’ – source, wikisecretTrumpVoters

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  26. “both sides”

    LOL

    Surely you don’t think the left has a monopoly on being the thought police?

    DRJ (aede82)

  27. Surely you don’t think the left has a monopoly on being the thought police?

    You are avoiding providing equivalent examples on the right.

    beer ‘n pretzels (494acc)

  28. 26… They do seem to have a monopoly on the objective of ruining the lives of ANYONE who has ever written or vocalized opinions that don’t strictly adhere to the prevailing narrative of the current day.

    Bullying on steroids.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  29. I am always reminded of the bit from Ghostbusters about “choosing the form of the Destructor”?

    https://youtu.be/8EbY0vuNt-Q

    Turns out that DJT seems to bring out the very worst in everyone. Period.

    As for Bari Weiss, I feel badly for her. What an awful environment. But I am not surprised. Mobs and bullies and tribalism appear to be the New Normal.

    I wish it was not.

    Simon Jester (4357eb)

  30. Sullivan has resigned from ny magazine, who is destroying statues, livelihoods, and actual lives,

    the New York times has been the handmaid to marxists, since the russian revolution, through duranty, matthews, salisbury, I’ll give props to scheinberg, for khmer coverage and shirley christian, for balancing ray bonner,

    narciso (7404b5)

  31. Lesbians are only allowed to think a certain way and apparently Weiss did NOT get the memo.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  32. so it doesn’t surprise me, but lizard illuminati worshiper alice walker, go on,

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-cites-quote-made-famous-by-mao-zedong-during-fundraiser

    narciso (7404b5)

  33. “You are avoiding providing equivalent examples on the right.”

    Dr. Fauci

    Davethulhu (5612ad)

  34. I hope French’s piece isn’t behind a paywall, because it’s worth a full read, but here are the final paragraphs…

    I often write about the necessity of personal courage in overcoming cancel culture and defending free speech. There are times when you have to stand up to the mob. You have to resist the cruelty. Bari stood and stood and stood. Who stood with her? This part of her letter is poignant. Speaking to her bosses she says:

    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.

    Bari’s right. The cancellations will continue so long as good men and women continue to praise courage in private and maintain silence in public. America’s liberal institutions can survive many things. They will struggle to survive the combination of cowardice and cruelty. Malicious men and women cannot be permitted to define the terms of America’s public debates.

    I hope Ms. Weiss and Andrew Sullivan join The Dispatch. They may not fit quite so ideologically, but temperamentally, heck yeah.

    Paul Montagu (52bb2d)

  35. #27

    Surely you don’t think the left has a monopoly on being the thought police?

    You are avoiding providing equivalent examples on the right.
    beer ‘n pretzels (494acc) — 7/14/2020 @ 1:12 pm

    30 cancellation targets of Donald Trump.

    lurker (d8c5bc)

  36. 30 cancellation targets of Donald Trump.

    All 30 failed.

    beer ‘n pretzels (afaa43)

  37. Didnt matthews and toure cancelled themselves as for rolling moss, snarfle

    Narciso (7404b5)

  38. Failure is Trump’s middle name.

    nk (1d9030)

  39. Toure was cancelled in 2015, the whole peanut gallery should be nuked from orbit.just to make sure.

    Cnn doxes anonymous meme makers, do we really want to go there.

    Narciso (7404b5)

  40. People are calling Miss Weiss a “centrist,” but she’s hardly that. Yes, she believes in freedom of speech — something which should hardly be controversial — and she supports Israel as a Jewish state, but her other columns have pretty much come down on the liberal side of the spectrum.

    It’s interesting that The New York Times published an OpEd piece by Peter Beinart on the 8th which, in effect, called for the destruction of Israel (technically, the end of Israel as a Jewish state, with full integration of the Arabs) and by the 14th, Miss Weiss was “resigned.”

    The Dana in Kentucky (229a56)

  41. JVW wrote:

    Dean Baquet is bound and determined to seize the crown as the single worst newspaper editor in the history of journalism.

    Stan Wischnowski of The Philadelphia Inquirer was stiff competition for that, until he, too, was resigned.

    The Dana in Kentucky (229a56)

  42. It should be remembered that Dean Baquet and The New York Times retained reporter Ali Watkins, who was in her mid twenties, after it was discovered that she was sleeping with her source, a 57-year-old married Senate security head. The Times did have the decency — or was it the fig leaf? — to assign her to a different beat.

    The Dana in Kentucky (229a56)

  43. Our esteemed host wrote:

    Sounds like a mix between resignation (which is what it technically was) and termination

    There ought to be a specific word for that. I use the term “was resigned,” but there should be a better one.

    The Dana in Kentucky (229a56)

  44. #39

    Failure is Trump’s middle name.
    nk (1d9030) — 7/15/2020 @ 7:50 am

    You say that like it’s a bad thing. It was the core of Trump’s impeachment defense. “OK, maybe he did try to corrupt our foreign policy with a shocking abuse of power, but he couldn’t pull it off. Nothing to see here!”

    lurker (d8c5bc)


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