Jeffrey A. Tucker adds to what was written yesterday about the New York Times:

The resignation letter from former New York Times editor and writer Bari Weiss was so powerful because it seemed to state what many once-loyal readers – I’ve been among them for many years, even given the obvious bias of the paper – already knew given the way things there have been going in the last year or so.

Something has gone very wrong at the newspaper of record. Weiss named it in a very satisfying letter writing with a burning desire to tell the truth.

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

At this paper, dogma has replaced reporting. Ideology has displaced facts. All facts are filtered through an agenda. If something doesn’t fit the agenda, it is not reported. I’ve become so frustrated with this, especially during the lockdown months in which the paper seemed to have a rule of blaming the virus and not the policy response for all existing problems, that I find it barely readable anymore.

When precisely this happened is unclear. Some say that the “woke” generation has figured out how to troll the old-time liberals that used to run the shop. Some would name the 1619 Project, which might have been an interesting and important coming to terms with a dark side of American history but instead turned into a full-on trashing of every American value plus the existence of capitalism itself. (You can read Phil Magness’s masterful response in book form.)

My own overwhelming consciousness that something had fallen apart began on February 27, 2020, with the New York Times podcast. Reporter Daniel McNeil told the host of this podcast that “this is alarmist, but I think right now, it’s justified. This one reminds me of what I have read about the 1918 Spanish influenza.”

Reminds him? That’s his justification for spreading international panic? He claimed that “If you have 300 relatively close friends and acquaintances, six of them would die.” The host of the show summed up McNeil’s message: “2 percent lethality rate of 50 percent of the country,” meaning 3.5 million dead. McNeil didn’t disagree.

I was stunned because there was zero evidence for such outlandish claims. Not even Neil Ferguson predicted anything that ridiculous. Meanwhile, genuine experts were desperately trying to calm people down even as the New York Times was spreading maximum panic, probably for political reasons.

In the weeks and months since then, the paper’s coronavirus doctrine was set in stone. It goes like this. This is a terrifying pandemic. Many millions will die. Everyone is vulnerable. The only solution is to lock down. If we don’t lock down, it is Trump’s fault. Therefore Trump is responsible for all death. That message has been repeated thousands of times, every day in every way, ever since.

This is not science. It is not reporting. It is fanatical ideology in the guise of reporting. Thank goodness former Times reporters like Alex Berenson call them out daily.

Now, readers see all this and say to me, hey, things have never been right at this paper. I would dispute that. From 1934 to 1946, the great economic journalist Henry Hazlitt wrote not only a daily editorial but also curated the Book Reviews. There were times when the name Ludwig von Mises appeared on the front page of that review section, with glowing reviews of his books.

Even looking back at the paper’s virus coverage of the postwar past, the rule was always the same: bring calm and urge trust of medical professionals to manage the disease but otherwise keep society functioning. That’s what the paper said in 1957-58 (Asian Flu) and 1968-69 (Hong Kong Flu). The paper has a long tradition of trying to find that “vital center” while allowing editorials on either end of that so long as they seemed responsible. (As for its coverage during the Progressive Era, I’ll leave that alone; it was nothing about which to brag.)

However, there is one gigantic, glaring, appalling, and essentially inexcusable exception to that. It is the case of Walter Duranty, the Times’s bureau chief in Moscow from 1922 to 1936. He was in a prime position to tell the truth about the catastrophic famimes, political purges, rampant murders, and millions dead at the hands of the Soviet regime during these years. He was stationed there, ruled the roost, and had access to information denied to most of the rest of the world.

In particular, Duranty might have covered the millions who died (were slaughtered really) due to deliberate famine in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. He did not. He did the opposite. In frequent articles for the Times, Duranty assured readers that all was well, that Stalin was a great leader, that everyone was more or less happy, that there was nothing to see in Ukraine.

His later book was called I Write as I Please (1935). It should have been called I Write to Please Stalin. Incredibly, the paper won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his coverage. The paper has never repudiated it. They still claim credit for it, despite the horrors that its pages were responsible for hiding from the world.

