Category: journalists behaving badly

And so it begins: Bari Weiss gets a “60 Minutes” segment pulled from the show

December 22, 2025 • 9:50 am

As you know, when Paramount Skydance acquired the television station CBS, Bari Weiss, still editor of the Free Press, was also appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News. I worried about that, as CBS has a long reputation for quality news, and I couldn’t see Weiss—whose Free Press site seems both center-right and lacking gravitas as well as reportorial quality—actually improving CBS News. But we’ll give her a chance. So far, she’s blown it, but it’s early days.

Weiss is new on the job, but is already putting her fingerprints on the broadcast news, and not in a good way. First, she held a Town Hall in which Weiss (unusual for an editor) appeared as an interviewer questioning Erika Kirk, the widow of the assassinated Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk. It was a debacle, with Weiss not pressing Erika and letting her spew Christianity all over the show. (We’re promised more town halls with Weiss in the future.)

Now, according to several sources, including the NYT article below, Weiss has done something even more serious: she had a segment of the excellent news show “60 minutes” pulled—and apparently for ideological reasons, Click below to read, or find the article archived free here.

Here’s an excerpt:

In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.

CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.”

But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Ms. Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia about Alfonsi, who’s been with the show for a decade:

Sharyn Elizabeth Alfonsi (born June 3, 1972) is an American journalist and correspondent for 60 Minutes. She made her debut appearance on the show on March 1, 2015. In 2019, she received the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award journalism award and has reported from war zones in Iraq, Gaza, and Afghanistan.

More clues as to why the story was spiked:

The segment was focused on Venezuelan men who were sent by the Trump administration to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison in El Salvador. In a news release on Friday promoting the segment, CBS News said that Ms. Alfonsi had spoken with several men now released from the prison “who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured.”

Ms. Weiss first saw the segment on Thursday and raised numerous concerns to “60 Minutes” producers about Ms. Alfonsi’s segment on Friday and Saturday, and she asked for a significant amount of new material to be added, according to three people familiar with the internal discussions.

One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.

Ms. Weiss also questioned the use of the term “migrants” to describe the Venezuelan men who were deported, noting that they were in the United States illegally, two of the people said.

In her note, Ms. Alfonsi said that her team had requested comment from the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote.

This is ludicrous. The story was vetted five times and cleared by CBS sttorneys. The team working on the story asked for comment from the three most relevant agencies: the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.  They refused to participate.  That would have been enough to add to the story: three “no comments”. But Weiss stuck her nose in and helpfully supplied Alfonsi with yet another administration official, a deputy chief of staff in the White House. (Did Weiss know what that person would say? If so, how?) It’s not the job of the reporter to keep asking administration officials until they find a cricial comment. Alfonsi is right: this appears to be Weiss’s attempt to get someone to badmouth or contradict the story. Alfonsi added this:

“We have been promoting this story on social media for days,” Ms. Alfonsi added. “Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘gold standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet.”

“I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight,” she wrote.

Reached on Sunday evening, Ms. Alfonsi said, “I refer all questions to Bari Weiss.”

Here, from “X”, is Alfonsi’s full email to the “news team,” presumably those people who worked on the story (click screenshot to go to site, Stelter is CNN’s chief media analys):

Alfonsi is clearly pissed off, and is going to fight (given Weiss’s position, Alfonsi will probably lose). But the whole thing smacks not only of censorship, but of Weiss’s attempt to micromanage “60 Minutes” stories, makng sure the Trump administration can weigh in publicly.  That’s not what reporting should do.,  Alfoni’s memo and stand is proper, and is that of a working reporter. Weiss has little experience with this end of reporting, and she screwed up by desperately trying to get someone from the Trump administration to criticize the story. Weiss’s overweening ambition to build news organizations is already starting to do her in. If she keeps acting this way towards CBS reporters, they will leave and the station will be left with a bunch of neophytes. (Some CBS employees are already threatening to quit.)

If you want other versions of this story, you can find them at CNN, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News, which adds a response from Weiss:

“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” Weiss said in a statement.

Weiss should never have taken this job, for I foresee a lot of micromanagement that is not to the taste of the newspeople themselves. She is is clearly not ready to be CBS’s news editor-in-chief, and we may have to watch the news division go down the tubes before Weiss learns enough to manage the news section properly.

 

h/t: Douglas, David

The Free Press touts Charlie Kirk’s Christian message on observing a Sabbath

December 9, 2025 • 9:45 am

I was of course appalled by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, just as I’m opposed to the assassination of any innocent person and nearly all “non-innocent’ people. And no, I didn’t agree with most of what Kirk said or stood for, but we can disagree with people without suggesting that they be killed, or celebrating when they are killed. I did agree with Kirk’s view, which some thing was phony, to promote discourse and exchange of views with one’s opponents.

But when people like Kirk push religious behaviors or values, I can still criticize their proselytizing. For Charlie Kirk was a Christian, and pushing Christianity was an important part of his message.  Yesterday he was helped along by the Free Press, which, along with other “mainstream” sites like the NY Times, is increasingly trying to tell us how religion is good for us—it fills the “God-shaped hole” in our being.  Notice that Kirk’s recommended Sabbath rest is part of the book’s message, and we’re supposed to kick back on the weekends, not to rest from the travails of the world, or because it recharges us, but because God tells us so. (Granted, Kirk does point out research showing the benefits of resting, but to Kirk, religion is central to this rest.) And Kirk’s new book from which the piece was taken is called Stop in the Name of God (an alteration of a Supremes song). From the book’s website:

In a world that never slows down, where busyness is worn as a badge of honor and screens dictate our every move, Stop in the Name of God offers a radical yet profoundly simple invitation: pause, rest, and reconnect. Through the transformative practice of honoring the Sabbath, bestselling author Charlie Kirk guides readers to reclaim a sacred rhythm that restores balance, nurtures the soul, and strengthens relationships. This book is not about escaping modern life-it’s about living it more fully, intentionally, and meaningfully.

Yesterday’s article, touting “Charlie Kirk’s final message to America,” is telling us to keep the Sabbath, and keep it in a way that the Bible recommends in Genesis and Exodus. (Presumably Kirk didn’t agree with the Old Testament’s approbation of genocide, though.)

The whole article, consisting of a bit by Kirk’s wife Erika followed by an excerpt from Kirk’s book, is introduced with approbation by the FP editors, who link to his book on a site where the FP may make a profit. The intro (bold and italics are from the original).

