How Morally Bankrupt Can a Free Press Be?

The New York Times has no special reason for appreciating the professional choices of its former collaborator, Bari Weiss. When Ms. Weiss resigned from her otherwise enviable job as opinion editor and writer in July 2020, she circulated a detailed resignation letter in which she accused the news organization of having a culture of bullying and ideological conformity. She went so far as to claim that Twitter had become the “ultimate editor” of The New York Times.
She also cited the paper’s hostility to her self-described courageous attempts to bring diverse voices to the paper. Disappointed at the journal’s failure to implement the goals she had defined, she complained of constant bullying from colleagues who disagreed with her views. Weiss described the environment as “illiberal,” accusing some colleagues of calling her a Nazi and a racist.
The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary has, in its brief history, had no qualms about calling into question the NYT’s journalism for its ideological bias and its servile relationship with the US national security state. We can therefore sympathize with a former employee in a position to reveal why some of the news and analysis produced by the Gray Lady comes out as distorted and unreliable.
It may therefore seem paradoxical that we are convinced by the breath of fresh air Bari Weiss has promised to bring to the world of US journalism.
Bari Weiss founded The Free Press in 2021. Her aim was to “produce news stories that exemplify the journalistic ideals of honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence,” which she felt were lacking in mainstream journalism, committed as it appeared to be to the ideological conformity that permeates legacy media.
The NYT author Matt Flegenheimer’s article offers this description of Weiss’s method: “The founder of The Free Press has built a new media empire by persuading audiences that she is a teller of dangerous truths.”
Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:
An expression that pretentious people apply to the largely unoriginal ideas they think they have invented and which they mistakenly believe will upset and humiliate people whose viewpoint differs from their own.
Flegenheimer’s position is officially listed as The New York Times correspondent “focusing on in-depth profiles of powerful figures.” As a kind of takedown artist he reformulates our definition, applied to Weiss, in these terms: “She has created, or at least created space at, a cool kids’ table all her own, positioning herself as a teller of dangerous truths while becoming a kind of brand ambassador for the views and passions of her audience, which often seem to track neatly with her own: that elite universities have lost the plot; that legacy outlets have lost their minds; that Ms. Weiss knows the way forward.”
The NYT may be guilty of many of the many of the flaws and even crimes Weiss attributes to it, but at least has the humility to present itself as a collective effort to present the news of the world. Despite its obvious biases and often sanctimonious tone, it embraces a variety of styles of addressing the questions in the news, even when consciously limiting the breadth of its worldview. In contrast, Weiss makes it clear that The Free Press was created to revolve around her unique personality and her particular sensibilities. Its overall purpose, despite her fake commitment to variety, consists of ennobling her own personal assemblage of popular ideologies, which range from the provocatively unorthodox to the shamelessly conformist.
Flegenheimer quotes the assessment of veteran pollster and strategist Frank Luntz: “She doesn’t just speak to the 1 percent. She speaks to the one-hundredth of 1 percent. And they’ll listen.” They are titillated by the idea that what interests them may be deemed by others to be “dangerous truths,” even though they more often resemble narcissistic self-celebration.
To prove Luntz is right, here is how Weiss responds to the challenge by her interviewer at the recent All-In Summit of changing a society that is “morally bankrupt.” As expected, she has the foolproof, universally appropriate answer. “It starts with something very simple. Give up the heroin needle of prestige. Rip it out of your arm immediately. Stop poisoning yourself, your family and your children with the bankrupt notion that getting them into Harvard and Yale is more important than inculcating in them a sense of love of family, of country and of all of the things we used to think were normal.” This was followed by the audience’s deafening applause.
For Weiss, the key to solving the problem at the core of US culture will be to change the outlook of literally “one-hundredth of 1 percent” of the US population: those who see their parental mission as consisting of getting their children into Harvard or Yale. What could anyone who thinks in those terms possibly mean when she evokes “all of the things we used to think were normal?” Who is the “we” she has in mind? And what is “normal?” Does she not know that among “normal” Americans, more likely to be affected by the risk of homelessness and the opioid pandemic than by the “heroin” of sending their children to Harvard, survival rather than “prestige” is what they are focused on?
Weiss apparently sees the quest for prestige as the unique original sin of contemporary US culture. “Prestige and honor,” she adds, “is [sic] not something that has been granted to you by institutions that have allowed themselves to be corrupted by morally bankrupt people.” The world around Weiss is morally corrupt. Her own pursuit of prestige and honor by launching the nobly inclusive Free Press should not, on the other hand, be deemed “morally bankrupt.”
Analyzing US culture is one thing. Looking at historical events gives us another perspective on what it means to be morally rich or morally bankrupt.
On October 3, Weiss featured her interview with Douglas Murray on Israel’s war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice assessed as a “plausible genocide” back in January. Subsequent actions have confirmed that assessment, as schools, hospitals and civilian infrastructure have been sacrificed in what literally resembles an extermination campaign that has now been extended to the neighboring state of Lebanon. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has now called the war an “unmitigated disaster.”
The subtitle of Weiss’s interview with Murray reads, “The West is ‘drunk on peace.’ What will it take to wake them up?” Weiss describes Murray in the following terms: “And it is Douglas, more than almost anyone in the world, who has articulated the stakes of this war with the moral clarity it requires.” The UN and the International Court of Justice cannot be deemed purveyors of moral clarity. They are too “drunk on peace” to appreciate the necessity of a never-ending genocide.
How is the following as an example of Murray’s superior moral reasoning? “I was told by a Jewish friend the other day that apparently there is something in the Torah that says one should not take enormous delight in the decimation of one’s foes. But I’m not Jewish, and so I don’t have to follow this.” So, Murray’s superior “moral clarity” tells us that the rules governing the religion committing atrocities should be suspended because he, who is not subject to those rules, has a moral vision that sees those atrocities as justified. It would be difficult to find a better example not of moral bankruptcy, which so preoccupies Weiss, but of moral perversity.
Weiss is a product and promoter of the American art of hyperreality. She sucks up bits of reality and processes them for commercial advantage. That’s why the Venture Capitalist (VC) crowd that organized the All-In Summit loves her. She has done what all the great entrepreneurs celebrated in VC lore have done: She has not just made money — a banal accomplishment anyone with talent can manage — but built fame and prestige out of fabricating truly dangerous truths.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]
[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.