Bari Weiss | All-In Summit 2024

00:00:00.000 | A major resignation now.

00:00:02.500 | An editor at the New York Times.

00:00:05.040 | Showing up for work as a centrist that an American newspaper should not require bravery.

00:00:09.360 | She's saying no one should be allowed to criticize me.

00:00:12.800 | They thought them very wise.

00:00:14.640 | Anyone that departs from woke orthodoxy gets a lot more heat.

00:00:18.960 | A new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper.

00:00:23.840 | If you don't have the right views, everything is caveated, edited,

00:00:28.560 | tripled, quadrupled the amount of crimes.

00:00:31.200 | Should it take courage to say that those who praise the pristine subways of Russia

00:00:36.880 | are not journalists, but propagandists?

00:00:39.840 | Should it take courage to just say in public, "I disagree"?

00:00:44.480 | Join me in welcoming Barry Weiss to the stage.

00:00:56.560 | Welcome. Hi, Barry.

00:00:58.720 | Barry, thanks for being here.

00:01:02.240 | Thanks for having me.

00:01:03.200 | Thanks for the cool weather.

00:01:04.160 | Really appreciate it.

00:01:05.040 | Yes, Barry made headlines.

00:01:07.840 | I'm going to give you a little introduction.

00:01:09.520 | Even though most everyone here knows who you are.

00:01:11.200 | But you made headlines in 2020 when you left the New York Times,

00:01:14.160 | criticizing its stance on free speech and diversity of thought.

00:01:17.520 | And since then, you've launched the Free Press.

00:01:19.760 | Congrats.

00:01:20.240 | I know a lot of folks here are subscribers.

00:01:25.760 | And the Free Press declares itself a free press for free people,

00:01:29.520 | honest, independent, and fearless.

00:01:31.360 | I think we all respect and admire you for your fiercely independent thinking

00:01:36.560 | and direct and honest takes on current events and social issues.

00:01:41.200 | We feel like you're a kindred spirit.

00:01:45.200 | Yes, a bestie.

00:01:46.560 | I wish.

00:01:47.060 | This may be an audition.

00:01:51.040 | Let's see.

00:01:51.540 | I don't know if you guys can handle having a woman in a bestie.

00:01:54.560 | I'm not sure.

00:01:55.360 | No, no, we can.

00:01:56.240 | Just not sex.

00:01:56.960 | So look, I want to start with a very broad, general question

00:02:05.200 | that you can take in any direction you want.

00:02:07.200 | What's going on in America?

00:02:08.720 | What are the two sides?

00:02:10.000 | Because it seems like a lot of what has, as we've been hearing a lot about,

00:02:15.920 | and I think we're going to hear more about throughout this conference,

00:02:18.240 | there are polarizing forces at play.

00:02:22.880 | And the polls kind of get defined differently.

00:02:26.800 | But is there a unifying thesis here?

00:02:29.520 | There's the notion of populists and elitists.

00:02:32.720 | Are there elitists that say I'm an elitist?

00:02:35.360 | There's corporate and government folks.

00:02:37.920 | The pocket square says you're an elitist.

00:02:39.840 | Yes, like pockets where it keeps slipping.

00:02:42.080 | There's the conservatives versus the liberals.

00:02:46.000 | I mean, what is the divide in the United States?

00:02:48.400 | And what is causing the polarity?

00:02:50.320 | How would you think about the polarity that's emerged?

00:02:52.400 | I think there's two ways, broadly, that I would answer that.

00:02:55.040 | And obviously, besties push back on me, as I know David Sachs surely will.

00:02:59.040 | One way to think about it, and I think Martin Goury has written about this

00:03:03.760 | absolutely brilliantly in his book, "The Revolt of the Public,"

00:03:06.960 | probably the most important book written in the last 25 years.

00:03:09.440 | Read it.

00:03:10.400 | If you haven't, "Stripe Press," publish it.

00:03:12.160 | Say it again.

00:03:12.960 | Martin Goury's book, it's called "The Revolt of the Public."

00:03:16.320 | And broadly, what he prophesied, without using the words Donald Trump

00:03:20.480 | or BLM or any of the phenomenon that have reshaped American political life

00:03:24.960 | over the past several decades, is the sort of--

00:03:28.000 | call it the renegades versus the establishment

00:03:31.680 | or the outsiders versus the insiders.

00:03:34.480 | If you want to understand how it can be

00:03:36.880 | that Dick Cheney and Kamala Harris are on one side

00:03:41.280 | and Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy,

00:03:44.960 | whatever you think of any of those people are on the other,

00:03:47.360 | that's how you have to understand that, I think.

00:03:50.400 | Another way that I've been thinking about a lot, though,

00:03:52.880 | is sort of like there are three sides that I see that are emerging.

00:03:56.000 | And I think the free press is trying to position itself

00:03:58.800 | in what I believe is the broad, self-silencing majority piece of the pie,

00:04:04.160 | which is to say there's a woke left.

00:04:06.560 | There's increasingly a woke right.

00:04:08.480 | And then there's the normal people.

00:04:10.480 | And the normal--

00:04:12.160 | I mean, this is what people come up--

00:04:13.440 | I went to a thing for my daughter's new preschool yesterday,

00:04:16.640 | and there were some free press readers.

00:04:18.080 | And they didn't come up to me to talk about any particular piece.

00:04:20.960 | They just said, "Thank you for being normal."

00:04:23.360 | And normal was the adjective that almost all of them used.