It’s extremely difficult to face this terrible history but once you do, you experience a major example of how lies can perpetuate a killing machine. Duranty ruled the press in Moscow, suppressing truth in every way possible and convincing the world that all was well in the Soviet Union, even though it is quite clear from the documented history that he knew better. He preferred the lie to the truth, probably because he was being blackmailed but also because he was a communist and had absolutely no moral compass. To what extent his New York editors cooperated in this outrageous fraud remains unclear. At the very least, they wanted him to be correct so much that they didn’t bother with an ounce of incredulity, even though he was exculpating and celebrating a totalitarian dictator.

It was this disgusting period of the paper’s history that ultimately led to the cover-up of one of the century’s greatest crimes. It was only revealed, through great moral courage, by journalist Malcolm Muggeridge (writing for the Manchester Guardian) and then by Gareth Jones, an independent English journalist who saw the suffering first hand, experienced near starvation, barely got out of Moscow, and, at great risk to himself and others, revealed the crimes of Stalin and the calamity in Ukraine to the world.

Which brings me to the real inspiration for this article: the 2019 movie Mr. Jones. You can rent it on Amazon. I urge you to do so. It’s a riveting historical epic based entirely on the true story of Duranty, Orwell, and Jones.

Rarely has a movie haunted me so much. It’s brilliant, mostly historically accurate, and celebratory of the kind of moral courage it requires to cause truth to prevail over lies in an age of tyranny. How is it possible that millions could die and the world not know and so many people would cooperate in the deliberate suppression of truth – people who otherwise had prestige and privilege and reputations for integrity? It happens. It did happen. It could happen again, unless people are willing to stand up and say what is true.

In some ways, it is happening now.

I’m pretty sure you know the feeling of looking at actual facts on the ground of this virus and then comparing them with the frenzied mania you get on the news daily, and especially at the New York Times, which only today warned that countless others will die if we don’t re-lockdown the entire country.

It only takes a modicum of intelligence to realize that this writer is talking about “cases,” which are overwhelmingly a result of required tests, mostly asymptomatic, and focused on the young and healthy who are in very little danger from this virus. We know this. We’ve known this since February. But he doesn’t tell the readers that. Instead it is hysterical and urging more, more, more public panic and a national lockdown.

In these months, the pattern at the Times has been the same:

• Attribute terrible economic fallout not to the lockdowns but to the virus;
• Attribute virus fallout to the failure to lockdown enough;
• Deliberately confuse readers about the difference between tests, cases, and deaths;
• Never focus on the incredibly obvious demographics of C19 death: average age 82 with underlying conditions;
• Ignore completely the primary victims of lockdowns: especially small businesses, the poor and minority groups, marginalized communities, artists, immigrant communities, small towns, small theaters, and so on.
• Do not publish anything that speaks of the path that all civilized countries prior dealt with new viruses: the vulnerable protect themselves while everyone else gets exposed with resulting immunity (Sweden did as well as any country because it refused to violate human rights);
• Dismiss any alternative to lockdown as crazy, unscientific, and cruel, while acting as if Fauci speaks for the whole of the scientific community;
• Above all, promote panic over calm.

From what I can tell, the last time that the New York Times ran anything realistic or sensible on this whole subject was March 20, 2020: Dr. David Katz on why the costs of lockdown are too high. Re-reading it now, it is apparent that the editors forced him to dial back his views, because elsewhere he was much more explicit.

At this point, it’s painful even to read their daily news reports, because they are all so transparently and obviously an extension of this above pattern and the larger agenda, which seems so obviously political. I don’t believe that everyone at the Times approves of this; it’s just an ethos that becomes self enforcing in the interest of job retention and career ambition.

I’ve been asked countless times whether this censorship at the Times of serious commentary is driven by politics, and, namely, Trump hatred. As an early critic of the president and someone who has written probably several hundred articles criticizing many aspects of this administration’s politics, the idea that an entire nation would be caused unthinkable suffering in the name of a holy war against Trump is basically unconscionable. Is it true? There is surely a grain of truth to the suspicions here, and even one grain is too much.

It is in this sense that the news reporting and editorial policies of the New York Times today remind me of 1932 and the way in which journalism is being used to push out dogma over truth, selective facts over full and balanced coverage, ideology over tolerance, propaganda over diversity of opinion, and an aggressive political agenda over humane and careful journalism. It seems out of control at this point.

This is why the inside testimony of Bari Weiss is so valuable and timely. Tolerance for different points of view sounds good in theory. In practice, there is an enormous draw toward righthink and the exercise of the cruelty toward those who land on the wrong side.