In the final years of his life, Charlie Kirk wrote a book. It’s about the importance of observing the Sabbath in our increasingly frenetic age; of resisting, for one day a week, your smartphone, your work, the distractions of modern life—and dedicating yourself to what’s truly important.

Stop, In the Name of God will be published posthumously on December 9. We’re honored to share an exclusive excerpt with you today. But first, there is no one better to introduce Charlie’s final message to America than his widow, Erika Kirk. —The Editors

Many people think their work is truly important, though. I know of many writers who didn’t take a stipulated day off to rest. Yes, they took time off, but not because God said so.

Click to read the article:

There’s an intro from Kirk’s widow Erika, and I do feel horrible for her, seeing her husband killed in front of her along with their two children. Kirk was only 31, and their kids will grow up without their dad.  Erika gives an introduction, and I do admire her for continuing one important part of her husband’s message: to have free discourse with your political opponents:

This, I think, is what saved him from burnout. Charlie didn’t write a book about the Sabbath because he wanted to learn the impact that it would have on his life. He did it because he knew it worked. The Sabbath saved him.

Writing it wasn’t easy. In every page, you can see the depth of theological and scientific research that went into it. There’s an area in our home with lots of plants in it; that was his secret garden. After work, very late at night when the kids were asleep, he would go there. And even if it was 30 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes a day, he would write.

. . . There is a reason this book isn’t political. Charlie wanted to heal the country, and he saw his conversations with students on campus as a piece of the puzzle. But when he was on campus, if someone was screaming at him, he knew they weren’t actually listening. When you’re constantly combative and fighting, you have no time to treat other people like human beings. Charlie genuinely felt that if the world had a weekly day of rest, just one, it would be the ultimate game changer.

First, note that Charlie’s way of healing the country is not a way that many of us would follow: he was pushing the Christian Right. Further, although his message isn’t political, it is based on Christianity, and that’s the part I oppose. In the part of Kirk’s book excerpted below, he deals with six objections to taking a Sabbath rest. Again, perhaps most people already do benefit from a weekend rest, but they are having it anyway! There’s no need to do it because God thinks it’s good when you’re doing it.. Just leave out the God part, since there’s no evidence for Him anyway. (I hate capitalizing “Him”, as it implies God exists).

Here’s how Kirk answers people who say they feel guilty taking a day or two off (the rest are excerpt from his book, and all bolding is mine):

If taking one day off makes you anxious or ashamed, then you must ask, What am I really worshipping? No idol condemns rest like the idol of productivity. This is the golden calf of the modern age. We bow to output, chase metrics, and sacrifice our joy on the altar of efficiency.

But our identity must be anchored in something far greater than toil. Work is good—it reflects God’s creative nature. But rest is holy—it reflects His sufficiency. The same God who calls us to labor for six days also commands us to rest for one. That’s not weakness; that’s worship.

Here’s part of his answer to people who say “I’m too busy to take a Sabbath”. The bold part is mine:

About five weekends out of the year—sometimes more—it becomes genuinely difficult for me to take a Sabbath. Occasionally, I’m asked to speak at conferences, churches, or public forums that fall squarely on weekends. And in those moments, I face the same tension many of you do: How do I honor God when life won’t slow down?

Here’s my answer: I do everything in my power to plan around it. But when that’s not possible, I get creative and deliberate. If I have to work on Saturday, I take Sunday as my Sabbath. If both days are booked and filled with travel or obligations, I plan ahead to block off the following weekend for extended rest—phone off, no emails, no output.

The goal isn’t a rigid formula—it’s a reordered life. The Sabbath is not meant to shame you into rest, but to awaken you to how much you’ve been missing.

You are also teaching your family something profound. Every time you pause your productivity and make room for stillness, you are discipling your children. You are showing them that faith isn’t confined to church pews but is woven into time itself.

And from the finale:

Don’t be afraid to turn off your phone. You’re not falling behind—you’re catching up to what matters most. The people in front of you. The presence of God. The peace you’ve been craving.

Now don’t get me wrong: it may be useful for some people to abstain from work or take phone calls on the weekend. (Kirk also reads scripture, sleeps, plays with his kids, and abstains from alcohol.) But for others, and those include me, I enjoy working (mostly writing and reading now), and I don’t spend that much time on the phone. Remember, many, many people don’t like their jobs and would appreciate time off, regardless of why one gets it. But I think you can see that this article’s publication is of a piece of what seems to be a new movement: cure the perceived malaise of people today by imbuing them with religious (often Christian) values.

In fact, Kirk’s message is pretty much the same as Jon Haidt’s, who’s long recommended that people abstain from devices, particularly kids. And that is to make us more social, more connected with each other. But you don’t need God to do that: Haidt is an atheist.  So you can get the benefits of rest, if you need it, without doing it in the name of God.  Religion may make people do some things that they need but wouldn’t do without it, but is that a reason to embrace Christianity. Humanists can certainly run their lives in a way not centered on a fictitious being and his fictitious book. You can also find a secular reason for the Sabbath in Jesus’s words (Mark 2:27): “And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”

Here’s the central placement of Kirk’s message on the Free Press site yesterday.  I’m wondering if Bari Weiss and Nellie take a Sabbath, and I’m worried about what happens when Weiss becomes a big macher in the CBS News.

Remember, if Kirk transformed the country in the way he wanted to heal it, we would be living in a Christian theocracy and following the dictates of MAGA, but with strong religious overtones. That would not “heal” us.

More God-touting in The Free Press, this time by Charles Murray

October 15, 2025 • 9:32 am

The Free Press keeps publishing articles by people who found God, though they never publish articles by people who gave up belief in gods. Two recent God-touting pieces are are “How the West Lost its Soul” by Paul Kingsnorth (see my post here) and “How intellectuals found God“, by Peter Savodnik (see my post here).

Now it looks as if a series of intellectuals are going to testify to faith in their own Free Press articles.  The latest is political scientist Charles Murray, famous (or infamous) for his work on IQ, including his much-discussed book The Bell Curve. (I never read it because I’m too lazy, but it also keeps me from getting involved in another brouhaha.)

In the Free Press article below, Murray describes his embrace of a sort of pantheistic spirituality, so he doesn’t clearly embrace Christianity (but see below—Jesus manages to sneak in there). But Murray invokes the same old tropes: the God-shaped hole coming from lack of meaning, the invocation of mysteries in physics as evidence for God, the inevitable question of “why is there something rather than nothing?”, and the invocation of a “creative force” that, he says, explains our scientific ignorance. I will give some quotes, but I have to tell you that this piece doesn’t elevate whatever respect I had for Murray.

