Guest essay by Eric Worrall
When President Trump unexpectedly won in 2016, the New York Times realised they had lost contact with a large segment of the American people. Opinion writer Bari Weiss was hired to reach out beyond the NYT’s increasingly narrow audience demographic. But Weiss has now resigned, after she decided it was impossible for her to do her job.
Dear A.G.,
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.
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
Source: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
The intolerance Weiss describes seems awfully familiar. In my opinion it is likely just another manifestation of the same self righteous narcissism and cancel culture which seems to be pervading many of our scientific and academic institutions, the corruption which permits and sanctifies vile personal attacks and bullying of scientists who disagree with their colleagues.
But there is nothing new about the rise of intellectual fascism.
Cancel Culture Dominates Climate Research, Cancelling the Scientific Method
H. Sterling Burnett
July 14, 2020 Updated: July 14, 2020Contrary to popular perception, “cancel culture,” in which people or their opinions are shamed and shut out of discussion when they don’t conform to whatever those shouting the loudest or rioting in the streets believe, is not a new phenomenon.
For more than two decades, politically connected climate scientists have been leading the cancel culture movement.
…
Let’s look at just a couple of examples of where academic conferences and media headlines have given consensus, cancel culture science pride of place over the facts when it comes to alarming climate claims.
Based solely on the unsupported assertions of consensus climate researchers, the media has been flooded with stories claiming human caused climate change is causing famine and starvation.
In late June 2020, Cornell Alliance for Science claimed farmers in sub-Saharan Africa were desperate for new farm technologies and crops to fight a climate change induced decline in crop production that the Alliance claimed was “driving millions [of Africans] into hunger.” Yet data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization shows cereal (staple) food crop production across southern Africa has grown substantially, and fairly steadily, since at least the 1960s. Moreover, the past 10 years have provided the 10 highest crop yields in sub-Saharan African history.
…
Too many climate scientists have become sideshow hucksters hoping to sell the general public the dangerous notion that giving government experts greater control over our lives will allow us to control the weather, and make the world a utopia. Ask the people in Cuba, Hong Kong, North Korea, of Venezuela how that is working out for them.
Read more: https://www.theepochtimes.com/cancel-culture-dominates-climate-research-cancelling-the-scientific-method_3424575.html
How did we get into this diabolical situation?
The late author Michael Crichton claimed in his famous Caltech lecture that the intellectual rot started in the 1960s, with the SETI project. Scientists really, really wanted to look for radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrials, so nobody spoke up to challenge the flaky assumptions which were used to justify SETI project expenditure.
… In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation: N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL
[where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet’s life during which the communicating civilizations live.]
This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we’re clear-are merely expressions of prejudice.
Nor can there be “informed guesses.” If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It’s simply prejudice.
As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. …
Read more: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/
Once an entire group has embraced the idea that the end justifies the means, if the end seems important enough, once they have accepted that a model full of wild guesses can be treated as a guide to action, it can be hard to kick the habit. There is no end to the list of noble causes and meaningless equations which can be used by the dishonest to justify their dishonesty and bullying. Making stuff up is easier than doing real work.
Such intellectual dishonesty and the bigotry it led to is ultimately self defeating, though it can do a lot of damage while it lasts. If the alleged intolerance and double standards at the New York Times continues and worsens, in the end the only people who will want to read NYT will be the staff. And perhaps not even them.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis
From the article: “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”
The New York Times and all the other Leftwing news outlets betrayed their standards and principles back during the Vietnam war and have been advocates for Leftwing causes ever since.
The only difference between then and now is the volume of Leftwing Propaganda has been turned up to 11, and there is no room for any other opinions.
The Leftwing Media have turned themselves into active propagadists for the Left. Nothing they say should be taken at face value because there is a political agenda behind what they say, always.
From the article: “but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis”
I love that! Ain’t it the truth! They’re just trying to help us!
Please go away! We don’t need or want your “help”.
That brings another quote to mind, from Thoreau: “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.”
I’m from the government and I’m here to help you. To see the failures of socialism, one needs to look no further than U.S. indian reservations. And so on.
“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.“
In other words, Gnosticism, at least in the way it was described by St. Augustine. Amazing how the old heresies keep coming back.
A great many educated people saw the paper of record as a rotten apple long ago. Seeing evidence from the inside of the apple helps validate the external view. Elsewhere in the orchard basket there are varying degrees of rot with similar progression. The apple consumers should pick wisely or maybe come back another day.
“We understand and know very well that the world is complicated and that what we are asking for may not be easy. The changes necessary to safeguard humanity may seem very unrealistic,”
Never mind the platitudes just march vehemently and blindly on all ye who feel the heat and passion-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/greta-thunberg-demands-crisis-response-to-climate-change/ar-BB16OJoB
Leon Szilard, a brilliant Hungarian physicist of the mid 20th century, had this to say about extraterrestrials. I paraphrase. There are two possible answers: first, we are alone because the good Lord would not make the same mistake twice, second they exists and moreover they are already here and call themselves Hungarians. Over the years I have heard this one added to the list: they exist and do their very best to not have anything to do with us.
