Former New York Times writer Bari Weiss appeared on CNN host Brian Stelter‘s show to discuss the growing concerns over self-censorship among woke mainstream media outlets.
Weiss was invited onto the show to discuss her new Substack blog, Common Sense with Bari Weiss.
In the ‘About’ section, she describes her mission:
“There are tens of millions of Americans who aren’t on the hard left or the hard right who feel that the world has gone mad. Science is at the mercy of politics. Identity trumps ideas. In the name of progress, art is erased and history is rewritten. Obvious truths are dangerous to say out loud. This newsletter is for those people.”
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After a brief description of the blog, Stelter asked how Weiss believed the world “has gone mad.”
She replied by listing several examples:
“When you have the chief reporter on the beat of COVID for the New York Times talking about how questioning the theory of the lab leak, the world has gone mad,” she began.
“When you’re not able to say out loud and in public that there are differences between men and women, the world has gone mad,” she added. “When we’re not allowed to acknowledge that rioting is rioting and it is bad… the world has gone mad…”
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After Stelter requested clarity on who is not allowing the conversation, Weiss went on to explain how large media outlets—like CNN—kept important questions from being asked and necessary stories from being published.
Stelter proceeded to nitpick over the semantics of Weiss’s statement, pointing out that people can find all of her aforementioned topics in the dark recesses the internet if they actively seek them out.
Weiss then explained how companies enforced internalized self-censorship—colloquially known as “cancel culture“—through vague threats to reputational damage and possible job loss.
“I saw this over and over again at the Times,” she said.
