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I'm reminded of the Letter on Justice and Open Debate[1] that Bari Weiss signed only a few years ago, now she's spiking stories like this one on CECOT for showi
by slg 10mo ago
I'm reminded of the Letter on Justice and Open Debate[1] that Bari Weiss signed only a few years ago, now she's spiking stories like this one on CECOT for showing the current administration in a negative light.
I also wonder if this story will get the type of leeway to stay on HN to collect the 200+ upvotes and 300+ comments of that previous example or if it will be flagged off the front page within minutes like so many other similar stories.
EDIT: No idea how long this post actually lasted, but checking in an hour later to see this has been flagged completely off the first 10 pages of HN despite getting close to that 200 point total.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23759283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23759283
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- cdrnsf 10mo agoShe was hired following the acquisition of Paramount to do things exactly like this. She's not a journalist.
- dralley 10mo agoLiterally not a journalist. She went from the opinion pages to writing opinion on substack. And for "some reason" was put in charge of a news organization.
- derektank 10mo agoShe has worked as a staff editor in newsrooms, most notably at Tablet. It’s not accurate to say her career has solely been in the opinion section. Also, it’s not unheard of for people working on the op-ed side of the house to become editors in chief. Most notable example I can think of would be Katharine Viner at the Guardian. And in the reverse, James Bennet went from being editor in chief at the Atlantic to running the op-ed page at the NYT.
- UncleMeat 10mo agoI wouldn't exactly use James Bennet as a successful example here.
- skywhopper 10mo agoAre you actually arguing that she was a qualified choice for this role at CBS?
- criddell 10mo agoYou’d have to know the qualifying criteria to know for sure. I suspect she was hired at least in part because she would be willing to take the heat for stuff like this,
- SmirkingRevenge 10mo agoHer upward trajectory has been facilitated mainly through pleasing select silicon valley billionaires by echoing their views back to them in her ironically named The Free Press outlet, which they also helped found.
- UncleMeat 10mo agoThis really is the future of journalism. Just make content that a few deranged billionaires like and rise up and up and up and up. CBS doesn't have to care whether ordinary people like it. What matters is the asshole with billions of dollars.
- criddell 10mo agoI suspect her bosses are very happy with who they hired. The chances that they now regret her are about 0%.
- woooooo 10mo agoOk, so with charity she's a marginally qualified 150 million dollar aquihire? In journalism?
- empath75 10mo agoEveryone who signed that letter was either a dupe or a fraud.
- timcobb 10mo agoYou gotta give us more than that
- UncleMeat 10mo agoThe signatories have spent years attacking free expression. A particularly acute case is when it comes to things like advocating for the end of israeli occupation in palestine, but there are many others. Whining about BLM is a particularly common approach for Thomas Chatterton Williams. The signatories have generally continued to complain about censoriousness from the left even while the right wing is detaining people for their speech, insisting that media personalities be fired for their speech, insisting that people (including naturalized citizens) be deported for their speech, cancelling grants because they are too "woke", and straight up passing laws banning the teaching of certain topics in secondary and postsecondary school. Weiss herself is a participant with UATX, a expressly right wing university that has fired people for not being sufficiently critical of DEI efforts. Weiss also has a long history of efforts to stifle the public debate that the signatories claim to support. The first thing that got her notoriety was an effort to get various professors at Columbia fired for their speech.
- djl0 10mo agoI think you're really off base. A quick search about what Williams has said about censorship on the right seems to undermine your one non-weiss example [1]. There were more than a hundred signatories from across a fairly wide political spectrum (and the letter itself was anti-Trump). The handful of signatories that I follow have squarely denounced right wing censoriousness - I'm open to hearing that I'm seeing a non-representative sample, but you didn't provide any useful info on that front. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/woke-right/681716/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/woke-right...
- UncleMeat 10mo agoWeiss got her start screaming about how various college professors should be fired. There has never once been a moment in her career where she seriously cared about open debate.
- TechDebtDevin 10mo ago[dead]
- drewbeck 10mo agoOr journalistic principles.
- spankibalt 10mo agoIndeed. Weiss came up as conservative troll and engagement farmer, and was hired as such by Ellison.
- martythemaniak 10mo agoYou can't understand technology without understanding the people behind it. I always wonder about all these non-bot people who support her: is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick? Is there something else? I never quite get it. A once-reasonable friend of mine genuinely thinks RJK is just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer. Crazy
- mananaysiempre 10mo ago> just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer As much as it would be comforting for all dudes who’re trying their best to pretend otherwise, the two are not mutually exclusive. (No opinion on whether RFK Jr is in the intersection—I’m not in the US and couldn’t affect his actions if I tried.)
- joncrane 10mo ago>is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick? It's both. That's one of the things that's difficult to suss out and therefore have a plan to engage. There's plausible deniability on both ends of that spectrum. Even in the high positions in the administration, there's a smattering of True Believers in amongst the grifters.
- lostlogin 10mo agoA similar post with comments linking to this thread just got marked as a duplicate, taking it off the front page. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361571