Warning up front: It’ll be an investment of time. Over two hours, to be exact.
It’s Jordan Peterson, interviewing former NYTimes editor Bari Weiss, who famously resitned from the paper, roasting it all the way for its obseisance, not to “journalism”, but to the feelings and politicized motivation of a small, “woke” faction of the staff.
It’ll be worth the investment:
If we can’t trust our institutions – law enforcement and the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the media – to act fairly and dispassionately – then the Republica has a huge problem.
Also: the Republic has a huge problem.
Modern journalism isn’t about fact, it’s about narrative — and narrative is about drama and conflict.
That’s because it’s journalism, not reporting.
Reporting means you tell the reader who, what, when, where, why.
Journalism means you tell them that stuff plus how you feel about it, and how the reader should too, if they weren’t such hateful bigots.
Two hours? To listen to someone, a former NY Times editor grouse about the consequences of decisions in which she took part? You have that much time to kill? Dare I say waste?
Jordan’s interviewing style takes getting used to. He is as interested in how his subjects came to have their opinons as he is about the opinions themselves, especially when their opinions have changed.
Bari Weiss is not old, but has the opinions of an old liberal. She believes in a liberal society whose goal is to promote human flourishing. She will choose free speech rights over “justice.”
Weiss has a lot to say about how the woke employees came to control the news and editorial operations at the Times, and what made it possible. She says, for example, that in the old days the Times made its money off of advertising, and its news and opinion sections reflected that. Now it makes its money off of its subscribers, and as a result it has become more like a social media platform and less like a pre-2000 newspaper.
Sorry, MO, but that is passive-aggressive BS. A decision was made (active voice) to coddle and indulge the subscribers who are in general woke and toss aside (also active voice) those less woke. Unless she clearly stated to the contrary (and can back it up), she was part of that transition and when the woke came for her she bolted.
Eff her.
What can I say? Watch the interview. She is 37 and was only at the Times 2017-2020. She is a lesbian and a zionist. You gotta take allies where you can find them.
Sorry for the unclear phrasing, MO. I didn’t mean you wrote passive-aggressive BS. I trust your digest.
No problem, JDM. I found it interesting, anyhow, to get a look into the sausage factory that is the NY Times editorial process. The NY Times newsroom revolt against Tom Cotton’s op-ed calling for troops to put down last summer’s riots exposed a lot of the rot to Weiss, especially the cowardice & lack of integrity of NY Times management. She felt that after that episode, she could no longer do her job because a new rule was introduced that required all the opinion editors to approve every op-ed.