Bari Weiss got a dose of her own medicine. You can’t blame other for copying your own effective slandering methods. This kind of behaviour is classic whenever people are passionate about a cause.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/
Calling out lies, is now an “attack on academic freedom”?
Moral relativism is the business card of neomarxism.
I have no time for the NYT. But I have even less time for Bari Weiss.
Here’s what is wrong at the NYT.
https://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-finds-time-for-soul-searching-1201852490/
Here’s a taste of it . . .
“For starters, it’s important to accept that the New York Times has always — or at least for many decades — been a far more editor-driven, and self-conscious, publication than many of those with which it competes. Historically, the Los Angeles Times, where I worked twice, for instance, was a reporter-driven, bottom-up newspaper. Most editors wanted to know, every day, before the first morning meeting: “What are you hearing? What have you got?”
“It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.”
“Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”
“Making stuff up is easier than doing real work.”
No more true words were written. I entered medical school after a biology degree and studying a few years in fine arts – drawing, painting and design. So I have lived and worked in the worlds of science and art. One of my talks is titled “Science, Art and Models”, in which I make the case that art (a wonderful source of beauty and pleasure in our world) is the “making stuff up” part of human intellect, science is the finding truth by avoiding our own imagination and biases, and models are simply a product of the human imagination partly founded on what truths we believed we have learned from science, but often largely based on our own biases and adjusted perceptions.
So what has led western wealthy countries to slide back into the “making stuff up” mode of human thought and turning their back on the foundations of natural discovery and the learning of ‘truth”? My own simplistic hypothesis on this is that, as mentioned above, “making stuff up is easier than doing real work”. Then what kept us at the grindstone for so long trying to find the truths of the natural world that would allow us to build a richer, healthier and more successful society? Necessity! Before mid 20th century we had world conflict, poverty, contagion, hunger, oppression, corrupt governance and many other ills that stem from a large number of individuals competing for a limited supply of resources. Since then things have gotten much better as has been the overall trend of the very brief history of human society. Two to three generations of westerners have grown up in relatively wealthy middle class society and had little to do with real problems. This has allowed them to “slack off” intellectually and to give reign to their own irrational thoughts and beliefs because there were no real consequences to doing so and it is simply easier than rational thought and objective inquiry.
This behaviour has become institutionalize through the gradual appointment or election of more and more people to leadership posts who are not in fact leaders but rather followers. These are the folks who try to discern whatever is popular thought and behaviour, what is in fashion, what is socially correct according to the celebrities they worship. All of their actions are directed towards following those perceived trends without any consideration or question as to the merits. If it is in vogue then it must be good. This is what has brought the New York Times to the place where it competes favourably with the rags one passes at the checkout on the way to pay for your groceries. It is just another product of social fashion and unquestionably belief systems and no longer a place to find truth.
If we want this to change we will ultimately have to bite the bullet and discharge anyone in a leadership post who is not a true leader, and then fill those posts with people who are dedicated to rational thought, objective inquiry, balanced debate and making hard leadership decisions irrespective of frivolous fashion. Good looks, nice clothes and the spouting of “social justice” pablum at every opportunity will not build a better society.
Correction: “unquestioned belief systems”
Thanks Andy, good analysis. Today’s Americans (and westerners in general) certainly aren’t as tough, capable or discerning as just a few generations ago.
Twitter caught red handed having blacklists, while denying they have blacklists:
https://www.rt.com/news/494880-twitter-blacklist-leaked-images/
What’s amazing is that it took her so long to figure out these things (to me, obvious decades ago).
Funny. Halfway trough reading I thought she was talking about the Washington Post. Same difference I suppose. The problem is media endemic these days.
This did not begin in the 1960s although it was widely promoted and disseminated in the 1960s. It would be difficult to look at the research of one Joseph Rhine, Duke University, into ESP, beginning at least as early as the 1930s, and not see something that was absurd on its face, filled with specious and fallacious statistics, and yet gained mainstream belief by the 1950s.
The problem is the political left. Answers to questions on national surveys, including the General Social Survey, over a very long period of time, have shown that the left believe strongly in superstitions and magic. The more that superstition and magic gain sway over elite thinking, the more our “advanced” society looks neo-medieval — citizens become subjects, the educated become experts, then authorities, then a sort of entitled nobility. The entire “western world” has drifted left for decades, and throughout it all superstition has generally prevailed over reason, rationality, and science. I suspect it is the reason that spending has everywhere outpaced revenues, so that the more wealthy our societies grow, the more indebted (normalized by size of economy) and fragile we become — and the more hardened become a number of social pathologies, which the spending was supposed to vanquish.
I find some comfort in the view of the economist and optimist Herb Stein who said, things will continue until they can’t.
I agree with you, Kevin, that the the left wing is at the center of our problems. It has manufactured all the present hullabaloo about racism out of nothing.
