It’s been awhile since Bari Weiss of The New York Times wrote That. Resignation. Letter. to publisher A.G. Sulzberger, but I am still thinking about what she wrote and some of the published reactions.
Yes, I wish someone would leak some Times newsroom Slack discussions about the aftermath. As always, I am more interested in what is happening in the newsroom, as opposed to the offices of the editorial-page staff (click here for the GetReligion podcast post on that subject).
Two commentary pieces jumped out of the swirling online mix, for me, in the days after that firestorm. I often read lots of material on the cultural left and then on the cultural right and look for thoughts that overlap.
With that in mind, let me recommend this piece by Jodi Rudoren, who is editor in chief of The Forward, a progressive Jewish publication. Rudoren spent more than two decades at the Times.
It’s safe to say that she worked there during — to frame this in terms of the Weiss letter — the era of the “old orthodoxy,” which was basically old liberalism, to one degree or another. The Times was a culturally liberal workplace, but it was not — at least not deliberately — trying to preach its gospel to readers. Now there is a “new orthodoxy” on the rise in America’s most influential newsroom.
Thus, the headline for Rudoren’s piece: “I don’t recognize the NYT that Bari Weiss quit.”
By all means, read all of that piece. But here is a crucial chunk of that, which starts with a discussion of the forced resignation of editorial page editor James Bennet after the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s essay calling for the use of U.S. military troops to quell violent protests. Rudoren writes:
I found the argument that publishing the OpEd endangered anyone’s life to be specious, though it was repeated by many of my former colleagues on Twitter; I thought that organized, open revolt violated every code of collegiality; and I worried that the paper was cowering from its historic role as the host of raucous but respectful debate.
My friends inside told me that the publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, had simply concluded that Bennet would not be able to lead his staff after this very public uprising, and I accepted that. I served on the masthead and know those roles are a privilege, and that life at that level isn’t always fair. I was sad for Bennet, a role model of mine, but what I cared about most was that Sulzberger would continue to be the voice for diversity of opinion.
Bari’s resignation is, in ways, more worrying. Her feeling pushed to relinquish the most powerful and most stable platform in journalism, is a serious indictment of the devolution of debate at The Times — and, indeed, across our industry, our politics, our culture.
However, Rudoren stresses that this anti-journalism virus has not spread into all of this important news organization. She doesn’t address Times coverage of religious, moral and cultural issues in American life — the territory of GetReligion, let’s say — but she accurately notes that the Times remains a crucial source of information about what is happening outside the borders of the United States.
I know that there are many GetReligion readers who would note issues of bias in Times foreign coverage — often connected to religious and cultural issues — but it’s hard not to be moved by this passage:
The foreign correspondents I worked with who risk their lives to bring us truth about the Uighurs and Rohingya, Hong Kong protesters and Russian oligarchs, are guided by pure intellectual curiosity and devoted to serving that curious public. When I was bureau chief in Jerusalem, I fielded so much criticism by advocates on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I knew that I was there not to feed their well-crafted narratives, but to inform readers in Nebraska and Nepal who did not have a particular stake in the game. In other words, I was working for people who did not already know what they thought, who wanted to understand their own instincts with more nuance.
Now, after reading that, let’s head over to the cultural right and an opinion essay by conservative Hugh Hewitt that ran at The Washington Post (to its credit). The headline: “We all live in bubbles. It’s time to burst them.” For me, this “bubbles” concept is the crucial topic for future discussions.
Hewitt begins by noting that what Weiss wrote will not trouble many Americans.
Why is that? Because their media lives were already arranged in ways that would not allow this information inside their digital news bubbles. The problem, he says, is that — according to Weiss, and others — the Times newsroom has evolved into a kind of bubble in which far too many American voices are not allowed to speak.
This points to an issue in the American public, as well.
The limited worldview that Weiss described inside the newspaper will asphyxiate everyone left behind and poison those for whom it is their only source of intellectual nourishment.
I see it as relentless as the bubble that always — always — captured actor Patrick McGoohan in the late ‘60s British TV show “The Prisoner.” He could never escape it. Its real-world counterpart is the confirmation bias consuming the New York Times’ Opinion pages.
The closing of the American left’s mind has advanced far beyond the condition Allan Bloom described in “The Closing of the American Mind,” his 1987 book about the rise of moral relativism on U.S. colleges and universities. That is true on the right as well. Intellectual curiosity about worlds, and worldviews, other than our own is at a low ebb.
As an act of rebellion, so to speak, Hewitt urges supporters of President Donald Trump to read Eddie Glaude Jr.’s book, “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.”
Then he urges liberal readers to read a new book from George Weigel: “The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission.” After all, Roman Catholicism is one form of traditional thought that still has some impact in the modern world.
Why give these reading assignments?
Point being: This column on this page just pointed you to two very different, very deep wells from which a serious person should want to drink. If the online sources you are reading or the cable news channels you are watching don’t surprise or at least nudge you, they are failing you.
Bubbles are not bad. They often suggest deep learning and lifelong commitment. But not when the subject matter is politics. As Charles Krauthammer wrote, “Politics . . . is sovereign.” He was correct. And politics cannot be conducted with blinkers firmly affixed.
Politics is “sovereign”?
That is certainly true, inside many journalism bubbles on the left and the right. That is part of newsroom orthodoxy for many, followers of the old journalism orthodoxy and the new (click this link and explore).
Let us attend.