Resignation of NYT columnist ignites firestorm
A Squirrel Hill native announced her resignation on Tuesday from The New York Times opinion section, touching off yet another media-centered social media storm split along party lines.
Bari Weiss, a self-proclaimed political centrist, has joined a number of editors and writers in recent months facing backlash for controversial ideas, columns and headlines. The publications range from the Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times to Vanity Fair and even Bon Appetit magazine. Adding fuel to the fire is a letter titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” published by Harper’s Magazine online July 7 and signed by numerous public figures, including Ms. Weiss, many of whom are now facing backlash and pressure to remove their signatures.
A former staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Weiss wrote after the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre about growing up in Squirrel Hill. The piece, which ran in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is titled “You cannot gun down the Tree of Life.” She spent the following year writing a much-critiqued book, “How to Fight AntiSemitism,” that won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award. She spoke about the book at Chatham University.
“We are living in an age when anti-Semitism is on the rise here at home,” Ms. Weiss wrote in her Post Gazette column. “Every Jewish community in America will now have to make sensible decisions about how to ensure that it is not the next victim of someone like [the shooter].”
Ms. Weiss joined The New York Times three years ago and has faced criticism due to her work and social media posts, but that is not what led to her departure from the Times, she says. In her resignation letter, which was published on her website, she describes “unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment and constructive discharge.”
“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,” she wrote. “But the lessons that ought to have followed the [2016] 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.”
Ms. Weiss could not be reached for comment. The Washington Post reported that the Times will not issue a public response to her resignation, and that acting editorial page editor Kathleen Kingsbury said, “We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion.”
Ms. Weiss wrote that Times stories are chosen and written in a manner that only appeals to a specific audience. She claimed that she — a Jewish woman — has been called a Nazi and a racist and that a piece thought likely to inspire backlash is “quickly steered to safer ground.”
“Every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated,” she wrote.
Critics of her work argue that Ms. Weiss is a rightwing commentator masking herself as a centrist and that she has a long history of sloppy writing and questionable viewpoints. A common thread in deprecatory social media in response to her resignation include references to the idea of cancel culture. Commenters suggest Ms. Weiss was not fired or silenced and that she has “canceled herself” in hopes of becoming a media martyr.
“If someone like @bariweiss feels like she can’t do her best work at the @nytimes, they should make some real changes over there,” tweeted former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
On the right, Twitter supporters have included U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, RTexas and Donald Trump Jr., son of the U.S. president.
Ms. Weiss said in her resignation letter that The New York Times has warped its coverage to emphasize particular narratives at the expense of broader points of view. She cited the recent controversy over the publication of an editorial by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, which resulted in the resignation of editorial page editor James Bennet after public and internal backlash.
She also recently took to Twitter to decry an internal struggle at the Times between “(mostly young) wokes” and “(mostly 40+) liberals,” with the former engaging in what she called “safetyism,” the idea that protecting someone’s emotional and psychological well-being is more important than upholding free speech. Again, critics dissented, arguing that ideas and speech can lead to physical harm and danger and should be checked before they do so.
A Pew Research study released in May indicates that Americans are split in their confidence in journalists, with just under half saying they have at least a “fair amount” of confidence in journalists and the other half voting “no confidence.”
Another Pew study from January concluded that “evidence suggests that partisan polarization in the use and trust of media sources has widened in the past five years,” noting that compared to a similar study in 2014, Republicans have grown “increasingly alienated” from many established sources while Democrats continue to view them as trustworthy.
Within hours of Ms. Weiss’ announcement, New York Magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan also announced on Twitter that he would be leaving the publication at the end of the week. He did not provide a reason other than describing the underlying reasons for the split as “self-evident” and promising a discussion of the broader issues in his final column on Friday.