Here we go, with a denigration of people who are not spiritual. (Murray had tried transcendental meditation but it had failed). Murray’s quotes are indented

Just as people have different levels of cognitive ability or athletic coordination, so too they have different levels of perceptual ability. That’s true in the appreciation of music, the visual arts, and literature. I’m not talking about IQ. People with stratospheric IQs can be tone-deaf, unmoved by great art, bored by Shakespeare—and clueless about anything spiritual.

Thirty years later, watching my wife, Catherine, become increasingly engaged in Quakerism in the last half of the 1990s, that thought forcefully returned to me: People vary in their ability to apprehend spiritual truths.

I’d like to know what Murray means by “spiritual,” and I’d like to know even more some examples of what he considers “spiritual truths”.  Just a few would do!

And here comes the God-shaped hole, not filled by “Western modernity” (presumably stuff like capitalism and antibiotics). Bolding here is mine:

Catherine observed once that she likes being in control as much as I do (which indeed she does). The difference between us, she said, was that her sense of need for belief was greater. I agreed with that, and I also had a suspicion about why. I had distracted myself with Western modernity.

I am using Western modernity as shorthand for all the ways in which life in the last hundred years has shielded many of us from the agonizing losses, pains, and sorrows that came early and often in human life since the dawn of humankind. Most people still suffer at least one such agonizing event eventually, but often not until old age and sometimes never.

So far, that’s been the case with me. I’ve lived my life without ever reaching the depths of despair. I’m grateful for my luck. But I have also not felt the God-sized hole in my life that the depths of despair often reveal. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a hole; it’s just that I’ve been able to ignore it. In the 21st century, keeping ourselves entertained and distracted is easy. And that, I think, explains a lot not only about me but about the nonchalant secularism of our age.

He’s got the hole! Next he dismisses the tenets of secularism:

My secular catechism from college through the mid-1990s went something like this:

The concept of a personal God is at odds with everything that science has taught us over the last five centuries.

Humans are animals. Our thoughts and emotions are produced by the brain. When the brain stops, consciousness stops too.

The great religious traditions are human inventions, natural products of the fear of death. That includes Christianity, which can call on no solid evidence for its implausible claims.

I look back on that catechism and call it “dead center” because it was so unreflective. I had not investigated the factual validity of any of those propositions. They were part of the received wisdom of most Western intellectuals throughout the 20th century. I accepted them without thinking.

I’m not going to go through these one by one, but I will say that I wrote a book justifying the first proposition (Faith Versus Fact).  About the second, yes, human beings are indeed animals, and there’s plenty of evidence that thoughts and emotions are produced by the brain.  When you do things to the brain (take drugs, have brain surgery when you’re conscious, etc.), your thoughts and emotions change.  Where else does Murray think thoughts and emotions come from? I want an alternative explanation. And we have no evidence that people whose brain stops working (i.e., who are dead) still have consciousness.  The parsimonious conclusion is that yes, thoughts and emotions, as well as consciousness, are produced by the brain. Things without brains, like rocks, don’t appear to have consciousness, though some addled advocates of panpsychism have suggested that.

As for the “great religious traditions” being human inventions, yes, of course they are. Biblical scholars tell us how the scriptures came to be, and we’ve seen plenty of religions invented by humans, including Christian Science, Scientology, Mormonism, and so on.  Finally, it is not “unreflective” to think about what evidence there is for the truth claims of Christianity (read the Nicene Creed to see them).  In fact, Murray’s “secular catechism” happens to be rational and, by and large, true.

Murray then lists a series of “nudges” that made him religious.  They are given as “evidence for God” in the new book is God, the Science, the Evidence, by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, (see my post on it here), and thety are, once again, simple God-of-the-Gaps arguments.  Here are a few, quoted:

The first nudge, so soft that it barely registered (I cannot recall when it did more than cross my mind) was the mathematical simplicity of many scientific phenomena—most famously E = mc2. There’s also Newton’s second law of motion (which is just F = ma), Galileo’s law of free fall (d = 1/2gt²), and many other examples.

It just seemed extremely odd that so many basic phenomena were so mathematically simple. It was almost as if someone had planned it that way.

Has he looked at the Schrödinger equation?   And of course there are plenty of phenomena—evolution is one—that can be approached theoretically, but the equations are not at all simple. He has picked the simplest equations of physics as evidence for God, euations in which the laws of physics hold, and can be described mathematically. (I’m surprised that Murray doesn’t think that the laws of physics are evidence for God.)  I discuss the Argument for God from the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics on p. 159 of Faith versus Fact.

One more God-of-the-Gaps argument from Murray:

The first unmistakable nudge involved the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” I first heard it put in those words by the late columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer during a session of a chess club we started in the early 1990s. That I thought Charles had come up with it himself is proof of how unreflective I had been. Anyone who had taken any interest in theology would have encountered it long since. It’s one of the most famous questions in metaphysics.

But I hadn’t heard it, and it caught me by surprise. When I had thought about the existence of the universe at all, I had taken it as a given. I am alive, I am surrounded by the world, the fact that I can ask the question presupposes that the universe exists. There’s nothing else to be said. It is a mystery with a lowercase m.

Hearing the question stated so baldly and so eloquently made me start to take the issue seriously. Why is there anything? Surely things do not exist without having been created. What created all this? If you haven’t thought about it recently, this is a good time to stop and try to come up with your own answer.

How about the simple answerm ” There is something because ‘nothing’ is unstable and a fluctuation in nothingness can produce what we call “something”?

The unreflectiveness of Murray, and his failure to investigate what philosophers and scientists have to say about this stuff, is exemplified in the video below, one in which physicist Brian Cox takes on these questions and tells what science has to say about them. For many issues, the answer is “we don’t know but maybe some day we will.” But for Murray the answer is always “THE CREATOR”.

In the end, the unanswered questions of physics have led to Murray becoming a pantheist. I’ll leave you with his own description of his god:

None of that had ever made sense to me. Once I decided that there had to be an unmoved mover and was intellectually committed to accepting that conception of God, I was free to think about a truth that, once you stop to think about it, must be a truth: Any God worthy of the name is at least as incomprehensible to a human being as I am to my dog.

