Is Zohran Mamdani Scared of Bari Weiss?

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Democrats and their teammates in the press are so accustomed to their symbiotic relationship that any hint of an adversarial one is met with pearl-clutching histrionics.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s (D) team, for example, was so upset by one of Bari Weiss’s tweets that they backed out of a CBS News interview they were in the process of negotiating on their boss’s behalf.

Former Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin delivered the scoop via his new “Party Animals” newsletter at Vanity Fair.

“Mamdani’s team, I’m told, has long been averse to appearing on CBS given the coverage his campaign got from Weiss’s The Free Press, but her recent social media post reacting with a fire emoji to an Iranian activist’s diatribe against Mamdani was the ‘nail in the coffin’ for him appearing on the network,” reported McLaughlin, citing “two sources with knowledge.”

The usual suspects, outraged by the existence of a media executive who doesn’t conceive of their newsroom as an arm of the progressive movement, took the news as an indictment of Weiss.

“Yes CBS’s ‘axe to grind’ is that it’s run by a self identified ‘zionist fanatic’ who openly incites violence against Palestinians—and Muslims more broadly—and was a second rate tabloid troll until her equally fanatical zionist multibillionaire patron decided she should run CBS,” submitted far-left commentator Adam Johnson.

“Weiss lacks the objectivity and maturity to run a news network. Attacking a potential interview subject ahead of the interview is such a rookie mistake a Jschool student would know not to do it,” chimed in writer Zaid Jilani.

J-School 101: Treat potential interviewees with kid gloves in exchange for access. Why pay the tuition when Zaid is dispensing such lessons for free?

The story here, we’re told, is not that the mayor of the country’s largest city refuses to submit to an interview he worries might be challenging, but that a journalist was just too hard on him. Is it not remarkable how quickly all of the bluster about speaking truth to power goes out the window the second the wrong person speaks the wrong truth to the wrong power?

One can debate the wisdom of Weiss’s continued social media activity given her position atop CBS. Perhaps her strong political views will cost the network interviews it may have otherwise secured.

But then again, there’s also something refreshing about the fact that Weiss, unlike so many in the industry, is open about her biases. Certainly it’s preferable to the approach of outlets such as CNN, where a professed commitment to sober objectivity is falsified by its revealed preference for dishonest activism.

Weiss is a journalist with a worldview. Mamdani is a powerful employee of the public. The latter’s avoidance of the former is less a testament to Weiss’s lack of judgment than it is to Mamdani’s enabled cowardice — and the rest of the Fourth Estate’s failure to demand more from him.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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