The US presidential race is truly kicking into gear, with President Joe Biden dropping out and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump just two recent bombshells. It’s no wonder our thoughts are turning to the journalists who cover the wild ride that US politics often is – and who sometimes end up embroiled in controversy themselves. Bari Weiss gained prominence after dramatically resigning from The New York Times in July 2020, posting a scathing, 1,500-word resignation letter online, alleging a “hostile work environment” where she was subject to “constant bullying”.
She went on to start her own media company, The Free Press, which she billed as a more objective answer to what she has described as the excessive “wokeism” in today’s mainstream media. {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"Bari Weiss is a political journalist in the US.
Photo: @bariweiss/X","url":"https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/07/22/07cdf9b6-256f-4794-8442-c5913b90ed1e_90be60db.
jpg"} Bari Weiss is a political journalist in the US. Photo: @bariweiss/X She’s married to fellow former Times reporter Nellie Bowles, who released Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History in May. The book details her experience at the publication as well as her views on the changing social, political and media landscapes in the US.
So just who is Bari Weiss and why is she so controversial? Here’s what you need to know. Why did Bari Weiss resign from The New York Times? {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"Bari Weiss at an event at the University of Austin in February.
Photo: @bariweiss/X","url":"https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/07/22/c7f75708-a14d-43d6-b4cb-3a72caad9be3_b39087ee.
jpg"} Bari Weiss at an event at the University of Austin in February. Photo: @bariweiss/X Weiss, now 40, was formerly a writer and editor for The New York Times’ opinion section. She joined in 2017 as part of a broader effort by the publication to increase its “ideological range” after Donald Trump became US president, it reported.
However, she dramatically resigned in July 2020. In her resignation letter, which she posted publicly to her website, she cited “bullying by colleagues” and an “illiberal ..
. hostile work environment”, criticising both The Times’ leadership and fellow staff. She accused her colleagues of insulting her and calling for her removal from the publication, both internally via Slack and online on X (formerly Twitter).
The letter quickly made headlines. Weiss was no stranger to controversy while at The New York Times, sparking backlash for criticising a woman who described an uncomfortable date she went on with Aziz Ansari, and appearing to inaccurately call Asian-American figure skater Mirai Nagasu an immigrant, among other things. The Tom Cotton saga {"@context":"https://schema.
org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"Republican senator Tom Cotton at a campaign event in Carrollton, Georgia, in October 2022. Photo: Getty Images","url":"https://img.i-scmp.
com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/07/22/f0eaf57c-25ce-42b1-afad-147e08cc626d_595de0ff.jpg"} Republican senator Tom Cotton at a campaign event in Carrollton, Georgia, in October 2022. Photo: Getty Images Just before Weiss’ resignation, Senator Tom Cotton published an op-ed in The New York Times calling for military intervention during the Black Lives Matter protests against racism and police violence in the US in 2020.
Over a thousand staff at the paper signed a letter protesting its publication; The Times later released a note saying that the op-ed “fell short of our [editorial] standards and should not have been published”. On X, Weiss detailed some of the drama unfolding inside the newsroom, claiming that there was a feud between “the (mostly young) wokes” and “the (mostly 40+) liberals”. Later, in her resignation letter, Weiss also accused the paper of allowing X to dominate the news agenda , writing, “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times.
But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.” Many staff members replied on the platform calling her comments inaccurate. Bari Weiss co-founded The Free Press After leaving The Times, Weiss co-founded a newsletter named Common Sense, which eventually grew into a media company rebranded as The Free Press.
The company is described as being “built on the ideas that once were the bedrock of great journalism: honesty, doggedness and fierce independence”, on its website. The New Yorker, meanwhile, described it as styling itself, “as an antidote to the woke excesses of mainstream institutions”. However, another column in the same publication questioned whether The Free Press’ reporting is as objective as it presents itself as.
Who is Bari Weiss’ wife, Nellie Bowles? {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"Bari Weiss shares a photo of her wife, Nellie Bowles, on X in May. Photo: @bariweiss/X","url":"https://img.
i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/07/22/b1caefc4-839f-4f99-9800-ec49a6a73831_23baafe7.jpg"} Bari Weiss shares a photo of her wife, Nellie Bowles, on X in May.
Photo: @bariweiss/X The Free Press isn’t a solo endeavour, though: Weiss co-founded it with her wife, fellow journalist Nellie Bowles, who writes a column for the publication called “TGIF” that rounds up the biggest headlines of the week. Bowles was also a reporter at The New York Times from 2017 to 2021, covering technology. According to a piece Weiss wrote for The Free Press, “curiosity is what got Nellie kicked out of the [NYT] club”.
Bowles also wrote the book Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History , a New York Times-bestselling critique of the US progressive movement, recently published in May. Bowles and Weiss spoke to the American Jewish University about how they met and fell in love – despite differing political views. Weiss had sent Bowles a few story ideas, and they met over coffee to discuss them.
“At the time ...
I was a good progressive, and I knew Bari was a dissident liberal and ...
I don’t know, I can’t explain it,” Bowles told Fox News Digital. The couple got married in 2021. They welcomed their first child in 2022 and are expecting a second, Weiss wrote on X in April.
Bowles has also spoken about the drama between Weiss and her former paper. In her book, she alleged that her editor accused her of dating a “f***ing Nazi” following Weiss’ social media posts about Tom Cotton’s op-ed. Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles are both Jewish Weiss worked at Tablet, a digital magazine centred on Jewish culture and politics, in the early 2010s; and in 2019, she released her book How to Fight Antisemitism.
She has also spoken up in favour of netizens defending Israel during the Israel-Gaza war, according to The Times of Israel. Bowles, meanwhile, converted to Judaism and detailed her journey in her blog, Chosen by Choice, which ran from late 2020 to late 2021: “This is a blog about converting to Judaism by me, Nellie Bowles, raised Greek Orthodox and Episcopalian, now working at The New York Times as a business reporter and hopefully soon marrying a Jewish woman. Sells itself!” Weiss is known for criticising excessive ‘wokeism’ on the progressive left and for her resignation letter lambasting The NYT; the Jewish-American has supported Israel amid the Israel-Gaza war, too She’s married to fellow journalist Nellie Bowles, who just released her bestselling book Morning After the Revolution; she also supported her wife after the fallout around Tom Cotton’s op-ed.
