Former NYT Writer Bari Weiss Confronts Brian Stelter Over CNN’s Covid Lab Leak Coverage, Hunter Biden Laptop & More

Francesco Abbruzzino, The Uncensored Report, LLC

 

 

 

CNN got a dose of common sense from former New York Times writer Bari Weiss Thursday, who explained why she, like many Americans, feels “the world has gone mad” due to the “progressive” left’s political correctness.

 

“So in what ways has the world ‘gone mad?’” Reliable Sources’ Brian Stelter asked.

 

 

“Where can I start? Well, when you have the chief reporter on the beat of COVID for The New York Times talking about how questioning or pursuing the question of the lab leak is racist, the world has gone mad. When you’re not able to say out loud and in public there are differences between men and women, the world has gone mad. When we’re not allowed to acknowledge that rioting is rioting and it is bad and that silence is not violence, but violence is violence, the world has gone mad,” Weiss said.

 

“When you’re not able to say the Hunter Biden laptop is a story worth pursuing, the world has gone mad. When, in the name of progress, young school children, as young as kindergarten, are being separated in public schools because of their race, and that is called progress instead of segregation, the world has gone mad. There are dozens of examples.”

 

Feigning incredulity, Stelter went on to ask, “Who’s the people stopping the conversation?”

 

“People who work at networks, frankly, like the one I’m speaking on right now, to say it was racist to investigate the lab leak theory,” Weiss shot back.

 

“Who said that at CNN?” Stelter asked. “When you say ‘allowed,’ it’s a provocative thing to say… You say we’re not allowed to talk about these things but they’re all over the Internet … I’ve heard about every story that you’ve mentioned. So, I’m just suggesting, of course people are allowed to cover whatever they want to cover.”

Weiss responded, “But you and I both know that it would be delusional to claim otherwise that touching your finger to an increasing number of subjects that have been deemed third rail by the mainstream institutions and increasingly by some of the tech companies will lead to reputational damage, perhaps you losing your job, your children sometimes being demonized as well, so what happens is a kind of internal self-censorship.”

 

Elsewhere in the interview, Weiss broke down why the NYT was right in 2020 to publish an op-ed by Tom Cotton calling on President Trump to dispatch troops to cities overrun by rioters and looters, which sparked a backlash among NYT staffers.

 

“Do you believe, Brian, that an op-ed can literally put people’s lives in danger?” Weiss asked.

 

“Do you believe that that op-ed put people’s lives in danger?”

 

“If 1,000 journalists said ‘No, it is wrong that New York Times editors were fired over an op-ed by a Republican senator, that’s insanity, that’s craziness,’”she said.

 

“If 1,000 people stood up and said that rather than 1,000 people in the case of Tom Cotton signing a letter saying their life was in danger, the whole news media would be different.

 

“It’s really about people standing up, saying no to the mob, saying yes to free speech and yes to openness to debate, and showing that in doing that, they can not just survive the mob but also come out on the other side of it.”

 

Weiss resigned after over 1,000 NYT staffers signed a letter protesting the Times’ publication of Cotton’s op-ed.

 

Watch the full confrontation here: