Bari Weiss Left 'The New York Times' Over What She Called an Intolerant Culture

For some journalists, working at The New York Times is the zenith of their professional careers. It's the biggest newspaper in the country and one of the most powerful in the world. Bari Weiss, though, didn't seem to appreciate her time there. Bari, who resigned from the Times in very public fashion in 2020, is now the head of CBS News after launching her own independent media vertical.

Now that Bari Weiss has become such a powerful force in the media, many are wondering why she decided to leave The New York Times to begin with. Here's what we know.

While people leave The New York Times every day for one reason or another, Bari Weiss's decision was far more public than most. She wrote a letter at the time in which she suggested that the institution was fundamentally flawed, chiefly because it was not open-minded enough.

"Intellectual curiosity — let alone risk-taking — is now a liability," she wrote in the letter, per Politico.

She also said that she felt bullied by her colleagues, who she claimed “called me a Nazi and a racist."

“Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery,” she added.

Of course, Bari was writing about her own subjective experiences, and her account has been contradicted in the years since her firing. Regardless, though, it seems that she felt the Times and her colleagues were not sufficiently open to other ways of thinking.

“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,” she wrote. “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.”

She also suggested that those who work for the paper are "removed from the lives of most people."

Of course, Bari's very public breakup from The New York Times might have been heartfelt, but it was also a great way for her to signal that she was an independent thinker who didn't appreciate the "liberal values" of the paper she was employed by.

Whether Bari sincerely believed everything she wrote or not is a question none of us can answer, but what's undoubtedly true is that the years since she left the Times have been characterized by remarkable success. She used her reputation as a contrarian to turn The Free Press into a huge success, and now she's been tasked with running one of the largest news organizations in the country.

Whether she will be able to keep CBS News from replicating everything she felt was wrong with The Times remains an open question. Whether that's the kind of reform she should actually want to instill is another.