00:04:26.240 | And so I think that that's also something that's happening where,

00:04:29.920 | you know, I'm sure as has already been discussed at this conference,

00:04:34.240 | we have this horseshoe in which the left,

00:04:37.120 | the identitarian sort of anti-liberal left, illiberal left,

00:04:40.640 | sounds eerily similar at times to the illiberalism of the right.

00:04:45.520 | And they sort of are in this dance with each other.

00:04:47.840 | And the rest of us are feeling like,

00:04:49.440 | "When did everything get so crazy?

00:04:52.560 | And is there a return to normalcy?"

00:04:54.720 | And I'm not saying a return to normalcy

00:04:56.400 | in the sense of like returning to some kind of neoliberal consensus.

00:05:00.800 | I just mean a return to the things that I think many of us still believe

00:05:06.000 | are just basic commonsensical American values

00:05:09.600 | that right now feel under siege.

00:05:11.200 | - Let's talk about the media's role in this.

00:05:13.680 | You and I have been career journalists, editors.

00:05:17.360 | And so when we were coming up,

00:05:19.920 | they would take your piece, whatever you wrote,

00:05:22.320 | and they'd just say, "Well, this is an opinion."

00:05:23.840 | They'd strike it out and say, "Who are you attributing this to?"

00:05:26.160 | There was a very thoughtful process.

00:05:28.320 | And then something happened economically with link baiting

00:05:32.320 | and maybe trying to get more clicks.

00:05:34.640 | And then this very strange thing happened when Donald Trump got elected

00:05:39.040 | that I think you and I both witnessed,

00:05:40.800 | which was journalists who were, you know,

00:05:44.720 | thought of themselves as independent.

00:05:46.800 | And storytellers who would just present the facts to an audience

00:05:50.320 | then saw themselves as part of the resistance

00:05:53.840 | and that they had to stop this individual

00:05:55.920 | because they believed he was Hitler.

00:05:58.240 | And the marketing when you went to the Guardian

00:06:00.880 | or the Washington Post or the New York Times,

00:06:03.120 | at the bottom of a Trump story would say,

00:06:06.240 | "If you want us to hold truth to power and stop Trump,

00:06:08.880 | give us your credit card."

00:06:10.720 | - Yeah.

00:06:11.440 | - And this seemed like this bizarre moment.

00:06:14.960 | Maybe you could just talk about that paradigm shifting

00:06:17.920 | because it happened during the economic turmoil as well

00:06:21.680 | when journalism got gutted.

00:06:23.200 | - I think it's deeper than...

00:06:24.720 | The roots of this are deeper than Trump.

00:06:27.680 | We actually have a piece we're running tomorrow afternoon

00:06:30.400 | called "When We Started Lying."

00:06:32.400 | That's sort of a view from someone

00:06:34.160 | that was in the Middle East Bureau of the AP

00:06:36.560 | and seeing the roots of this back in 2005, 2006.

00:06:40.080 | And what that piece argues,

00:06:41.600 | and I think it's exactly put,

00:06:43.840 | is people don't really understand

00:06:45.440 | that the fundamental job description

00:06:48.400 | of mainstream journalism has changed.

00:06:50.720 | It used to be that the job of journalism,

00:06:53.920 | and I still believe that this is the job,

00:06:56.000 | is to hold up a mirror to the world as it actually is

00:06:59.120 | so people can make sensible, rational decisions

00:07:02.800 | about where to send their kids to school,

00:07:04.320 | about where to live, about who to vote for,

00:07:06.400 | about all of the things that are important in this life.

00:07:09.200 | Tell the story about reality as plainly

00:07:12.640 | and as truthfully as you can.

00:07:13.920 | That is plainly no longer the goal,

00:07:17.600 | I think, of many "mainstream,"

00:07:19.760 | I should put in quotes, American journalists.

00:07:22.480 | The job description as they see it

00:07:24.720 | is to usher you toward the correct political position.

00:07:27.760 | That's it.

00:07:29.120 | And once you begin to understand that,

00:07:31.440 | things that seem crazy, like,

00:07:32.880 | "Wait, how did they not tell me

00:07:35.280 | "about the Hunter Biden laptop story?"

00:07:37.280 | Or, "Why did they tell me

00:07:38.800 | "that the thing that I saw with my own eyes,

00:07:41.200 | "which is the obvious mental decline

00:07:42.880 | "of the President of the United States,

00:07:44.960 | "which is relevant to every single person

00:07:47.280 | "in this country and in the world, was a lie?"

00:07:51.520 | And once you start to understand that,

00:07:53.360 | you understand the misconstrual of certain stories,

00:07:56.960 | you understand the absolute silence around others,

00:08:00.800 | and frankly, that's why we're all here.

00:08:03.520 | Like, it's given this tremendous opportunity

00:08:06.000 | for people who crave that thing

00:08:10.080 | that journalism used to do.

00:08:11.360 | - The truth?

00:08:12.000 | - Can you...

00:08:12.400 | - Yeah, the truth, yeah.

00:08:14.560 | - Can you just double- - Yeah, the truth.

00:08:16.000 | - Just double-click into that.

00:08:17.440 | Like, it's not like there's some grand cabal of people

00:08:21.120 | that decide, "Let's obfuscate Biden's decline.

00:08:23.920 | "Let's elevate this."

00:08:25.440 | So what does it actually mean day-to-day?

00:08:28.160 | Like, how is it actually happening?

00:08:29.920 | - Okay.

00:08:30.320 | - Is it the money?

00:08:31.360 | Is it the incentives?

00:08:32.240 | What is happening?

00:08:32.880 | - There's a few things that happened.

