I really sort of went back and forth all morning
about whether I should talk about this Barry
White situation or not.
And I decided to talk about it at least as
an introduction into exploring whether some
bigger discussion is required.
So let me explain to you what's going on and
then we'll talk about it.
Barry Weiss was up until yesterday a New York
Times opinion columnist.
And yesterday she wrote a resignation letter,
which she published on her Web site.
And the resignation letter led to the entire
sort of social media sphere being abuzz.
Different people for different reasons.
But everybody from you know, I think Don Junior
tweeted about it all the way to the folks
in the so-called intellectual dark web and
sort of like everybody in between.
And I think what the letter says is one piece
of it and the reaction is another piece.
And I want to talk about both.
Now, Barry Weiss was hired by The New York
Times in 2017 to write about culture and politics.
And she became significantly more well-known
when she wrote a widely disseminated piece
about the intellectual dark web.
And she's appeared on Bill Maher's program.
She's appeared on a number of different programs.
And when she published this resignation letter
yesterday, the social media space exploded
up for different reasons.
But all with the assumption and the understanding
that this resignation letter is a bombshell,
blockbuster indictment of The New York Times
and of media intolerant media more generally.
And, you know, during the day, I was seeing
this stuff in little fits and spurts, but
I was busy with this bogus, urgent press conference
that Donald Trump held.
And covering the expanding war between the
White House and the medical community on Corona
virus, we had another death surge to nearly
a thousand deaths, record deaths in multiple
states.
We had multiple live streams yesterday.
So it wasn't really until last night that
I even read the resignation letter.
I slept on it.
I looked at it again today.
And I have to tell you, I've looked at this
thing six ways from Sunday.
I think the phrase is, excuse me if I've got
that one wrong.
I'm not sure that there is actually that much
to discuss in terms of this being a bombshell,
other than it really seems like The New York
Times isn't the right place for Barry Weiss
to do her writing.
Now, I want to be really clear.
I don't dislike Barry Weiss, nor do I think
her work is bad.
I don't always agree with her conclusions,
but she's done some reasonable work.
She has done some interesting pieces about
ways in which anti-Semitism is often ignored
or oppression is is not taken as seriously
when it comes to the Jewish community.
And I've been talking about that for a long
time.
I think there's different standards there.
I think she's reasonably interested in that
topic and sort of does it does does pretty
good coverage there.
She's way off on a whole bunch of other stuff.
But that's OK, right?
That's not a personal problem I have with
her that would apply to.
I mean, listen, Andrew Sullivan, who I'm going
to mention later, a conservative.
Sometimes he says things I agree with and
a lot of what he says I disagree with.
It doesn't mean I want him fired or his voice
suppressed or whatever the case may be.
Now, let's dig into the letter itself.
May be the most notable part of the letter
is a paragraph about the relationship between
The New York Times and social media, where
she says, quote, Twitter is not on the masthead
of The New York Times, but Twitter has become
its ultimate editor.
As the ethics and morals 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.
In another paragraph, she sort of seems to
issue an indictment of what was allowed to
take place at the New York Times and says
that, quote, showing up for work as a centrist,
referring to herself, showing up for work
as a centrist, that an American newspaper
should not require bravery, clearly implying
that The New York Times has become some kind
of radical left wing publication.
And her centrism required her to be brave,
to show up in spite of it in the face of and
despite recriminations and and, you know,
all sorts of attacks on her, not physical,
but ideological.
So in general, she is arguing that The New
York Times increasingly is catering to a very
narrow audience and that anybody looking to
put out something outside of that narrow scope
of opinion is just like not really allowed
or welcome at The New York Times, both from
the point of view of the publication, but
also just in terms of her feeling like she
was just not treated particularly well at
The New York Times.
She wasn't in the in crowd at The New York
Times because of her differences of opinion,
which to me relates more to a toxic work environment
than it is a criticism of The New York Times
as a journalistic institution.
And that's where I get to my first sort of
primary point here.
When you see a letter like this and then you
start reading the responses, often the responses
are very generalized and it's sort of like,
are people responding to what she says about
The New York Times as a media outlet or what
she says about The New York Times as an employer?
Because toxic work environments are are unfortunately
very common and we need to distinguish in
looking at her letter.
What is she asserting about how she felt while
working at The New York Times, which is completely
valid?
And what are her criticisms about The New
York Times as a media institution which can
be argued and are up for the debate?
I mean, for example, she argues that The New
York Times is now catering to the narrowest
slice of the political spectrum.