Its takeover of the universities with their cultural and whiteness studies are themselves systemically racist and prejudicial, and have ruined academics. It has inflamed the temperaments of the students, and infected the minds of faculty and, especially, administrators.
I’ve been watching the slow destruction of Stanford University and SLAC, both of which have now introduced officers of the euphemistically labeled ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ which actually mean conformity, quotas, and systematic racism, respectively.
People will soon be forced from their jobs for wrongthink. I can’t imagine their continued excellence, should those policies persist.
Regarding the ultimate source of this, I offer that the Enlightenment was a cultural speciation event, in the true evolutionary sense. Humans are the only culturally obligate species. Speciation involving culture is a necessary outcome.
Homo individualis emerged from the older Homo collectivus, during the 15th through 18th centuries. The two species are now contending for the same ecological space, namely human society. The Romantic counterattack on the Enlightenment was actually the response of Homo collectivus to the emergence into view of a true competitor, Hi.
The left is composed chiefly of Homo collectivus. They’re great at organizing, as one might expect. They shift from one cause to another with the generations, because the specific ’cause’ is unimportant. Its only purpose is to energize collective action. That action is mobilized to wreck Hi societies. That’s why the causes of the left can be self-contradictory with time. The substance doesn’t matter.
Free speech in 1964. Censored speech in 2020. Opposing causes, same people.
It’s no surprise, in that light, that individual rights emerged with the appearance of humans with minds self-organized into an individualistic psychology. Individual rights have no place in a society of collectivists. There, adherence of the normative morality is all. Negotiation is heresy.
It’s a mortal contest.
I was reading last night about a college course in which part of the mandatory reading list was a book that claims that all whites and all conservatives are racist. Even black conservatives.
Apparently, if you don’t believe that affirmative action is a good idea, you are a racist.
As usual, leftists set themselves up as the measure of all things, and anyone who disagrees with them is evil and must be destroyed.
And there’s another example of leftist-contradiction as Pat Frank describes above — affirmative action is just reverse-discrimination.
With the universal imposition of, “equity, inclusion, and diversity” (= enforced quotas, enforced prejudice, and enforced conformity), it’s become systemic racism, beng.
As I’ve said before, leftists define right/wrong, good/evil based solely on whether they benefit from it.
Any tactic is defensible when they use. In the next breath they will attack anyone else who uses the same tactic.
Speaking of the faculty in CA universities.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/california-faculty-union-demands-free-tuition-for-black-students-removal-of-armed-campus-cops/
You may have something. Most of the ‘progressive’ lot do seem to believe in pyramids or salvation by weird diet. I remember in the 70’s when my dad, a rigid leftist, tried to get me to read a book about how the Russians had proved telepathy by killing baby rabbits and observing distress in the mothers who were under the sea in a submarine – something like that.
As far as Bari Weiss’s letter goes, I think she goes on and on, dissing her former colleagues. The letter reads as a piece for the media to circulate, not a short clear message in resignation. In other words, she is playing the same game as she accuses her colleagues of, but from the opposite side.
The leftish media and others of their ilk are behaving as if they have some self-importance and authority when they have neither.
They do, however, act like my mother would act if I said something that was true, forthright, and real. She would repeatedly tell me: “You can’t say that. You can say – – – – -,” and my response to her dishonest attempts to “manage” what I said got this response from me: “Oh, so you want me to lie instead of telling the truth?”
That always annoyed her.
Having to lie to make someone else happy is the worst thing you can do. Dishonesty and falsehood run rampant in today’s world, which is unfortunate. It’s unfortunate that Ms. Weiss is too honest for her “own good” (I think that’s the term for it) and her coworkers are nothing but spoiled brats and bullies who lie like dogs and hammer anyone they see as a threat. That is SOOOOO first grade on the school playground, you know.
But I do support her in the choice she made. I think it will pay her in her favor. It just won’t be quick to do so.
I forgot to add something about this: Crichton claimed in his famous Caltech lecture that the intellectual rot started in the 1960s, with the SETI project. – article
Well, we now have SIX (count ’em) SETI signals, including the original “WOW!” signal that got those two Ohio State astronomers all wigged out in the 1970s, but has never been repeated. It makes for a good source for science fiction, maybe a “cry for help” from a civilization under attack some 300 million lights years distant in a galaxy far, far away, but by the time it left, no one on Earth even existed, and when it gets here, it gets a “Wow!’ rating, and that’s about it.
And speaking of oogey-boogey stuff like magick/sorcery/whatever, there are people who have made a very good living as authors of fantasy fiction.
The new McCarthyism needs to be combatted, but Bari Weiss is not the best person for the job.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/07/bari-weiss-leaves-the-nyt-and-thats-bad-for-zionists/
“Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob” seems to be the standard response anymore, and not just with publishers.
“The Left eats its own”, part whatever. If the likes of Rowling and Chomsky were denounced as insufficiently virtuous, what hope she could have?..