. . .Two other useful concepts entered my thinking sometime during the 1990s. One was that God exists outside of time—as taught by Aristotle but elaborated by Thomas Aquinas. Just trying to get your head around the concept of existing outside time is a good way to realize how unknowable a being we are talking about.

Quaker teachings are also helpful in de-anthropomorphizing God. They emphasize that God is not a being with a location. He is everywhere—not just watching from everywhere but permeating the universe and our world. And there is the most famous of Quaker precepts: “There is that of God in everyone.” It is not the same as saying, “There’s some good in everyone.” God is in you in some sense, along with permeating everything else.

How does Murray know that there is an unmoved mover (see Cox’s video above)? And how does he know that “God exists outside of time”? What does that even mean?

In the end, we get the same arguments for God that are endlessly recycled, and endlessly rebutted. It looks as if each generation comes upon these questions themselves (e.g., “Why is there something instead of nothing?:), and each generation has to be given the arguments why ignorance does not equate to God, whether he’s in heaven or permeating everything.  But why is the MSM, especially the Free Press, so concerned with recycling the same old calls for faith? Is CBS going to start touting religion, too?

And Murray’s got a book. Click on the cover to go to the page. It turns out that Murray does indeed embrace a Christian god. Here’s a quote from the publisher’s page:

Taking Religion Seriously is Murray’s autobiographical account of the decades-long evolution in his stance toward the idea of God in general and Christianity in particular.

I wonder how Murray decided that Christianity was the “right” religion. In the article above he doesn’t especially tout Christianity, and in fact says that most people’s view of Christianity don’t appeal to him. Is he a Christian pantheist? Is Jesus everywhere, too: in blades of grass, rocks, and sparrows’ wings? In the article, though, Murray seems to reject simple Christianity:

The New Testament’s verbal imagery of God as a father and Jesus sitting at God’s right hand reinforces the anthropomorphic view of God. That image has been reinforced still further by Christian art—think of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel depiction of God as a formidable old man with flowing hair, touching Adam’s finger.

None of that had ever made sense to me.

Voilà: the new book:

Science editor of Sunday Times touts book “proving” God’s existence

October 5, 2025 • 10:15 am

In the face of declining belief in God in countries like the US and UK, believers are looking for any evidence that God exists.  But there’s nothing new to support the existence of the supernatural, though as science finds out more truths about the Universe, and we think of more questions about things (e.g., what is “dark matter”), religionists continue to take unanswered scientific questions as the evidence for God they so desperately need. And so a new book simply reprises the “god of the gaps” argument, a shopworn argument that has been tried–and has failed–many times before, both philosophically and scientifically. First, recent data from the US and UK on declining belief in God.

Here are figures from a 2023 Church Times article showing waning belief in the UK since 1981, though belief in life after death has held steady (belief in God is the line at the top in orange).. Click to read article:

And a similar decline from a 2022 Gallup poll showing a decline of about belief in the US of about 18% since 1950.

In both cases the trends are unmistakable, and, with a few hiccups, inexorable.  How do you keep your faith when all around you people are leaving it? You write a book decrying materialism, which of course, like all such books (as well as those recounting “visits to heaven”) become bestsellers due to the many believers desperate for “proof of God.”

This article appeared in today’s Sunday Times of London (h/t Pyers). Click headline to read, or find the article archived here.

The book that gives evidence that God “must” exist is God, the Science, the Evidence, by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, published by Palomar on October 14 at £22.  It’s already sold more than 400,000 copies in non-English editions (it was published four years ago in France), and U.S. publishers have ordered a print run of 110,000 for the book, which will be published here in a week.

The two authors are both believers, of course (excerpts from the Times are indented):

These authors — like Dawkins and Hawking — consider themselves men of science. Bolloré, 79, from Brittany, is a computer engineer who has founded a series of successful heavy industry, engineering and mechanical firms; Bonnassies, 59, from Paris, studied science and maths before a career as an entrepreneur in the French media industry.

Both are also men of faith. Bolloré is a lifelong Catholic. Bonnassies, who did not find his Christian faith until his twenties, said he thought before his conversion that “believers were irrational people”, adding: “God, the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary — I found it crazy.” Yet it was logic, he said, that won him around: “The surprise was there were many rational reasons to believe in God.”

And here is the book’s argument summarized by the Sunday Times. It amounts to no more than this (this is my characterization.

We do not understand how the universe began or how life began.  If everything occurs by materialistic processes, what caused the Big Bang, and how did life originate? The most “rational” solution is a creator. 

And some excerpts from the laudatory review in the Times (why are they touting superstition?):

Science and religion have never been easy bedfellows. As Thomas Jefferson put it in 1820, priests “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight”. Five centuries of scientific breakthroughs — from Galileo to Darwin to Crick and Watson — have eroded our belief in the divine.

But now, according to a new book, a “great reversal” is under way. Science, its authors argue over 580 pages, has come full circle and “forcefully put the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table”.

Good Lord: has the argument ever been off the table? William Lane Craig has been banging the drum about it for years. But I digress; here’s more:

In a striking challenge to the academic consensus, two French authors, Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, argue that the latest scientific theories lead to only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it.

. . . .Instead, the authors have written a critique of materialism — the theory that all reality, including our origins, thoughts and consciousness, can be explained solely by physical matter and physical processes.

The materialist narrative for the beginnings of the universe and life on earth is so full of holes, he and Bonnassies argue, that every modern scientific advance increases the strength of the case that a “creator” is the only rational explanation.

The authors insist that their book is not a religious one, or one touting the advantages of faith. No, it’s a critique of one of the underpinnings of science, materialism.

The authors’ ideas have received support from unexpected quarters. The renowned physicist Robert Wilson, who was jointly awarded the Nobel prize in physics for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, agreed to write the foreword to the book. “Although the general thesis … that a higher mind could be at the origin of the universe does not provide a satisfying explanation for me, I can accept its coherence,” he wrote. “If the universe had a beginning, then we cannot avoid the question of creation.”

Yes, but if God exists, how did He/She/They/It come into existence? Why terminate the regress of causes at the creator God instead of going back even further. After all, God is not simple, as Dawkins has emphasized, so how do an immaterial being of such complexity and power come about?

Here are the two main arguments described in the Times (my headings, indented matter from article).

The Universe:

For the past century, for example, scientists have known the universe is expanding. If stars and galaxies are always moving further apart, logic dictates, the universe must have started at a single point, in a state of immense density. In 1931 the Belgian theoretical physicist Georges Lemaître termed this the “primeval atom”. We now call it the Big Bang.