What can be done? In 1932, there weren’t many alternatives to the New York Times. Today there are. It is up to each of us to get smart, get moral, sniff out and reject the lies, and find and tell the truth in other ways.

John Podhoretz adds:

It isn’t really about Bari Weiss.

The mob inside The New York Times didn’t target Weiss, an opinion editor and writer there since 2017, for cancellation to get her specifically — though her smart writing and editing surely didn’t endear her to some of the third-rate digital-media hacks and ­talentless millennials who ­enjoyed the pursuit of this journalistic star on the rise due to their loathsome envy.

As Weiss detailed in a widely read public resignation letter on Tuesday, she left her job after constant bullying by more left-wing colleagues (the vast majority) that included underhanded gossip, anti-Semitic innuendo and public attacks against her that would never have been tolerated had she been the one meting them out.

She also described an atmosphere of pervasive ideological intimidation and conformity that finally made commissioning diverse viewpoints and writing and thinking freely — essential to opinion journalism — all but impossible.

So Weiss left. But again, it wasn’t ultimately about her. The mob’s real targets are twofold.

First, the mob yearns to scare into submission everyone in a position of authority at the Times and any other liberal institution in America who might think it wise to hire someone like Bari Weiss — someone who draws outside the ideological lines and brings a fresh perspective.

You can see how this works in the cowardice manifested by Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. As Weiss noted in her letter, Sulzberger praised her in private, even as he simultaneously failed to defend her in public from the threats and slanders of her own colleagues, both in internal communications and on Twitter. Such conduct marks the journalistic scion forevermore as less a man than a mouse.

Consider, too, that Weiss’ blistering resignation letter shows how Sulzberger and the Times leadership are likely guilty of several employment-related ­offenses, particularly in their ­refusal to intervene to end the hostile work environment in which she had found herself — due at least in part to how she was being treated by colleagues as a member of a minority religion.

It should be said, right here, that Weiss, who is a friend of mine, is not a conservative. She calls herself a centrist, and as someone who has argued with her on matters of ideology, I can confirm this is an entirely fair description.

She is, however, versed in conservative thinking and argument and open to both. This is a thought-crime in woke circles.

Even more telling, she is a ­Zionist, a stout defender of ­Israel and someone willing to call out anti-Semitism on the left — views that, in our garbage cultural and political movement, have become tragically unacceptable in many woke quarters.

She was targeted for holding these opinions and because she became well-known on TV and elsewhere for the eloquence with which she espouses them. Those who targeted her did so at her place of work and in public fora. And yet Sulzberger & Co. did not come to her defense or aid, even though their business was facing legal exposure, because it was safer for them to risk a Weiss lawsuit than to discipline those who had threatened her.

Why? Because they are more frightened of the mob. They are terrified of being subjected to the same treatment. It’s that simple. Sulzberger let the wolves try to devour Weiss to save his own rich-boy hide. She refused to participate in her own sacrifice.

Which brings us to the mob’s second object: The wokesters want to scare everyone who might emulate Bari Weiss in the future. And this, of course, is the real purpose of cancel culture. It is less about silencing the voice who is so annoying to the cancelers in the present — and far more about silencing the perspective that voice represents in the future.

This goes far beyond The New York Times. It is an effort pervading every major cultural institution in America.

Against this generational menace, the milquetoast mandarins who run these places refuse to defend themselves, the principle of free expression or anything but the maintenance of their own jobs. Their surrender of all principle in pursuit of that lowly aim is a mark of just how morally, spiritually, politically, intellectually and practically decayed they and their organizations have ­become.

The New York Times reports on itself:

Bari Weiss, a writer and editor for the opinion department of The New York Times, has resigned from the paper, citing “bullying by colleagues” and an “illiberal environment.”

In a nearly 1,500-word letter addressed to A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher, Ms. Weiss offered a deep critique of Times employees and company leadership, describing a “hostile work environment” where co-workers had insulted her or called for her removal on Twitter and in the interoffice communications app Slack. …

Mr. Sulzberger declined to comment. In a statement, Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman, said, “We’re committed to fostering an environment of honest, searching and empathetic dialogue between colleagues, one where mutual respect is required of all.”