00:08:34.320 | The first, as Jason was alluding to,

00:08:36.240 | is that the economic model changed.

00:08:38.320 | It used to be that if you ran a piece in "The New York Times,"

00:08:42.160 | your fear was you were gonna piss off the advertiser

00:08:44.880 | that was running next to the story.

00:08:46.480 | Once the business model shifted,

00:08:49.120 | you no longer were as concerned about,

00:08:51.440 | although you still are to some extent,

00:08:53.280 | about enraging, you know, Procter & Gamble.

00:08:56.160 | You're worried about enraging the reader, right?

00:08:59.120 | This is the phenomenon that so many people

00:09:00.640 | have talked about, which is audience capture,

00:09:02.720 | which is as, you know, the individual sub-stacker

00:09:05.600 | is as susceptible to this as "The New York Times."

00:09:07.520 | None of us are free from that phenomenon either.

00:09:09.520 | - People respond to your article and say,

00:09:11.440 | "That was stupid," or "That pissed me off,"

00:09:13.920 | and then you feel pressure to change.

00:09:15.520 | - Unsubscribe or unsubscribe.

00:09:17.360 | - No, so think about this.

00:09:18.640 | The court, and I think that these are public figures,

00:09:22.320 | but something like 95 to 98% of readers

00:09:26.480 | at "The New York Times," and I'm choosing that only

00:09:28.160 | 'cause it's the experience I know most intimately,

00:09:30.400 | regard themselves as liberals or progressives.

00:09:33.360 | So if you write, and I'm thinking about my wife,

00:09:38.080 | who writes about in her book how she,

00:09:40.480 | after the violent rioting that happened

00:09:43.360 | in places like Kenosha, she was a business reporter,

00:09:46.080 | went and reported on those stories

00:09:47.680 | and found that the story was unbelievably complicated,

00:09:50.560 | that many of these business owners were minority,

00:09:53.440 | small business owners, they did not have insurance,

00:09:55.760 | they were absolutely devastated by what happened,

00:09:58.400 | and you know what happened?

00:09:59.600 | She brought, it was an excellent story,

00:10:01.280 | back to her editors, and they said,

00:10:02.880 | "Let's wait until after the election to run this."

00:10:05.120 | So that's the kind of thing that would happen a lot,

00:10:09.040 | and no, there's not like some secret cabal meeting

00:10:12.240 | that happens where it says, "Let's make sure

00:10:14.720 | "that we lie to our readers about Joe Biden's mental state."

00:10:18.800 | It's the exact same phenomenon that everyone here feels

00:10:21.920 | in any social scene or company or institution

00:10:25.920 | that they're a part of, which is that human beings

00:10:28.080 | are social animals, and if you look

00:10:30.320 | at the kinds of people that work at the New York Times,

00:10:32.880 | they went to the same 10 boarding schools

00:10:34.880 | or fancy schools and the same 10 colleges,

00:10:37.600 | and they marinated in the same set of ideas,

00:10:39.440 | and they want their kids to go to the same schools

00:10:41.680 | in Brooklyn Heights or the Upper West Side,

00:10:43.440 | and that creates this very particular

00:10:46.160 | group thinking phenomenon.

00:10:47.120 | Let me add one thing, which is that was always there.

00:10:49.520 | The thing that I think has changed a lot in the past,

00:10:53.520 | let's call it 20 years, is that the very places

00:10:57.840 | that used to be feeders to the New York Times

00:11:00.160 | were no longer feeding in sort of

00:11:02.160 | your standard center-left liberal Democrat.

00:11:05.040 | They were feeding in a kind of person

00:11:07.840 | who believed in something like revolution

00:11:11.280 | and believed that their job was to foment that

00:11:14.480 | inside the New York Times.

00:11:15.600 | - No, but how does that, say more about what does that,

00:11:18.880 | what do you mean?

00:11:19.280 | - Well, what I mean by that is that they did not,

00:11:22.160 | you could look at the values of the New York Times and--

00:11:25.200 | - Sorry, okay, wait, just go back a step.

00:11:26.480 | So the people in the New York Times are fancy,

00:11:28.800 | basically is what you're saying.

00:11:29.760 | - I'm not saying, their fanciness is sort of beside the point.

00:11:32.400 | - Yeah, but I'm saying there was an archetype.

00:11:34.320 | - Yeah, of course.

00:11:35.120 | - And then that archetype shifted.

00:11:36.400 | - Right.

00:11:36.880 | - And is that because the feeder schools changed

00:11:39.120 | or is that because what they were taught

00:11:40.320 | at those schools changed?

00:11:41.280 | - It's because wokeness happened to American liberalism

00:11:44.240 | and the people that were speaking the language

00:11:48.000 | of progressivism all of a sudden transformed the notion

00:11:52.720 | of what let's say social justice was, right?

00:11:56.720 | All of a sudden social justice wasn't about doing

00:11:59.360 | good by the poor.

00:12:00.480 | It was actually about a kind of neo-racism

00:12:03.920 | and a resegregation.

00:12:05.520 | All of a sudden, progressivism wasn't actually

00:12:08.480 | about human flourishing and progress.

00:12:11.360 | It was about ensuring equality of outcome

00:12:16.080 | rather than equality of opportunity.

00:12:17.840 | And I don't think that the sort of that transformation,

00:12:22.400 | which some people have said,

00:12:23.200 | "Oh, wokeness has peaked, it's over."

00:12:24.720 | It cannot be overstated.