But if all matter originates from that single explosion, and materialism dictates there is nothing outside of matter, what caused the bang?

Evolution:

According to the theory of evolution, this incredibly sophisticated data storage system — 40,000 billion times more dense than the most advanced computer today — emerged from the primordial soup quite by chance. The authors write: “While we still do not know how that gap was bridged, or a fortiori, how to replicate such an event, we do know enough to appreciate its infinite improbability.”=

Finally, I find this bit pathetic:

Bolloré acknowledged that the book does not present proof of God’s existence. “You cannot prove it,” he said. “You have evidence for one theory — the existence of God. And you have evidence for the other one, which is the non-existence of God. The best you can do is to compare the two sides of the scale.”

But he said that many areas of science require as big a leap of faith as that demanded by faith in God. “We are all believers,” he said. “Believers in God believe, with some evidence — and believers in materialism, they believe in plenty of things which are a little bit weird.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest critics of the French edition of the book have not been scientists, but priests. “Some theologians say we don’t want evidence of God because it would reduce the merit of faith,” he said. “‘We don’t want proof’, they say. ‘Because proof would mean that we don’t have faith.’”

Here we see that the authors offer only two alternatives: God or not-God, but the alternative is really materialistic processes that we do not understand but might with more work.  And faith in materialism or science is not at all the same thing as faith in religion, an argument I dispelled in Slate some years ago.

The rejection by believers of the need for evidence is what is most pathetic. Faith, some say, is based not on empirical evidence but on revelation or authority (priests, Bibles, epiphanies, etc.) alone. Yet when believers see something that looks like evidence, they glom onto it. That’s why books like this are always best-sellers, why two documented “miracles” are required for canonization of a saint, and why people flock to Lourdes to be cured.  It’s all because unexplained. cures and miracles count as evidence for God. So do books like Heaven is for Real!

And so we get “evidence” from unexplained origins—of both life and the Universe.  To the authors, both of these fit into to a combination of The Cosmological Argument (or “First Cause” argument) and the “God of the Gaps” argument.  Readers should know the problems with both of these, and if you don’t, simply look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the relevant sections of Wikipedia.  Since we don’t know how the Universe came into being (i.e., what is the physics behind the Big Bang?), or how the first form of “life” originated, it’s foolish and impossible weigh ignorance against a belief in God—and not just God, but clearly the Abrahamic God— the god of both authors.

I have spent more than half my life dealing with these arguments, and will say just one more thing before I show a few of the Times readers’ comments. The existence of a creator God, especially of the Christian subspecies, should not be accepted simply because it’s hard at present for materialism to explain some things.  Instead, look to the Universe itself for positive proof of God: do we see signs of a loving, omnipotent creator God in the universe?

Carl Sagan discussed what evidence could count in favor of not just God, but the Christian God, as I do as well in Faith Versus Fact. But we don’t have any of that evidence. Why did God create so much of the Universe that is inhospitable for life? Why do little kids get cancers that kill them? Why do tsunamis and earthquakes happen that kill thousands of innocent people? These things cannot be explained rationally by positing a beneficent and omnipotent creator God.  In the absence of these explanations, and of positive evidence for God (e.g., Jesus coming back and doing real miracles documented extensively by film and newspapers, or, as Sagan noted, the stars arranging themselves to spell “I am that I am” in Hebrew), the best alternative is atheism, the view “there is no positive evidence for God.”  Thus the “god” side of the scales becomes lighter over time, continuing the trend begun when one after another “unexplainable” miracle or phenomenon was been explained by materialism. And of course physicists haven’t given up trying to understand the Big Bang, nor have biologists given up trying to understand how life originated.  Will the authors give up their thesis if one day, under early life conditions, scientists see a primitive form of life originating in the lab, or create a theory of how there could be cyclical universes or multiple Big Bangs creating multiple universes? I doubt it, for they are “men of faith”.

A few readers’ comments. The first one was upvoted the most:

And some more. (The readers are clearly smarter than the authors, though there are some believers in there, too.)

There are 1100 comments, so knock yourself out! As for the Sunday Times, well, they decided to present an argument for God without interviewing detractors.

NYT launches column apparently touting religion and spirituality, thin on “nonbelief”

September 15, 2025 • 10:20 am

Is there some reason that progressives are starting to embrace religion? I’ve previously mentioned a number of MSM pieces that basically tout religion: presenting it without criticizing it or saying that its evidential bases are nil. Remember when both the Free Press and the New York Times published excerpts from Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious, Ross Douthat’s new book?  This kind of stuff is appearing more often now, and it puzzles me.  Are liberals experiencing the much-discussed “God-shaped hole in their soul”: the lacuna of meaning that supposedly appears when you give up faith? There has been an uptick in American religiosity in the last two years, but it was small and, I thought, temporary. Maybe not. But for sure the press is making a huge megillah about it.

This notice appeared in yesterday’s New York Times email newsletter, announcing that they’re going to have a regular column dealing with “modern religion and spirituality.” And although they say they’ll include “nonbelief” under that rubric, atheism and agnosticism isn’t mentioned any further. No, this will be a column about real religion.

The paper itself (click on headline) announced the column in greater detail. It will be written by Lauren Jackson, a NYT editor. She’s a nonbeliever, which is good to hear, but I’d like to know that she deals with nonbelief when she deals with belief.

Below: quotes from Ms. Jackson’s introduction to the column. (Bolding is mine. except for the “Why are we doing this?” headline.)  It is not at all clear to me what they mean by trying to speak of God in a secular fashion

In the 1940s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a dissident German pastor, wrote hundreds of letters while facing execution inside a Nazi prison. From his small, dank cell, Bonhoeffer asked: “How do we speak in a secular fashion of God?”

The line has both inspired and inflamed theologians in the decades since. It’s also a question that animates this newsletter: The mission of Believing is to speak about the sacred, in all its forms, in a very secular space.

Why are we doing this?

Earlier this year, we published a series of articles about how people experience religion and spirituality now. In response, thousands of you told us you wanted more: You wanted us to expand our reporting on how ancient ideas are appearing in our very modern lives. You wanted a space for both believers and nonbelievers to share their stories. You wanted, above all, for us to take the subject seriously.

Well yes, religion has to be taken seriously. About 81% of Americans believe in God, and, surprisingly, the Barna site says, “According to Barna’s latest data, 66 percent of all U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today.” (This is scary given the lack of evidence for a Jesus person who was divine.) But these beliefs motivate much of Americans beliefs (e.g., abortion), politics (the Christianity of the Right), and morality.  So yes, understanding religion is important if you want to understand America. It’s a vital part of our sociology.

