Conservative firebrand Rush Limbaugh defended former New York Times opinion editor and columnist Bari Weiss after she publicly lambasted the news organization for what she characterized as institutional intolerance for conservative thought or commentary.
“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space,” Weiss wrote in a resignation letter to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. “Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.”
Limbaugh, a frequent critic of the New York Times and similar media outlets, said Weiss’s assessment of a leftward lurch at the New York Times is spot on.
“Damn right. The New York Times has become the epitome of tyranny and authoritarianism. You’re not allowed to have any other point of view if you read the paper,” Limbaugh said. “You must conform to the opinions in the news stories, or you’re not even welcome as a subscriber.”
Weiss, who has taken flak from journalists inside the New York Times and elsewhere in the media, revealed she was bullied by editors and reporters there who she says called her racist and bigoted for presenting conservative viewpoints in her writing and commentary.
“What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets,” Weiss wrote. “The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people.”
The New York Times’s opinion section has sparked controversy in the media industry on more than one occasion in recent years, publishing an anonymous op-ed by someone claiming to be an insider in the Trump administration and broadcasting a controversial opinion article written by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the deployment of the U.S. military to quell civil unrest.
Pundits such as Limbaugh and Weiss have warned that an out-of-touch media is dangerous for the country and was one of the factors that led to President Trump’s election.
“The entire left believes that Twitter is America, that they believe Twitter is American public popular opinion and that it is a majority. They’re gonna go down so hard, folks, in November. They’re gonna go down so deep. They’re gonna go down so fast — they’re not gonna know what happened to ’em,” Limbaugh said. “Twitter is not America.”