00:12:26.400 | The thing that began at the margins and at the fringe

00:12:29.600 | has moved into the center of American institutional life.

00:12:34.640 | And that is the story of the transformation

00:12:37.040 | of the New York Times.

00:12:37.760 | And it's the story of the transformation of Harvard

00:12:40.240 | and so many other places where people all of a sudden

00:12:43.040 | turned around and thought,

00:12:44.000 | "When did everything get so insane?"

00:12:46.480 | - Is it a story that ends in socialism

00:12:48.640 | as it has in past lives?

00:12:50.320 | - I think that, you know, I'm an optimist.

00:12:53.920 | This is America.

00:12:54.880 | And I think that there's an unbelievable pushback

00:12:57.840 | to this phenomenon.

00:12:59.120 | But the pushback, I believe...

00:13:01.920 | (audience applauding)

00:13:04.760 | - We have Elon here this afternoon.

00:13:07.440 | - Right.

00:13:07.940 | The pushback, and this is where I guess

00:13:11.040 | I'm more of a radical than a reformer.

00:13:12.640 | I think I began at the New York Times as a reformer

00:13:14.880 | believing that I could make a difference.

00:13:16.960 | And God bless the people who are still trying to do that.

00:13:19.520 | I think there's a role for both.

00:13:21.200 | I think what has made me more of a radical,

00:13:23.360 | not politically, but just in terms of my posture,

00:13:28.000 | has been that I've become someone who believes

00:13:30.000 | that the way to change those institutions

00:13:32.720 | is not to give money to those places

00:13:34.480 | or join the board of them

00:13:35.680 | or delude yourself with the idea

00:13:37.200 | that you can transform them from within.

00:13:39.200 | It's to build new things.

00:13:40.400 | And in building new things and creating competition,

00:13:43.200 | it forces the other people to change.

00:13:45.760 | - Sheri, give a voice to the people.

00:13:47.520 | (audience applauding)

00:13:51.280 | If you wouldn't mind, give a voice to the people

00:13:53.440 | that want to buck the trend,

00:13:56.800 | that want to be able to respond to the statement

00:14:00.000 | that they are morally bankrupt

00:14:01.840 | if they identify that this is not the right path.

00:14:06.320 | What's the conversation that,

00:14:08.400 | and this is happening with everyone I know

00:14:09.840 | in schools, in workplaces.

00:14:11.520 | It's not just the institution of the New York Times.

00:14:13.440 | It's all institutions.

00:14:14.400 | - Okay, it starts with something very simple.

00:14:16.480 | Give up the heroin needle of prestige.

00:14:19.680 | Rip it out of your arm immediately.

00:14:22.640 | Stop poisoning yourself, your families,

00:14:26.400 | and your children with the bankrupt notion

00:14:30.320 | that them getting into Harvard or Yale

00:14:32.720 | is more important than inculcating in them

00:14:35.520 | a sense of love, of family, of country,

00:14:38.640 | and of all of the things we used to think were normal.

00:14:40.720 | (audience applauding)

00:14:44.320 | - That, to-- - That could've been clapping

00:14:47.120 | 'cause he went to Stanford, but no.

00:14:48.400 | (audience laughing)

00:14:49.440 | - To me, to me, that, it begins with that

00:14:53.840 | because I find myself in these baffling conversations

00:14:56.960 | with people where they say, "Thank you for what you do.

00:14:59.840 | "I'm so grateful for the free press.

00:15:01.280 | "I'm so grateful."

00:15:02.080 | I'm like, "Yeah, and we're talking, it's great."

00:15:03.760 | And I'm like, "Where do your kids go to school?"

00:15:05.600 | And then they name a place that's like

00:15:08.400 | the center of the mind virus.

00:15:10.880 | And I'm like-- (audience laughing)

00:15:13.520 | - Why would you do that?

00:15:15.280 | - Well, Al-Qaeda was all filled up.

00:15:17.840 | They reached their capacities.

00:15:19.840 | - Right, so to me, it's sort of,

00:15:22.320 | the beginning of wisdom begins with that

00:15:24.720 | and with the confidence that prestige and honor

00:15:29.360 | is not something that is granted to you

00:15:32.080 | by institutions that have allowed themselves

00:15:34.320 | to be corrupted by morally bankrupt people.

00:15:38.880 | You and your values, they're lucky to have you, right?

00:15:43.280 | That's what I think the fundamental posture needs to change.

00:15:46.480 | - Let's talk about the new stuff we're all building,

00:15:50.640 | the Go Direct movement, all these new brands.

00:15:52.880 | You're one of them, we're one of them, I suppose.

00:15:54.800 | - Are we gonna talk about Founder Mode?

00:15:56.240 | I know you guys can explain to me what that is.

00:15:57.680 | - Well, I mean-- - It's cocaine.

00:15:58.800 | - No, you're right. - Oh, Barry, it's cocaine.

00:16:00.560 | - Really? - Yeah, Founder Mode's cocaine.

00:16:02.080 | - Yeah, it's good.

00:16:02.560 | We have actually a good-- - I've never done Founder Mode.

00:16:05.200 | - I can only guess, but--

00:16:06.080 | - No, my guys got the best Founder Modes.

00:16:07.680 | I put some in your green room.

00:16:09.760 | - Thank you so much.

00:16:10.560 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:16:11.440 | If you need more, let me know.

00:16:12.800 | - I think I've been doing Founder Mode.

00:16:16.480 | If Founder Mode means working till you collapse every night

00:16:19.600 | for three years-- - No, no, that just means

00:16:20.880 | being committed and trying to build a business.