That said, it’s also important to realize that most Americans rest their religious beliefs, and the morality that grows from them, on no evidence at all.  They were either brought up to be religious, or had it hammered into them by peers and church before they learned to think for themselves. This means that much of American behavior is based on wish-thinking instead of evidence.

If you think that the clash of ideas in American life produces truth, as intended by the framers of the First Amendment, well, it hasn’t worked with religion. On one side are the vast majority of religious Americans; on the other are the 10% of Americans who are atheist or agnostic, and the approximately 20% that identify as “nones,” i.e., people who don’t necessarily reject God but aren’t affiliated with a church.

I would expect, especially because Lauren Jackson says she’s a nonbeliever, that there would be ample space given to nonbelievers and their writing. But the one mention of nonbelievers above is all we get.  We do get a bit about Jackson’s own nonbelief, but she clearly has that god-shaped hole when she explains who she is below. First, the column’s raison d’etre:

Over the past few months, I’ve heard from so many different readers — MAGA bros, wellness influencers, climate activists, professors, actors and high school students. They all had something in common: seeking a space where they could think about the sacred.

Have a look at that link: it is all readers who have a God-shaped hole and want to believe because they want to belong. And if Jackson really wants to deal with nonbelief, she’s going to have to provide a space where where Americans can “think about the nonexistence of gods.”

Even her own atheism is hedged as she writes. From the intro above:

In reporting on belief, I’ve found that the fastest way to build trust is to share where I’m coming from. So here it is: I was raised a devout Mormon, or a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Arkansas. I know how luminous and enchanted life can be when you really believe in something. I also know what it feels like to leave a religion, which I wrote about here and here.

Yes, she’s being rightfully honest, but there was a reason she left Mormonism.  Are we going to hear from other people who aren’t religious, too? And if you look at the two links in the preceding sentence, you see Ms. Jackson showing every evidence of a God-shaped hole. Quotes from the two pieces:

From the first article, called “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion”:

I recognize, though, that my spiritual longing persists — and it hasn’t been sated by secularism. I want a god. I live an ocean away from that small Arkansas chapel, but I still remember the bliss of finding the sublime in the mundane. I still want it all to be true: miracles, souls, some sort of cosmic alchemy that makes sense of the chaos.

I want. . . I want. .  I want. . .   Well, I want a personal chef and a bottle of 1982 Château Pétrus, but I ain’t gonna get it.

Source.

The second link goes to an article by and about Jackson, called, “She almost went on a Mormon mission. She became a journalist instead.” This is simply an account of how she left Mormonism, and is reportage. But when she explains leaving Mormonism, she neglects one thing: She doesn’t tell us why:

I faced pressure to go on a mission, and I wrestled for years with the decision. At the same time, I won funding to attend a secular university, an opportunity I was too curious to decline. At school, I fell in love — with ideas, my classes, a boy. I found a new reality, inescapable and contradictory to everything I once knew. On that sidewalk in Rwanda, I looked at the missionaries and felt a distance between us for the first time. They were living a life I was slowly leaving.

I am no longer a member of the church. I ultimately chose to spend my college years becoming a journalist, not proselytizing. Still, I maintain an abiding curiosity about belief, one that has animated my reporting. I often see missionaries around the world and wonder how their work is shaping their nascent adulthoods, their hopes and desires. So I spent the last eight months reporting for The New York Times on how missionary work is evolving and influencing the church’s future.

So why did she “choose” to give up Mormonism? We don’t know.  Did she realize that its tenets were wrong, its story, involving the golden plates and a peepstone, ludicrous? We’ll never know. I hope, but don’t think, that she’ll devote substantial time to nonbelievers and why the ‘nones”—I still think a lot of them are atheists—don’t belong to any church.  And of course Europe, particularly the northern parts, are far less religious than Americans. Will she report on nonbelief there, too?

But I digress, for I’m just tired of the MSM constantly focusing on and touting beliefs that aren’t based on evidence but wish-thinking.  At any rate, you can find her first article of the new series clicking on the headline (or find it archived here). It’s about how American are turning to AI on apps to answer questions about religion, quell doubts about their faith, or to act as a sort of electronic father-confessor.

It’s not that enlightening, as it reproduces a lot of conversations people have about belief and God with the bot, and also quotes a few religious detractors who say a bot can’t do the same job as a pastor, which is true.  Here’s one conversation:

Pretty boring, eh? And the AI shows through clearly. Yet many Americans apparently find solace from this kind of algorithmic pap. But as they do it more, the bot will get better as it absorbs more and more answers, with all of them designed to dispel rather than exacerbate doubt. In fact AI therapy has recently been banned in Illinois!

Jackson’s debut is, sadly, a pretty boring article full of boring chats—not a good start to the column.  But as I read these chats, I was reminded of Carl Rogers (1902-1987)—a famous psychologist who jettisoned psychoanalysis to simply become a robot, reflecting back patients’ views and not adding much.  He was basically an AI therapist.

I put a video below of what I see as Rogers’s completely ineffective therapy. But he was famous!

The only advantage of a human acting like a bot is, as you’ll see below, their ability to look at a patient’s behavior and affect, which may give them clues to help them. Unfortunately, Rogers’s “help” was limited to stuff like “I can see that you’re nervous because you’re trembling.” To me, at least, he had little to offer. But Americans think AI has a lot to offer in lubricating their relationship with God. I think that’s unfortunate.

All in all, this is not a good start for the NYT’s new “religion” column.

And, of course, the Free Press is also mentioning God to help us in these troubled times. From their newsletter just this morning:

 

“This is a circus”: The unmitigated bullying from Piers Morgan

June 6, 2025 • 10:30 am

Some time ago I was on the Piers Morgan “Uncensored” show for half an hour, talking about why biological sex is binary (see my post about this here). I now realize how fortunate I was, because I knew in advance that Morgan agreed with me and I didn’t face what Natasha Hausdorff faces below (and many other guests have also faced): unmitigated, rude, and arrogant bullying, as well as constant interruptions. (My solo appearance was followed by a panel of three discussants, and at least one of those people faced Morgan’s opprobrium.)