After working at The Wall Street Journal and Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish culture and politics, Ms. Weiss joined The Times as an Op-Ed staff editor and writer in 2017 as part of the paper’s effort to broaden the ideological range of its opinion staff after President Trump’s inauguration.

Ms. Weiss, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has been known to question aspects of social justice movements that have taken root in recent years. She was critical of a woman who described an uncomfortable encounter with the comedian Aziz Ansari and questioned whether the sexual assault charges leveled against Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh should disqualify him from the post.

She was also criticized for a tweet suggesting that the California-born U.S. Olympic figure skating competitor Mirai Nagasu was an immigrant. (Ms. Weiss said in a later tweet that she knew Ms. Nagasu was a daughter of immigrants.)

In 2018 she wrote on the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where she became a bat mitzvah, in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. The murder of 11 Jews led her to write the book “How to Fight Anti-Semitism,” which won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award.

Ms. Weiss recently came under fire for online comments on the staff unrest that followed the publication of a Times Op-Ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton calling for a military response to civic unrest in American cities during the widespread protests against racism and police violence.

More than 1,000 Times staff members signed a letter protesting the Op-Ed’s publication, and James Bennet, the editorial page editor, resigned days after it was published. An editors’ note was added to the essay, saying it “fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” The opinion department of The Times is run separately from the newsroom.

In a tweet, Ms. Weiss described the turmoil inside the paper as a “civil war” between “the (mostly young) wokes” and “the (mostly 40+) liberals.” Many staff members objected on Twitter to her comment, saying it was inaccurate or misrepresented their concerns. …

Kathleen Kingsbury, the acting editorial page editor, said, “We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion. I’m personally committed to ensuring that The Times continues to publish voices, experiences and viewpoints from across the political spectrum in the Opinion report.”

Weiss wrote this to Sulzberger:

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from the New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. 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. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

I was honoured to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the 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. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

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. 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 moulded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behaviour 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.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at the Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

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 unscrutinised. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker.

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Even now, I am confident that most people at the Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like the Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labour for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

It appears that the Times has done a poor job of hiring employees, which management has made worse by not firing employees who behave as Weiss depicts.

Across town, the New York Post reacts in its usual restrained way …

… with columnist Michael Goodwin writing:

Back in 2012, a Goldman Sachs banker famously quit his job in a New York Times op-ed. On his last day at work, Greg Smith got on the biggest soap box he could find to declare that Goldman’s culture is “toxic and destructive.”

Bari Weiss has now done the same thing to the Times itself. Her resignation letter, posted on her Web site, is a classic example of going out with a bang.

Yet Weiss does something more than just make noise as she’s making her exit. She lays bare a hostile, coercive workplace and describes incidents and insults that reveal how the Times is the same bully in-house that it is to those on the outside who don’t subscribe to its warped views. …

In a chilling paragraph, Weiss cites “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’ ”

That would make her a Nazi who supports Israel. The bullies need to work on their insults.

Although Weiss was a writer and editor on the opinion section, she makes the entire operation, especially the newsroom, sound like a college campus where dissent is demonized and silenced by threats. Who knew the Gray Lady could be so nasty?

Weiss does something else too — she dumps the whole mess in the lap of 39-year-old publisher A. G. Sulzberger. She addresses her letter to him and charges he personally stood by silently while a mob mentality seized control.

“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,” she writes. “And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage.”

As extra zingers, she quotes an 1896 line from Times patriarch Adolph Ochs — the current publisher’s great, great grandfather — who promised that the paper would always “invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

Sulzberger himself had quoted the same line in a statement when he assumed the job of publisher from his father in January of 2018, and Weiss is cleverly reminding him that he has failed to deliver.

In that statement, Sulzberger, the fifth member of his family to run the Times since Ochs died in 1935, all of them men, also promised the paper would “continue to resist polarization and groupthink by giving voice to the breadth of ideas and experiences — because we believe journalism should help people think for themselves.”

In fact, the Times is doing the opposite. As Weiss notes, groupthink now dominates the paper’s coverage from front to back and readers are encouraged to obey, not think.

If Sulzberger is looking for someone to blame, he should grab a mirror. His firing of opinion editor James Bennet last month was a green light to the Twitter mob that the publisher would bow before it, no matter how outlandish the ­demands.