00:16:22.240 | - Yeah, we're talking about cocaine.

00:16:23.440 | - Founder Mode's being a dealership.

00:16:24.800 | (audience laughing)

00:16:26.640 | - It's back.

00:16:27.200 | But let's seriously talk about--

00:16:30.320 | (Barry laughing)

00:16:33.920 | It's so funny. - These are back, baby.

00:16:35.440 | - It's back, woo!

00:16:36.960 | It's gonna be a great show.

00:16:37.840 | So I wanna talk to you about the new stuff

00:16:41.920 | that's being built.

00:16:42.640 | Obviously, you have your subscription-based business

00:16:45.920 | doing wonderfully.

00:16:46.960 | We've got the information.

00:16:48.320 | We've got all in.

00:16:50.160 | And then you have everybody who got kicked off

00:16:52.720 | of broadcast television

00:16:55.760 | or for whatever reasons they left,

00:17:00.000 | Don Lemon, Megyn Kelly, Tucker--

00:17:02.880 | - Katherine Harridge.

00:17:03.520 | - What's that? - Katherine Harridge.

00:17:04.720 | - Yeah. - It's fantastic.

00:17:06.000 | - Yeah, so tons of long tail there.

00:17:08.480 | But this group is also susceptible

00:17:11.840 | to the same things as you pointed out,

00:17:13.440 | and perhaps in some ways more susceptible

00:17:16.320 | because they've got a less subscriber base, less brand.

00:17:21.040 | So Fox News is gonna be fine.

00:17:22.800 | New York Times is gonna be fine.

00:17:23.840 | But as we saw this past week,

00:17:25.120 | the Russians put $10 million into a little slush fund

00:17:28.720 | and then gave it to--

00:17:30.560 | - You're gonna start with Saks again?

00:17:31.600 | - For, no, no, I'm not talking to Saks.

00:17:33.120 | I'm talking to Barry.

00:17:34.880 | - He's talking to Saks through Barry.

00:17:36.720 | - I thank God I'm not managing these people.

00:17:38.480 | - Well, no, no, I'm just curious what you're,

00:17:40.160 | I mean, these are obviously,

00:17:41.680 | as the Russians would call them, the useful idiots,

00:17:43.360 | but they didn't even know

00:17:44.800 | they were getting millions of dollars.

00:17:46.240 | They didn't ask where it was coming from.

00:17:48.080 | Obviously you didn't take that money.

00:17:51.040 | We didn't get offered that money, unfortunately.

00:17:52.640 | - Otherwise you would have taken it.

00:17:53.680 | - Yeah, we would have secured that bag immediately.

00:17:56.880 | - Free money from the Russians?

00:17:58.560 | - No, we're like the scene in "The Matrix"

00:18:01.280 | where Neo's dodging the bullets and one nicks his leg.

00:18:04.080 | That's the Russian money

00:18:05.120 | 'cause it was flying everywhere.

00:18:06.880 | And J. Cal was trying to jump into the bullets.

00:18:08.800 | (audience laughing)

00:18:09.600 | - I was trying to collect them.

00:18:11.360 | - And it's like, it's all we can do to just,

00:18:13.120 | we wanted to get that sweet, sweet Putin money.

00:18:15.920 | But what was your, what's your take on this?

00:18:18.960 | 'Cause you had some strong feelings

00:18:20.480 | when I think Tucker went and did his,

00:18:24.240 | what you thought was propaganda for Putin.

00:18:26.800 | And so let's talk about how susceptible, in your mind,

00:18:33.280 | these voices are to being bought and paid for, apparently.

00:18:37.600 | - To me, it's less about--

00:18:39.040 | - Allegedly.

00:18:39.600 | - Being bought and paid for.

00:18:40.960 | I think what it is,

00:18:42.560 | is there's a really, really understandable risk

00:18:47.520 | that once you sort of eject yourself from "The Matrix"

00:18:50.480 | or whatever the right metaphor is,

00:18:51.680 | stop taking the blue pill.

00:18:53.680 | It's like, once you see one lie,

00:18:56.400 | all of a sudden it becomes a world of lies.

00:19:00.320 | And what's to stop you sort of

00:19:02.080 | from falling down the rabbit hole?

00:19:03.680 | And I'll give you an example.

00:19:04.640 | There's certain people, I don't wanna name them,

00:19:06.640 | who I so admired.

00:19:08.880 | And I felt like they were really prescient

00:19:12.640 | on standing up against sort of the neo-racism

00:19:16.000 | from the left, let's say.

00:19:17.040 | And then all of a sudden I turn around

00:19:19.200 | and they're basically talking about how Bill Gates

00:19:21.440 | is putting 5G chips in our brain.

00:19:23.520 | And I think to myself, how did that happen?

00:19:25.760 | And I think the way that it happened

00:19:27.440 | is a really understandable human impulse,

00:19:30.800 | which is these people lied to me about this thing.

00:19:34.480 | Therefore, everything they say is untrue.

00:19:38.320 | Or the Overton window has been narrowed so, so tightly

00:19:46.560 | that I'm just gonna bling it open to, I don't know,

00:19:49.840 | someone that says that Churchill is a villain

00:19:52.000 | and the Nazis may have had a point.

00:19:55.840 | So that's what I think is actually happening more broadly.