In the show below (the bullying starts at the beginning and ends at about an hour in, followed by an interview with Ahmed Alnaouq, who, it’s claimed (see below) is from a family of Hamas terrorists. But let’s concentrate on the main guest/target Natasha Hausdorff, someone I deeply admire. She’s a British barrister specializing in international law and also the legal head of the UK lawyers For Israel.  She keeps her cool even under the hottest fire, and you can’t get much hotter than this kind of rude interrogation by Morgan.  There is no debate, no speech, that Hausdorff will refuse to participate in, even if she knows she’ll be subject to booing and hatred, for she feels that she must get the message out about the world’s misconceptions about Israel (e.g., the “apartheid state” and “genocide” canards).  I’ve rarely seen someone so brave on the platform.

Here she tries to give her opinions to both Piers Morgan and libertarian/comedian Dave Smith, but hardly gets a chance to speak. I don’t recommend that you watch the entire first hour, but do dip into it. I recommend, for example, watching the segments beginning at 17:45, 24:35, 27:30, 38:00, and 41:30 (Hausdorff gets two short, uninterrupted spaces to respond, eloquently, at 46:48 and 53:45).  Note that she never interrupts either Smith or Morgan, but listens politely. She is not afforded the same consideration.

Note as well that neither Smith nor Morgan levels any criticisms at Hamas, save for one brief offhand remark by Morgan. Especially notable is the complete dearth of admission by the two men that civilian deaths certainly from Hamas using Gazans as human shields, nor do they offer any approbation for IDF’s care not to kill civilians.

Now if you are anti-Israel you will be taking Pierce’s self-admitted “objective” evaluation of the situation, but I will mention two issues, one of which is dealt with below.

First, Hausdorff is asked several times to admit that Israel has nuclear weapons. Many of us believe they do, but in fact Israel has never admitted it has nuclear weapons (a good strategy if you don’t!), and for a lawyer to say otherwise is simply not on.

Second, Morgan repeatedly brings up the issue of why Israel doesn’t allow foreign reporters into Gaza. In fact it has: Douglas Murray has been several times. Of course, as Morgan says, he was “embedded with the IDF” but if I’m not wrong other journalists from organizations like Reuters have been allowed into Gaza, or at least into Lebanon. But see the article by Sheri Oz below.

And if you’re anti-Israel, you may find support in the words of Morgan and Smith. From me: Kudos to Hausdorff for withstanding Morgan’s verbal cannonade.

 

Here’s a post from Global Disconnect that dissects the segment above, include Morgan’s bullying, his ignorance of the data relevant to the Hamas/Gaza war, and, at the end, the background of guest Ahmed Alnaouq. Click the headline to read.

A few excerpts:

Piers Morgan couldn’t help himself. In his latest so-called debate between comedian Dave Smith and international lawyer Natasha Hausdorff. The so-called “debate: was a staggering display of contempt for both basic debate etiquette and respect for the woman and legal expert he invited to his show. At one point, Piers even sneered that “numbers aren’t her strong point,” a cheap, sexist jab suggesting she’s somehow stupid. In reality, the one who showed no grasp of numbers, facts, logic or any journalistic integrity was him.

. . . Since numbers “aren’t Piers’ thing”, I’m going to help him out: he interrupted Natasha Hausdorff 103 times. Her longest uninterrupted statement lasted 38 seconds, and she generally wasn’t allowed to string five words together before being cut off. Dave Smith spoke uninterrupted nearly every time he had the floor. Piers only interjected 3 times: the first so Piers could clarify his own viewpoint, the second was to agree with Dave, and the third was to pivot back to attacking Natasha. Dave’s longest uninterrupted monologue rolled on for over three minutes. How do you like those numbers, Piers?

. . . Piers Morgan has relentlessly pushed the same false narrative that Israel is starving Gazans or attacking civilians on their way to get food. Let’s start with the most basic and shameless lie—a display not only of journalistic failure, but of a complete lack of integrity as a human being. Israel is not targeting civilians around food distribution points, and that’s not an opinion—it’s documented fact. Hamas itself has admitted to executing people in Gaza. There’s drone and CCTV footage as evidence, even the BBC and The Washington Post—initially eager to repeat Hamas propaganda—retracted their reporting. And yet, Piers Morgan still claims “there is no evidence” that Israel wasn’t responsible. That’s not ignorance—it’s deliberate deception.

. . . To answer the question Piers Morgan so desperately—and theatrically—asks in order to revive the oldest blood libel: that “Jews like to kill children”—only now aimed at the Jew among the nations, Israel. Piers Morgan theatrically performs his “outrage” over Israel not counting the number of children it supposedly “kills,” implying either a deliberate targeting or a cold disregard for their lives—yet not even his own army in any war has ever tracked civilian casualties, let alone child casualties separately, but somehow he demands of Israel what he’s never asked of any other military in any conflict, including wars his own country and brother fought.

. . . As of two days ago, Hamas claims 54,400 total deaths in Gaza, while the IDF estimates around 30,000 were Hamas and militant fighters. That leaves roughly 24,400 civilian deaths if both figures are accepted—giving Piers Morgan the simple math he challenged Natasha on: a combatant-to-civilian ratio of about 1.2:1. That’s already unusually precise warfare, but it gets sharper. Hamas itself admits natural deaths are included in its total, and over the 20-month period, about 8,500 people died of age, illness, or accidents. Excluding those, the adjusted ratio is 1.9:1—meaning 1.9 combatants killed for every 1 civilian. For context, UN and Red Cross data say the global wartime average is 9 civilians for every 1 combatant. So what exactly is Piers screaming about? Is Piers Morgan really that bad at basic math, or is his hatred for Israel so deep it overrides any pretense of journalism or objectivity from the start?

There are more data dealing with the libel that Israel is targeting children in Gaza (at one point he asks Hausdorff how many people she has killed!), but you can read the article for yourself. Just one more quote:

Piers Morgan’s “get out jail” free card is ignorance about the facts on the ground, he loves repeating the falsehood that Israel has banned international media—yet I’m not on the ground, I am not even a journalist and I’m still able to provide basic facts. Piers, Google is your friends—try using it. The truth is, Israel follows the same wartime media protocols as every modern military. No warzone offers unrestricted press access; journalists operate under controlled, coordinated entry by the military in charge, whether it’s in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else. If Piers truly wants to report from Gaza, he can apply and follow protocol, just like any other journalist in any other war.

Now, to take up the last issue, here’s a post from the Israel Diaries Substack (click to read):

So the accusation arises over and over – such as in comments to some of my articles on Substack: Why won’t Israel allow foreign reporters into Gaza?

