If I were in charge of deciding which American journalist should be honored for preserving fairness and balance in our media, I would confer that honor on Bari Weiss.
If her name sounds familiar, it may be due to the dust-up she caused a few years ago when she was a columnist at The New York Times.
Known for her commentary on culture, politics, and free speech issues, Ms. Weiss gained significant attention for her outspoken views on topics like antisemitism, identity politics, and the growing intolerance for differing opinions in modern discourse. A self-described centrist and classical liberal, she famously took on both the far left and far right. This is specifically why she was recruited in 2017 by the Times as an op-ed editor and writer.
Apparently (but not in any way logically), her hiring was meant to diversify the paper’s editorial perspectives after Donald Trump’s first election. This was undoubtedly due to her willingness to challenge progressive orthodoxy on issues such as free speech, cultural politics, and identity. That the Times saw hiring an openly gay centrist to somehow provide balance at the beginning of the Trump Administration revealed the Times had a bigger problem balancing centrism and the left than addressing anything to do with MAGA. From an editorial perspective, her hiring was a success. She attracted a substantial following. But the fact that she took on the more “progressive” circles made her an instantly polarizing presence at the Gray Lady.
By July 2020, she was gone, having chosen to resign.
Her reasons became clear when she made her resignation letter public. In it, she stated that the Times had become increasingly hostile to ideological diversity, claiming that an internal culture of censorship and fear was stifling open debate. She wrote about colleagues bullying her on internal and public social media channels, suggesting that her views were unwelcome. Most significantly, she made what I consider a powerful case that the Times, rather than upholding journalistic neutrality, had adopted a progressive worldview as its default.
Unsurprisingly, her resignation became a flashpoint in broader debates about free speech, cancel culture, and the role of media in shaping public discourse. Some criticized her as being thin-skinned and resistant to legitimate critique. Others—I among them—viewed it as evidence of a narrowing of acceptable viewpoints in major institutions, the press chief among them.
Ms. Weiss has since moved on.
When she first began her tenure at the Times, I was not her biggest fan. I was skeptical about many of her claims about the press and, in the traumatic shadow (I can think of no better term for it) of the first Trump election, I was not especially prepared to think about the failings of the left. Nevertheless, in 2019, I read her book How to Fight Anti-Semitism. While I agreed with her about the resurgence of antisemitism from the far right, I was not ready to admit to the reality of what she was seeing on the left. Since the events of October 7, 2023, I now consider her a kind of prophet.
Why am I devoting a commentary to Bari Weiss?
Because I think she’s right. Our legacy media have failed us. I do not say this because they have failed to reflect my own opinions. In fact, as a liberal (albeit of the closer-to-center variety over these past few years), the legacy media usually reflect my thinking. But I don’t view that as a great thing. I don’t need my own assumptions mirrored back to me; I need to know what other reasonable people are thinking. I need to be challenged. That’s not likely to happen when—as a 2017 analysis revealed—94% of campaign contributions from donors identified as journalists at outlets like ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post went to Democrats or liberal causes between 2008 and 2016.
So, you may wonder, if I want to know the other side, why don’t I just turn to Fox News?
It’s because Fox News is as much of a problem on the right as the outlets above are on the left. It’s an echo chamber reflecting a narrow set of right-leaning beliefs, one that I believe was founded to do for its viewers exactly what the legacy media does for those who consume its content.
What I want from a media outlet—what we should all want—is complete neutrality in reporting and balanced points of view from reasonable and rational sources in opinion. This is not what we’re getting in this country, and it’s exactly what we need.
After Bari Weiss left the Times, she began several efforts that ultimately led to a new online publication called The Free Press (an unfortunate name for Michiganders wanting to distinguish between our local version and her national effort). In just a few years, she has grown its paid readership to over one million and counting. More importantly, she has hired a staff of journalists and columnists who represent a much wider diversity of opinion than any I have encountered. When it comes to both resident and guest columnists, I find myself vigorously agreeing and disagreeing in equal parts. The added and necessary bonus is that I also find myself thinking in new ways about all kinds of issues. On the journalistic side, I am learning about events and issues that never appear in the legacy media. And I consume a lot of that.
I will not be earning any commissions from The Free Press. My stake in recommending it to you is that I’m a humanist who cares deeply about the First Amendment. It is, to my knowledge, the only place in our Constitution where the role of a non-governmental institution is protected. Yet the Constitution’s prohibition on our government “abridging the freedom…of the press” is insufficient to fully protect the Fourth Estate. We must each do that by rewarding responsible, fair, and truly balanced journalism.
If you want to check it out, you’ll find it at thefp.com. Much of it is free, though a great deal of the good stuff is behind a paywall. If you do check it out—and you like a little snark in your opinion pieces—check out “TGIF,” the free weekly column written by Ms. Weiss’s wife, Nellie Bowles, also available as an email newsletter.