00:20:00.560 | And I think the, I feel oftentimes at the Free Press,

00:20:04.560 | like we're dancing on the edge of a knife,

00:20:06.720 | which is to say on one side,

00:20:08.720 | you have these institutions that have the poor gatekeeping,

00:20:13.440 | but at least it's, I mean, they have gatekeeping,

00:20:15.440 | they have fact checkers,

00:20:16.560 | they have this whole system, right, that's corrupt,

00:20:19.520 | but at least it was supposed to work at one point.

00:20:22.080 | And then you have kind of the Wild West world.

00:20:24.560 | And the Wild West world has everything.

00:20:27.360 | And so you can see Alex Jones right alongside

00:20:31.760 | a fantastic journalist like Megyn Kelly,

00:20:35.280 | and how are you supposed to know who is who, right?

00:20:39.280 | And so that's the challenge, I think,

00:20:41.440 | of the new Wild West world.

00:20:43.360 | And what we're desperately trying to do at the Free Press

00:20:46.320 | is to be the bridge.

00:20:48.800 | And what I mean by that is to marry the standards

00:20:52.240 | that you would once expect from a place

00:20:54.320 | like the Washington Post or the New York Times.

00:20:57.200 | In other words, everything is rigorously fact-checked.

00:21:00.400 | When we get something wrong, we publicly correct it.

00:21:03.280 | Like all of those old rules,

00:21:04.720 | but marrying them to the sort of political freedom

00:21:07.600 | of the new world.

00:21:08.240 | - Can you take us into an instance where a contributor,

00:21:10.960 | 'cause you have a lot of freelance contributors

00:21:12.560 | or just important people will want to publish now

00:21:15.600 | in the Free Press, which I think is a really good sign

00:21:17.360 | for you that you're doing something meaningful,

00:21:19.760 | that they submit something and you're like,

00:21:21.840 | "Okay, this is not actually reporting.

00:21:24.880 | "This is your opinion on a conspiracy.

00:21:27.200 | "And we need to maybe get some facts in here

00:21:31.040 | "to boister this opinion of yours."

00:21:33.680 | Because I mean, these dopes accepted $100,000

00:21:37.120 | and never asked it.

00:21:37.760 | So then people are gonna take their opinion on Ukraine

00:21:40.480 | and look at that as factual

00:21:42.560 | when they don't even question

00:21:43.680 | who gave them $100,000 an episode?

00:21:46.000 | I mean, these people are obviously idiots/corrupt.

00:21:50.480 | What do you think?

00:21:50.960 | - I wish I had read more about this particular story.

00:21:52.960 | - Well, no, it's infuriating

00:21:54.800 | because if somebody were to drop $100,000 on you

00:21:57.680 | to republish the Free Press on another website,

00:21:59.920 | you'd say, "Where's the money coming from?"

00:22:01.120 | Correct?

00:22:01.520 | - Yeah.

00:22:02.560 | - And why are we getting free money?

00:22:04.400 | - Yeah, we don't get free money,

00:22:06.720 | probably 'cause I'm too stupid to get free money.

00:22:08.640 | - No, no, it's the opposite.

00:22:09.600 | You're too smart so they wouldn't offer it.

00:22:10.960 | - Maybe.

00:22:11.680 | I mean, the scenario you're asking me to go into,

00:22:15.440 | that happens every single day.

00:22:16.720 | In other words, we're in a really excellent position

00:22:20.400 | where we turn down the majority of things

00:22:23.040 | that are submitted to us.

00:22:24.240 | And I think the thing that's really heartening

00:22:26.320 | is what our readers reward

00:22:29.200 | is the very thing that we were founded to get.

00:22:33.440 | In other words, when I left the New York Times,

00:22:35.600 | the Free Press, it was barryweiss.substack.com,

00:22:38.160 | and it began as a reactionary product, honestly.

00:22:40.560 | Now it's transformed itself,

00:22:43.120 | but it began as me being so pissed

00:22:46.320 | that they were ignoring and lying about so much.

00:22:49.360 | And those were the stories that I ran sort of headlong into,

00:22:52.080 | mostly institutional capture in the areas of law

00:22:55.120 | and medicine and education.

00:22:56.960 | But just to choose an example,

00:22:58.720 | a few hours ago, we sent Leighton Woodhouse,

00:23:01.200 | an amazing reporter.

00:23:02.160 | I saw, as everyone here did,

00:23:04.640 | that the 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis

00:23:06.640 | during the BLM protests and rioting burned to the ground

00:23:10.240 | and the cops abandoned that station.

00:23:12.320 | And I wondered, what do the cops in the 3rd Precinct,

00:23:16.000 | what do the small business owners there,

00:23:18.000 | what do they think about Tim Walz?

00:23:19.360 | Now that is a natural story that in a normal time,

00:23:22.880 | the New York Times would report on immediately

00:23:25.680 | when he was chosen, but they didn't.

00:23:28.000 | And so then we sent Leighton,

00:23:29.360 | and he interviewed two dozen police officers

00:23:31.440 | and small business owners,

00:23:32.880 | and that is the kind of thing that our readers want.

00:23:35.680 | They want new information,

00:23:37.680 | soberly presented and brilliantly written.

00:23:41.200 | They want really high quality things.

00:23:43.760 | And to me, that's one of the things

00:23:45.440 | about building the business has been the most heartening.

00:23:47.040 | David Sachs has not said a word.

00:23:48.400 | Well, let me, I can actually,

00:23:53.680 | let me agree with a few things you said.

00:23:56.000 | So first of all, I agree with you

00:23:59.040 | that the mainstream media is not just biased,

00:24:01.680 | it's just like all propaganda all the time.

