The New York Times revealed.
Bari Weiss, until last week, was an opinion page writer at The New York Times. She is a self-described “centrist liberal.” She was hired following the 2016 election – when the Times suffered a convulsive realization that the paper might not really understand the country it is supposed to be covering.
Ms. Weiss resigned from the Times last week. In so doing, she posted her brilliant resignation letter that offers a behind-the-scenes view of the leftist corruption that has destroyed mainstream American journalism.
Her letter is a tour de force – chock full of money quotes. Here is one of my favorites.
…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.”
Bravo. I have been searching for a way to concisely describe the smug, condescending, elitist leftism that has taken over substantially all of American journalism. I now have it.
Ms. Weiss goes on to say,
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 draw their own conclusions.”
In my nearly 30 years of owning a network-affiliated news and talk radio station, I have spent a lot of time with network anchors, reporters and executives. Some of them I count as real friends. Some of them – a distinct minority – actually share my conservative beliefs. Others are at least intellectually honest and will privately engage in civil, thoughtful discussion. But the operative word is ‘privately.’ They dare not do so in plain view. A newsroom employee’s public departure from the leftist orthodoxy that pervades New York City and Washington, D.C. newsrooms carries a high risk of career suicide.
Again, the words of Bari Weiss:
My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. 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.”
The New York Times is still the bell cow of American journalism. Its reporting still informs the reporting of nearly all other outlets. Thanks to Ms. Weiss, we see in high relief just how far afield American journalism has strayed. She quotes an 1896 statement from the Times’s legendary publisher Adolph Ochs, who at the time aspired,
…to make the columns of The New York Times a forum for consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”
Those days are long gone. Consume your media accordingly.
As with most of the media these days, the New York Times is no longer in the news business, having switched to the agenda business. Fortunately, these people are no longer the only news source available to the public. These days we get real, honest news from sources other than the New York Times and their legion of lickspittles, In time the tide will turn and bring back more real journalism. In the meantime, I pity the media types who stray from the liberal agenda and orthodoxy.
Maybe she can replace Young Carlson.
I never understood why the “Gray Lady”, along with most of the so-called mainstream media, are hell-bent on promoting a form of government that will eliminate them. Paul’s opinion piece exposes the bowels of this publication and reflects what we always thought, but they always denied. But why? Please explain to this inquiring mind why a free enterprise that enjoys first amendment protections would not do everything possible to defend the system of government that grants such protections. You can bet your bottom dollar that a Marxist authoritarian government will have them on the top of the hit list, except to echo the government line. How about this title for a newspaper: The New York Izvestia or Pravda? The “Gray Lady” will be the “Red Lady”!
NO newspaper is still in the commodity news business anymore, because news — the raw data — has been commoditized.
It’s like ketchup. Want some? Grab a fistful of packets at McDonalds.
That thing-in-your-pocket we used to call “a phone” — or whatever other digital device you’re using to read this — cut-out middlemen who cut-down trees to deliver yesterday’s news.
So NYT is doing what Roger Ailes did inventing Fox News: flavor it, as affirmation to a defined constituency. Choose your channel, dismiss the others.
You can still get the unfiltered version by downloading the AP app…or skipping their handy aggregation entirely, by bookmarking, for instance, CDC.
And if the raw data challenges your comfortable predisposition, call them “Deep State” (through a face mask).
Cute……..sure, we all know that the NYT is selling a yesterday’s news commodity to an eager leftist reader. This is called marketing, or providing products or services to those who wish to buy those particular products or services. However, why do these media outlets seem so determined to commit suicide? Shouldn’t they be acutely aware of the fate of a free press under Marxism?
It’s less “suicide” than “cancer,” as explained by this scrappy digital pioneer. She and her small, energized staff ran-rings-around a once-proud paper The Dallas Morning News ended-up selling, to a chop-shop hedge fund:
https://youtu.be/hyryqHnuldU
Great link! From Rhode Island to “Russia Today”…..small leap! The Dallas Morning News may be improved with the chop-shop ownership…no regrets here! Just remember, some cancers are treatable and curable, but suicides are 100% fatal. I cannot buy the optimism that the NYT or other media outlets will be allowed free expression under Marxism. How could anyone be so blind?
Excellent work Mr. Gleiser.
If America’s great men and women founders were alive today, they would give no quarter to the current political correctness balderdash, or to the cancel culture craziness, or to the marxist communist fascist BLM / Antifa groups. All three are a grave danger to our constitutional republic, and we –citizens of law & order and goodwill– must push back strongly until these three perversions of truth are defeated absolutely.
Of all people, American journalists, should cherish FREEDOM over subjugation. But those who choose to give in to “leftist group think” are going down the road toward socialism marxist fascism where FREEDOM of thought, word, and deed no longer function or even exist. And to any thinking person, one can only come to the correct answer that such a path, is not only disastrous, but is EVIL.
Choose GOOD. For The United States of America that we love as Founded [1776] weighs in the balance.
TRUMP 2020
GOD bless America.
Amen Mr. Anderson, AMEN!