If that's the case, it would be reflected
presumably in decreased viewership of The
New York Times because it appeals to a smaller
and smaller slice of the population.
So we could look at that empirically.
I happen to know what the answer is, but I
don't think it's particularly relevant to
this story.
But The New York Times is actually doing quite
well.
Now, you could argue, well, it's because they've
decided just to criticize Trump.
OK, but now now we're in a gray area.
All of a sudden, there's some interesting
criticisms that I want to look at that focus
on the media piece that are much more broad
than The New York Times.
But the bombshell about The New York Times
that some are pointing to here, I'm just not
seeing it now.
First and foremost, from the point of view
of opinion, The New York Times is basically
a center left publication.
They've correctly mean listen to to say they're
biased because they do a lot of Trump critiques.
Donald Trump is a uniquely bad actor who has
done things no president has done before.
We're every week.
Never mind.
You know, sometimes every day there's a new
scandal.
So The New York Times, as the center left
paper that also does investigative journalism,
has been correctly criticizing a lot of Donald
Trump's presidency.
And remember, there was no big pro Bernie
voice at The New York Times.
There was also no big pro Trump voice at The
New York Times.
And that's the point.
It's center left sort of in line with MSNBC,
but they do more investigative journalism,
which is a separate department than the opinion
side.
The New York Times, from an opinion perspective,
seems widely in line with the Democratic Party.
Both are center left.
Now, if your problem is I don't want The New
York Times to be center left.
OK.
That now.
Now we can talk about that.
But The New York Times is some radical place
is just wrong.
It's empirically wrong.
Secondly, there is the idea of what is considered
outside the Overton Window for The New York
Times.
And Barry Weiss talked about talked about
the.
What is or isn't acceptable to say or publish
at The New York Times.
And from Barry Weiss's perspective, the Overton
Window is too narrow at The New York Times.
It doesn't include certain perspectives.
And as a result, she feels like her work was
demeaned and not maybe given the placement
or seriousness that she believes it deserves.
That's completely legitimate.
And it genuinely does seem like her work was
not best placed at The New York Times.
But that's not strikingly different from saying
the National Review wouldn't be the right
place for a lot of stuff.
Fox News is not the right place for a lot
of stuff.
I believe Barry Weiss is genuine when she
says that the environment at The New York
Times was not the right place for what she
writes.
And I still want her to write.
And it's OK if The New York Times is in the
right place.
She also says that the work environment was
hostile in a day to day perspective.
And I have no reason to doubt that there is
no shortage of toxic and hostile work environment.
But let's not mix the two things.
And and importantly, she wasn't silenced.
She wasn't fired.
She determined she didn't like the work environment
and the way which her work was received.
And that's a very different thing than the
bombshell that many people are making this
out to be.
Now, there is a separate issue here, which
we have to talk about in terms of her criticism
of The New York Times as a journalistic endeavor.
And there is no shortage of criticism of The
New York Times.
And in general, I agree that too many media
outlets are catering to social media as a
primary doorway to their content and social
media and share ability of content.
And journalism has changed how The New York
Times and just about every media outlet behaves.
But that is not the wide spread indictment
that maybe some are making her letter out
to be so in total.
As I read the piece, I see very little that's
unique to The New York Times other than Barry
Weiss worked there.
And her relationship to the Times is different
than to the National Review or some other
publication.
Every media outlet has biases which come from
ideology or corporate structure, from availability
bias, from a desire to maintain access to
people in positions of power, whatever else.
Maybe at The New York Times, the bias has
sort of one shape at the Wall Street Journal.
The bias has a different shape at The Washington
Post or the Washington Times or Fox News or
CNN or The David Pakman Show Bias Caesar or
shaped in different ways.
That's a big, complex issue that's widely
studied in media literacy classes.
But the idea that some journalistic outlets
don't want a full range of of political opinion
represented.
That's not new.
I mean, that applies to us, right?
I control the preponderance of certain types
of ideas that are put out on my program.
I exclude some stuff.
There's some stuff that would be a bad fit
for this program if it didn't work out for
Barry Weiss at The New York Times.
She's completely right to leave.
And her critique of how she felt from a personal
perspective there is completely valid.
But I don't see the bombshell here that many
are making it out to be.
I'm willing to have my mind changed.
Now, one last thing.
Andrew Sullivan has also announced that he's
leaving the Atlantic at the end of this week.
I would not be surprised if there's some announcement
coming about some new endeavor where Barry
Weiss and Andrew Sullivan and maybe others
are going to be involved.
We'll see if we soon learn about that.