00:24:04.560 | And the turning point for me in realizing this was COVID,

00:24:08.240 | I think before COVID, I realized that, yeah,

00:24:10.480 | the mainstream media is largely consists of liberals,

00:24:13.680 | so they're gonna have a liberal bias.

00:24:15.440 | What we saw during COVID was that

00:24:17.600 | they were even lying about science, right?

00:24:19.840 | It wasn't just politics, it's like everything.

00:24:22.720 | You know, we were told that the pandemic

00:24:25.440 | was a pandemic of the unvaccinated,

00:24:27.040 | even though, even if you got the,

00:24:28.880 | what they were calling the vaccine,

00:24:30.000 | it didn't actually stop the spread.

00:24:31.680 | You go on and on that, you know,

00:24:33.120 | we had to basically do social distancing,

00:24:35.440 | except when the riots of 2020 happened,

00:24:37.600 | then you're allowed to go outside and actually participate

00:24:39.840 | because it's a social justice cause,

00:24:41.520 | so therefore the health changes.

00:24:43.040 | I mean, it was like on and on.

00:24:44.160 | - No church, but you can go to a protest.

00:24:46.000 | - Right, right. - No surfing.

00:24:47.360 | - So it was like, for me, it became so obvious

00:24:50.160 | that the media is just, again, it goes way beyond bias.

00:24:54.080 | You know, it's like, it's just all wrong.

00:24:56.160 | Now at the same time, I think that you do raise a good point,

00:24:59.920 | which is once you're outside the world

00:25:02.160 | of the prestige media, yeah, you are kind of on your own.

00:25:05.520 | - You're naked. - You're on independent

00:25:07.600 | platforms.

00:25:08.640 | I use X to try and figure out, you know,

00:25:11.360 | who I should listen to.

00:25:12.960 | And the way I do it is I compare who said what

00:25:17.120 | compared to what actually happened.

00:25:19.200 | So like, who ended up being right about the issues?

00:25:23.280 | And then I will follow them more,

00:25:24.880 | and I will de-follow the people who are wrong.

00:25:27.200 | It's really simple.

00:25:28.720 | For example, on the issue of Ukraine,

00:25:30.480 | the number one quoted source in the mainstream media

00:25:34.160 | is a think tank called the Institute for the Study of War.

00:25:37.840 | It's basically a neocon-funded think tank

00:25:41.440 | who are the relatives of Victoria Nuland,

00:25:44.240 | who was the architect of our policy in Ukraine.

00:25:47.440 | Everything they've written over the past two and a half years

00:25:49.520 | about Ukraine has been proven wrong.

00:25:51.200 | They said that the summer counter-offensive

00:25:53.120 | last summer was going to be a giant victory.

00:25:55.040 | It ended up being a disaster.

00:25:56.720 | - Sorry, these are her relatives you're saying?

00:25:58.160 | - Her relatives.

00:25:59.040 | And the mainstream media, the New York Times and so on,

00:26:01.840 | quotes ISW.

00:26:03.120 | If you go look at the citations,

00:26:06.560 | it is the single most cited authority

00:26:09.440 | by the mainstream media,

00:26:12.160 | and they are consistently wrong.

00:26:13.760 | Who was right about the summer counter-offensive?

00:26:15.600 | Well, I was, for example.

00:26:17.360 | (audience laughing)

00:26:20.640 | - While we're handing out credit.

00:26:22.000 | - And I certainly didn't need to be paid by the Russians.

00:26:24.960 | I just figured out what the truth was.

00:26:26.560 | Okay, J. Cal?

00:26:27.440 | So, you know, you bring up these, you know,

00:26:32.560 | these stories about Russian influence or whatever.

00:26:36.080 | The real influence operation in this country

00:26:38.640 | is by the mainstream media.

00:26:40.320 | They're the ones who are spreading disinformation

00:26:42.880 | about the war in Ukraine and so many other issues

00:26:45.520 | on a scale that dwarfs

00:26:47.360 | what any of these like handful of podcasters

00:26:49.840 | that most people have never heard of

00:26:51.040 | can ever hope to accomplish.

00:26:53.200 | So in any event, I agree with you.

00:26:55.280 | - When's the foreign policy panel at this conference

00:26:57.920 | and can I join it?

00:26:58.720 | - Well, yeah, we're going to do.

00:27:00.720 | - Meir Scheimer and Sachs.

00:27:02.320 | - Jeffrey Sachs.

00:27:03.440 | - Meir Scheimer and Sachs.

00:27:04.320 | Sachs on Sachs on Meir Scheimer.

00:27:05.680 | - Well, look, I would, well, we're having,

00:27:08.000 | yeah, John Meir Scheimer and Jeffrey Sachs

00:27:09.760 | are speaking tomorrow.

00:27:11.040 | So they're doing a tete-a-tete.

00:27:12.720 | But yeah, if you want to stick around

00:27:13.920 | and we could have, maybe you and John,

00:27:16.000 | we can work that out.

00:27:17.040 | - I have a question.

00:27:17.840 | - You've got some time right now.

00:27:19.600 | - Right now?

00:27:20.640 | - You know what I mean?

00:27:21.360 | - No, no, go on.

00:27:22.480 | - Last year--

00:27:23.840 | - This would be like a many hours conversation.

00:27:26.080 | - Well, last year, one of the most popular

00:27:28.240 | things to come out of this

00:27:30.240 | was a talk about regulatory capture by Bill Gurley.

00:27:33.200 | And you mentioned that the first thing,

00:27:35.120 | Bill Gurley, someone--

00:27:36.000 | (audience applauding)

00:27:37.840 | - That's cheering for Bill and not regulatory capture.

