"The Free Press" is Good. Let's Be Honest About Why.

It's not for the reasons they say

Bari Weiss

very publicly resigned from her cushy journalist job at the NYTimes because she thought the paper was too woke. She then went out and founded her own media company, The Free Press, with her rich wife. Their motto boils down to, ”not telling readers what to think, but rather giving them the information necessary to make their own decisions.” Guess what slogan that sounds suspiciously similar to? FOX News (“we report, you decide”). A motto is just a collection of words; it’s what you do that matters.

Let me be clear that I like The Free Press and despise FOX. I am a paid subscriber to the FP. After October 7th, when I was going out of my mind with reading misinformation posing as news coming from every direction, their coverage of Israel kept me sane. But that might be precisely the problem.

The Free Press is at its core a Jewish publication. Nothing wrong with that—I mean, that makes me their target demographic. They need to embrace their real identity and the blind spots that come with it. Israel is an area they are strong at, as well as exposure of how woke ideology has caused real harm (this article from a physician about the pitfalls of medical care for trans teens is one of the best pieces I’ve read on that subject).

Bari appears incapable of identifying her weaknesses, so I’ll do her that favor. The Free Press is weak at covering news that intersects with race and class issues (i.e. crime). The reason for this is because their writers lack experience covering stories stemming from the school of hard knocks that many Americans face daily, so they can’t handle those themes in a nuanced manner. Instead, they default to their “woke is bad” lens, whether or not the story in question calls for it. This situation is a function of the writers’ collective privilege.

Here’s a specific example: we’re supposed to be impressed that they interviewed the Central Park Karen to get her side of the story. I think many of us can agree that the public shaming that Amy Cooper received following that incident may have been excessive, and even her victim agrees. But hearing “her side” doesn’t give us any new insight into the incident itself. It’s just a lengthy insinuation that the consequences Amy Cooper faced as a result of her own actions—which included losing her job and getting thrown out of her apartment—were really, really unfair.

Now, they’re repeating the same errors with the Daniel Penny case. In short: white guy puts Black guy acting erratically on public transportation in a chokehold that ends up killing him, ostensibly to keep him from causing harm to others on the train. During the police interrogation, according to the FP, “it becomes clear that the officers don’t see [white guy] as a Good Samaritan—they see him as a criminal suspect.” God, has whoever wrote that line ever watched Law and Order? It’s a common police tactic: goad the suspect into waiving their right to a lawyer, and get them talking. That’s exactly what Penny did, and he basically admitted to everything he’s been charged with. Neely’s death wasn’t racially motivated; the media coverage of it is (including from the FP). The lesson here isn’t about reverse racism or police misconduct, it’s NEVER, EVER TALK TO THE COPS WITHOUT A LAWYER PRESENT!

Here is what The Free Press is good at:

• Keeping the NYT honest and filling gaps in the NYT’s reporting when needed.

• Reporting on Israel and the problems facing the global Jewish community with an actual understanding of that history (very hard to come by nowadays).

• Calling out woke bullshit in society today.

Here are their flaws:

• Overreporting on the Israel-Hamas War while ignoring other global atrocities. In this regard, that makes them just like any other media publication.

• Engaging in tokenism. Coleman Hughes is their only Black staff writer, and his sensibilities lean, to put it simply, Jewish.¹

• Covering viral incidents involving racism and suggesting that there’s “more to the story” when there really isn’t, or the “more to the story” bit involves an issue they choose to ignore (i.e. in Neely’s death: why are so many mentally ill individuals out in public posing a danger to themselves and others without proper intervention? The answer has nothing to do with race or wokeness).

The Free Press has captured a major market: consumers of news frustrated with mainstream media. In the USA alone, that’s hundreds of thousands of us. Good on Bari for creating a successful media company with that mission. But they have an agenda, and they must be honest about it. Admitting one’s biases is a principle not only of good journalism, but of good writing in general—and The Free Press clearly values both.

1. UPDATE: Since I first posted this article, I have received dozens of comments calling this assessment “racist.” Let me be crystal clear: I am calling out Coleman Hughes’s employer, not him. These same individuals who “don’t see color” then go on to use tropes like “Uncle Tom” to describe what they think Coleman Hughes is not. You may want to ask yourself: 1) who is the one engaging in racism by using that kind of language to describe the FP’s only Black writer in his “defense”; and 2) why does the FP only employ minorities who think just like Bari Weiss?