Bennett’s sin was to publish an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton that said President Trump was right to consider using the military to quell riots in American cities. In a shocking breach with tradition, more than 800 Times staff members, the vast majority from the newsroom, signed a petition denouncing the piece and pushed for Bennett to be fired.

By surrendering, Sulzberger betrayed journalism’s best principles and there’s a straight line from that moment to Weiss’ resignation.

The publisher should pay special attention to one section of her letter. Noting she was hired after the Times failed to detect even a hint that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election, Weiss writes that the clear aim was to add “voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages.”

But instead of being open to those voices, she complains that “a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”

She’s absolutely right, which is why I have been saying that the Times no longer functions as an actual newspaper. Its “mission” is to rewrite the story of America, one that dovetails with the paper’s obsession with race, gender and every new form of identity politics.

The current crisis actually began two years before Sulzberger became publisher. In the summer of 2016, executive editor Dean Baquet abandoned the paper’s traditional standards of fairness and impartiality in its news pages in a bid to block Trump’s election. Since then, virtually every article on every page has been an editorial where the reporters’ opinions dominate.

Baquet’s decision to take away the guardrails against bias created a vacuum that was filled with a radical agenda. The paper is now published not to give readers facts and information, but to browbeat them with the far, far left political and social positions of the writers.

It’s a predictable Lord of the Flies outcome, where the official party line is the only acceptable position and you either go along or get out. So day after dreary day, from front to back, the Times reeks with the delusion that it knows best about everything.

That bloated hubris is a key reason why I revealed the Confederate roots of the Ochs-Sulzberger family in my Sunday column. The knowledge that members of the family, including Och’s mother, Bertha Levy, supported slavery and Ochs himself donated large sums of money to Confederate memorials should lead the staff to demand a full accounting of the family’s history. My fantasy is that the Times will apply the same standards to its own conduct that it applies to other people and institutions, and, humbled by what it learns, will be cured of its arrogance.

In that sense, Weiss and I are on the same page. We want the Times to be what it used to be and what Sulzberger promised it would be — a real newspaper.

Or is that too much to ask?

The New York Sun opines:

Jonathan Turley adds:

We have been discussing the shocking abandonment of journalistic principles by the New York Times in its recent apology for publishing a column by a United States Senator and forcing out an editor who had the audacity to publish an opposing view of the current protests.  The newspaper effectively declared echo-journalism to be its new mission.  Now another opinion writer and editor, Bari Weiss, has resigned after what she called an “illiberal environment” where she has been harassed and abused by other reporters without any intervention from the management. In a scathing resignation letter, Weiss called the Times a “Digital Thunderdome.”

In the Cotton controversy, various writers falsely claimed that the senator’s column contained false and unconstitutional statements.  Simply the act of publishing the column led to the removal of the editor. Yet, one of those writers recently spread a clearly false conspiracy theory about police with no such outcry.

After the removal of the editor and cringing apology of the newspaper, Weiss said that the environment at the newspaper became openly intolerant and hostile for anyone deemed insufficiently obedient to the new orthodoxy at the newspaper.  She wrote in her resignation letter that “showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.”  She claims to have been called a “nazi” and “rascist” for holding opposing views: “a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.” …

The last few weeks have seen the rapid acceleration of attack on free speech and the free press. The most chilling aspect of this period is that the attacks has come from universities and the press itself.  Faculty and reporters have remained silent as their colleagues have been abused. Many are fearful that they will also be labeled as racist.  These attacks have succeeded in chilling speech.  Indeed, Weiss describes how management encouraged her in private but remained conspicuously silent in public.  She stated “Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do.” It is an account that is all too familiar for those of us in academia. However, the collapse of the New York Times — long the iconic paper of record in the United States — has been the most chilling development in this glacial period.

I have previously said that the actions of the New York Times on the Cotton column would stand alone in journalistic infamy.  It is not surprising that the New York Times has allowed an environment of intolerance and abuse to expand in the vacuum left by by its earlier abandonment of core principles.  None of this matters to most readers or reporters.  Readers now have a newspaper that will not challenge their assumptions or their positions.  Reporters will be allowed to continue to write so long as they do not challenge the orthodoxy of the new order.  It is a pattern that we have seen played out repeatedly in history and it has never ended well.