00:27:40.000 | - Cheering for Bill.

00:27:40.720 | - Yeah, he's great.

00:27:42.480 | - But you said that when you left the Times,

00:27:43.840 | you threw yourself sort of like headfirst

00:27:46.560 | into the regulatory capture of the law

00:27:49.920 | and medicine and whatnot.

00:27:51.040 | What did you learn?

00:27:52.480 | - I wouldn't say regulatory capture.

00:27:53.760 | I would say ideological capture.

00:27:55.040 | - Ideological capture.

00:27:56.000 | Okay, so what did you learn?

00:27:56.800 | - Yeah, well, I mean, we've published so much on this.

00:27:59.920 | But basically the way in which institutions

00:28:04.240 | intended for one purpose

00:28:05.840 | have come to serve another one or another god.

00:28:09.920 | And in the case of medicine,

00:28:12.640 | which I would think would be

00:28:14.320 | maybe the most alarming in the law,

00:28:16.080 | not actually intending,

00:28:20.480 | I mean, the purpose of medicine is to do no harm.

00:28:23.200 | And yet all of a sudden in many hospitals

00:28:26.640 | and medical schools across the country,

00:28:28.560 | people were being told to do something very different,

00:28:32.000 | to mete out care based on race,

00:28:34.480 | to shuffle young teenage girls,

00:28:39.200 | especially toward irreversible changes in their bodies

00:28:43.680 | and things of that nature.

00:28:45.120 | So a lot of it comes back to the fundamental theme

00:28:48.800 | we've been sort of encircling in this conversation,

00:28:51.040 | which is that ideological change that's happened.

00:28:54.400 | And I think just to go back

00:28:57.280 | to where we began this conversation,

00:28:59.040 | it's like, where did all this come from?

00:29:00.800 | I don't think it's possible to understand these changes

00:29:03.520 | and like the rebel alliance maybe

00:29:06.480 | that's risen up against it

00:29:08.560 | without talking about technology

00:29:10.720 | and the reality that we,

00:29:12.960 | like 20 years ago, 30 years ago,

00:29:16.000 | I would have just left the New York Times

00:29:17.600 | and just maybe opened a diner

00:29:19.600 | and done something completely different.

00:29:21.040 | This would not have been available to me.

00:29:23.120 | And it's kind of unbelievable

00:29:25.920 | what's been made possible by technology.

00:29:29.760 | I mean, I'm not someone who,

00:29:31.360 | I've never managed a person in my life.

00:29:33.120 | I never raised money in my life.

00:29:34.480 | I never imagined I'd be an entrepreneur.

00:29:36.240 | I can barely log into Substack.

00:29:38.000 | And now I have a company with 50 full-time employees.

00:29:41.120 | It's unbelievable.

00:29:41.760 | - That's amazing.

00:29:42.800 | Congratulations.

00:29:43.600 | - That's founder mode.

00:29:44.640 | - That's the real founder mode.

00:29:46.640 | - And I would just add that,

00:29:50.000 | what the truth is on any particular issue

00:29:52.000 | is not always obvious.

00:29:54.000 | It's a process to figure it out.

00:29:56.080 | And so we have to have these alternatives

00:29:58.320 | in order to debate the issues

00:29:59.680 | and then arrive at the truth.

00:30:00.800 | And you, again, compare what people said

00:30:03.280 | to what actually happens.

00:30:04.240 | And you try to figure out who you can trust.

00:30:06.560 | And the good news is that today

00:30:08.720 | we have these alternatives.

00:30:09.760 | We have alternative media,

00:30:11.120 | of which your major part,

00:30:12.640 | All in Pod is a major part.

00:30:14.400 | And I think these alternatives are building

00:30:16.880 | in reaction to basically the corruption

00:30:19.280 | of the mainstream media,

00:30:20.080 | which I think you're spot on about.

00:30:21.600 | - I think that the challenge,

00:30:23.840 | at least I'll say for the free press,

00:30:25.600 | is there are a lot of people out there

00:30:28.160 | who their goal,

00:30:29.520 | and they're doing it beautifully,

00:30:31.200 | is to make a lot of money really quickly

00:30:33.600 | and to be very influential as one man bands.

00:30:38.240 | What we are trying to do

00:30:40.240 | is something much more long-term.

00:30:42.720 | We are trying in an age

00:30:44.160 | where no one trusts institutions anymore

00:30:46.400 | and they only trust individuals and influencers

00:30:49.440 | to stealthily build an institution.

00:30:52.240 | And what that requires is a kind of discipline

00:30:55.120 | to give up, and we do.

00:30:57.200 | A lot of things that would really stuff our pockets

00:31:01.120 | in the short term, not the Russians,

00:31:02.960 | but other things,

00:31:03.760 | for the sake of building

00:31:06.320 | what is to us the thing of the most value,

00:31:10.640 | which is trust with the audience.

00:31:12.320 | And they, I believe, see us doing that

00:31:16.400 | and see us publishing things

00:31:17.760 | that might enrage them,

00:31:19.600 | that they might disagree with,

00:31:20.640 | that might provoke them.

00:31:21.440 | And we think that that's just a part of,

00:31:24.000 | that is fundamental to our mission.

00:31:25.680 | - That's great.

00:31:26.240 | - Ladies and gentlemen, Mary Weiss.

00:31:28.240 | - Thank you.

00:31:28.480 | - Thank you very much.

00:31:29.480 | (audience applauding)

00:31:32.640 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Bari Weiss | All-In Summit 2024

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