AMERICA — Bari Weiss, an Opinion columnist and editor for The New York Times, resigned from her position with the publication on Tuesday, July 14, noting bullying from within the company on various platforms in regards to her centrist ideals.
“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,” Weiss said.
Weiss wrote in her resignation to Times publisher A.C. Sulzberger, which she also posted on her personal website, that the newspaper catered to an “illiberal environment” and toxic behavior. She also noted that masthead editors regularly and openly demeaned her character on Slack, the messaging app. Meanwhile, other coworkers would publicly smear Weiss as a liar and bigot on Twitter with no repercussions from higher-ups. Colleagues who have disagreed with her views have called Weiss a “Nazi and racist,” she wrote.
Following the 2016 election, Weiss’s ideals were initially favored by The Times with the goal to bring in voices that wouldn’t have normally appeared in the publication, noting the loose grasp the paper had in terms of their coverage on the country, she wrote.
The Times has been the subject of what Weiss would call a “civil war” after the newspaper published an Opinion-Editorial piece from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) calling for troops to be deployed to stop the riots occurring in the midst of social justice protests. The column was met with much scrutiny from within the publication and also social media.
Former Times Opinion Editor James Bennet resigned from the company on June 7, following the backlash in regards to the article, with The Times saying that the piece “fell short of our standards and should not have been published.”
“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,” Weiss said.
In her resignation, Weiss called out The Times for not reprimanding with the same criticism other articles that have been published, such “as Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.”
Weiss also notes The Times appeal towards satisfying a narrow Twitter audience, rather than allowing the public to “read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.”
“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,” Weiss said. “Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.”
The resignation of Weiss is one of many to occur in a mass exodus of employees within the media who have been ousted or removed from their job in light of pressure from social justice reformists.
