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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I’ve gone through all the previous submission and I still don’t understand what this is about. I mean i can get bits and pieces from the comments but I miss the big picture. I’m neither American nor terminally online, so that might be why.

Who is Bari Weiss? Why does it matter what she thinks? Without watching an hour of American TV, what’s in that episode that she wants it suppressed so bad?

I mean we all know that the US sends people without due process to a Salvatoran prison, that’s (terrible and) not new. So what is, that it gets HN this hotheaded?

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Bari Weiss is a woman who used to be an editor and opinion columnist at the NYT. She was pushed out of the NYT. Some claim she quit to become a martyr to those on the right, but if you look at what happened, like her co-workers openly insulting her in the company chat, it doesn't look good.

She went on to found a center right online publication. Then she was named the head of CBS News. She's arguably less qualified than most, but she's not as unqualified as others claim she is.

All of this has gotten people really worked up about her.

It's worth noting, I guess, that she's also a lesbian. I only say that because I've noticed that it's most often people who have the "right" social characteristics that get the most aggressive responses. The people criticizing her wouldn't expect a white male to do anything else, but those that step out like Weiss often get the most pushback.

I think you're skipping part of the reason people are annoyed at her: she had consistently claimed that she's trying to advance the case of free speech (her publication was even called "the free press"). So there's a great deal of hypocrisy in her imposing top-down pro-regime censorship on a major news organization.

That's a decent point, but I left it out for two reasons. One is that she's the head of the news department. Part of her job is to decide what goes out or not. Two is that it isn't clear if it's postponed or not.

I felt like your comment above about Weiss' background was actually misleading because you did leave out the most important current point about her, which is that she appears to be a conservative enforcer and was only appointed to the position because they thought she would block negative things about conservatives. And she has done exactly that in this case.

But her first notable achievement in her career was calling for professors to be disciplined for criticisms of Israel, so that claim to be about free speech was always an obvious lie.

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

> I only say that because I've noticed that it's most often people who have the "right" social characteristics that get the most aggressive responses. The people criticizing her wouldn't expect a white male to do anything else[...]”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this idea communicated in this kind of framing. I think it makes your point quite striking.

The Free Press is the publication she created that you refer to as "center right". I would not characterize it as center anything, it was created with an agenda to push far right narratives, including the elimination of Palestine. The publication primarily focuses on social issues and anti-woke narratives. In particular, it regularly publishes either outright anti-trans people content, or engages in dishonest concern trolling

> but if you look at what happened, like her co-workers openly insulting her in the company chat, it doesn't look good

I'm not sure "my coworkers don't respect me" is the same thing as "I got fired".

You conveniently cut off the first part of that sentence where I said she resigned.

> You conveniently cut off the first part of that sentence where I said she resigned.

I left it off because "she resigned" is definitely not the same thing as "I was fired".

Calling Bari Weiss "Center-Right" has got to be one of the more dishonest characterizations I've read. Or, you're going to need to claim that the Overton window has gone off the far-right deep-end such that the mere presence of a confounding social factor is enough to pull people from being "extreme" to being "Centrist."

I'd love to know what policy/opinion you think is "Moderate" from Bari Weiss, and which opinion piece of hers demonstrates it when compared to the sheer volume of Deep Conservatism she espouses in all of the rest of her work.

> It's worth noting, I guess, that she's also a lesbian...

This bit is solidly poisoning the well, because it gives you the ability to claim that any legitimate criticism about Bari Weiss Kowtowing to the current administration is because she's a lesbian, and not because she's legitimately censoring free speech like everyone claimed the news was doing before she started actually doing it.

People are upset that an investigation piece on a concetration camp got spiked due to purely political reasons. I am not sure what is confusing about it.

She was also installed in her role by Oracle's Larry Ellison and his son, Paramount CEO David Ellison, which gives it extra tech credentials.

Which is the connection I think is interesting to be discussed in the tech circles, we all know that Larry Ellison is dangerous from how heavy handed Oracle always has been with lawsuits.

Now that he is part of the inner circles of the US government, and through his son trying to reach into traditional media it significantly increases the damage potential he can do.

Given the quote from him that mass surveillance would "keep citizens in their best behaviour" it's actually frightening he managed to create proxy censorship through CBS, he's not even that far disconnected, it's simply: Larry Ellison -> David Ellison -> Paramount -> Beri Weiss -> CBS.

Bari Weiss is a conservative journalist that was appointed to the head of cbs under the appearance of being a suck up to Trump. Trump has attacked critical news organizations aggressively and that includes 60 minutes.

The fear when she was, recently, appointed was that she’d exert editorial control to hide stories critical of Trump. This episode being buried at least has the appearance of this happening.

Appreciate it. Clearly (from other responses) I didnt even understand what I didn't understand and therefore phrased my question badly. This was the context I was missing.

The 'postponed' 60 Minutes segment is only 15 minutes long...

https://archive.org/details/insidececot

Bari Weiss is well known and influential Journalist if you are an American Politico, I never found her particularly interesting. Outside of that she doesn't have much name recognition. It is like Glenn Greenwald, if you care about Snowden you probably know who he is.

>Without watching an hour of American TV

If you just watch the first five minutes you'll have more idea of why it's bad. The whole thing is 15 mins.

I am in the same boat as you. I believe it's mainly a Streisand effect

Seems shocking and appalling to me. In sure an AI could explain how corrupt this is to you if you feed it the article.

HN is pretty consistently anti censorship

But also trying desperately to not become another divisive hotbed of online flame war.

yes, but a refusal to at least soberly acknowledge tech's central place in human conflict and it's litteral weaponisation would be another death by capitulation. that this place retains a certain civility whilst ubber geeks, money grubbers, lightly bored acedemics, and every variety of ax grinders have a go, is testement enough. the common denominators bieng drive, curiosity, and however grudgingly to count someone elses point, or let it go. though I will posit that the stakes are higher than just this place, as tech is central to everything now, and figuring that out is everyones respinsibility, so a little heat is guaranteed. Bieng a pyrologist it's something I am comfortable working with, and while I might discuss something hot, I wont shove somebodys head in the flames. no adhominum right.

Which is why people flag anything negative about Trump?

I wonder if a positive story about Trump would similarly get flagged?

What's the association between censorship and an editor of a publication making an editorial decision about an item? Those appear to be different subjects. Or is it censorship of B when an editor decides to cover A today instead?

If I buy a car with a Make Love Not War bumper sticker and cover it with a Peace Through Strength bumper sticker, I have not committed censorship, but if I don't buy the car first, I have.

Because that editor was installed in order to be able to censor CBS. They also bought Tiktok, and are trying to buy other media companies in order to be able to better control the flow of information.

The head of the news organization pulled an investigative story presumably because the facts it presented either didn't support her own politics, because she was afraid of the current regime's reaction, or because she doesn't know what journalistic standards are for running this kind of story because she lacks experience.

Two of those reasons are a kind of self-censorship for political reasons tied to who is in power. Democracy needs journalism that's ready to stand up to the people in power or we become a state like North Korea where people can't speak the truth.

> What's the association between censorship and an editor of a publication making an editorial decision about an item?

as another not-terminally-online person, have my upvote.

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