It’s a fair question. It sounds fair.

Let us see what you think, dear readers. Below, I present two alternative theories that may explain why Israel is not letting foreign reporters into Gaza. Each theory has a number of explanatory items. Mark the item you think most likely stands behind the reason why Israel does not let foreign reporters into Gaza.

Before you answer, consider the following:

Where would the journalists even stay?

War correspondents typically lodge in hotels. Are any still operating in Gaza? If yes, fine — reporting might be feasible. If not, the only option would be to embed with one of three entities:

  1. The IDF
  2. Hamas
  3. A still-active NGO, such as UNRWA — which, given what we now know, is effectively a Hamas affiliate.

Now, weigh the following two theories. Each has a list of possible explanations. Below each list is a multiple choice questionnaire on which you can vote for the explanation that seems most plausible to you.

Theory 1 is “The Journalist as Liability,” and theory two is “It’s a cover-up (or something more sinister),” implying that Israel has something to hide.  The article gives arguments on both sides, and readers (not many at this point) have voted, I’ll let you read the short piece for yourself.

Finally, and I haven’t seen this ever before, Hausdorff herself has taken to the news—the pages of the Spectato—to give a post facto analysis of her appearance with Morgan. Click below to read:

A couple of excerpts from the archived version. She begins with her exchange with Morgan about whether a family of children parented by two doctors was really killed in an Israeli strike. The exchange simply shows that, given Hamas’s history of false reports, Hausdorff is reserving judgement (as am I) until the matter is properly investigated.

Being interrupted and harangued, or even having my volume turned down or line cut, is not a new experience for me in “interviews”. It has always been a clear indication that the individuals involved in this unprofessional conduct were out of their depth and at a loss as to how to engage with the evidence I had presented. Nor, indeed, am I the only one experiencing such treatment. Any individual who does not subscribe to the virulently anti-Israel agenda, and who is asked to comment on broadcast media, will have experienced similar playground antics. It is demonstrative of a catastrophic failure by the media to do its job and an abject absence of journalistic integrity.

The pathetic display this week by Piers Morgan demonstrates that he is a significant part of the problem of disinformation about this conflict. Morgan should be well aware that there have been repeated stories emerging from Gaza which have subsequently been debunked only after they spread around the world. The predictable result has been the poisoning of many minds against Israel, on the basis of fabrications and blood libels. My simple entreaty was that the matter should not be prejudged, especially where fake AI generated images had been deployed to support it. Cue frenzied outrage and bile from Morgan.

Defence of fake images in pursuit of a “good story” is, of course, old ground for Morgan. He was dismissed from his role as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004, following the publication of photographs that purportedly showed British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. The images were later determined to be staged and not taken in Iraq. Morgan stood by their publication and refused to issue an apology on the basis there was no firm evidence that they were fake, though the newspaper did, acknowledging that it had been the victim of a “calculated and malicious hoax” and expressing deep regret for the reputational damage caused to the British Army. Morgan’s defence of his decision to publish those fake pictures stemmed from his opposition to the Iraq war in a disgraceful example of “the ends justify the means”.

Did he learn anything from that shameful incident? The way I was treated on Uncensored suggests not. At least when Morgan was in the employ of a national newspaper, he could be held accountable. But this no longer appears to be the case. He is now free to shout down his guests without consequence.

The problem doesn’t stop with Morgan. The unfair way in which Israel is presented in the Western media, and the refusal to treat Hamas’s claims with scepticism, misleads the public. It increases the threat of violence to Jews around the world, but also, crucially, props up and encourages Hamas, thereby prolonging the war and the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

After all this—the shouting and rudeness and inability to discuss evidence—I ask myself, “If I had it to do over again, would I still have gone on Piers Morgan’s show to discuss the binary nature of sex? And ;my answer is, “Yes, certainly.” For one thing, I knew that he agreed with me, and so expected little haranguing and rudeness. (I’m not sure that, were I Hausdorff, I would have the guts.)  Mainly, though, it was important for me to speak the biological truth as I knew it, and to relate how that prompted the FFRF’s act of censorship.

h/t: Malgorzata

Pamela Paul leaves the NYT

April 3, 2025 • 9:15 am

Several months ago I reported, based on articles from sources like New York Magazine, that Pamala Paul, heterodox New York Times columnist, was leaving the paper’s op-ed section, and the paper altogether. I was upset to hear that, for although she didn’t toe the paper’s “progressive” line, her columns were thoughtful and liberal.  Here’s the New York Magazine article (click headline to read):

The article was a bit ambiguous, as it implied that Paul’s ideas, which ran contrary to the NYT’s progressive op-ed aura, were the cause of her getting the pink slip. But the NYT also denied that. From the piece above:

Paul is admired by some of her colleagues for her willingness to buck liberal-left conventional wisdom. She has written a defense of J.K. Rowling and scrutinized the MeToo movement for overreach, while a recent column criticized the American Historical Society’s vote to condemn the ongoing “scholasticide” in Gaza. But others have said she does little more than produce rage bait, with what one Times staffer referred to as “intellectually lazy” positions. “It is a rarity inside the Times for someone to manage to make enemies on every desk they touch; Pamela is indeed a rarity,” one newsroom employee said. “She should have spent time making allies if she was going to be as divisive a figure as she was internally. But she didn’t put the time in there, or at least did not have the interest.”

I’m told, however, that Opinion’s decision to part ways with her is not because of her ideological positions. [Opinion editor Kathleen] Kingsbury said, “We don’t discuss personnel matters, but any insinuation I make staffing or editorial decisions based solely on political viewpoints is false.”

It’s really offensive to ask a heterodox columnist to suck up to her colleagues so they wouldn’t criticize her pieces. But that’s how the NYT rolls, and it’s the reason why Bari Weiss, among others, also left the paper. And note the weasel word “solely” in Kingsbury’s quote above.

For nine years (2013-2022), Paul was editor of the paper’s Book Review section, and then three years ago she moved to op-ed. I saw immediately that her columns were bucking the paper’s own ideology, and I believe I predicted (or at least worried) that she’d be fired for heterodoxy.  Nevertheless, I discussed her pieces often (she was liberal and thoughtful but not “progressive”), and, when I heard her head was on the chopping block, I compiled a list of the columns that were likely to have irritated the top op-ed editors. Here’s a bunch of screenshots:

Despite the announcements by other venues, up to now Paul hasn’t said a word about her leaving, and her columns still appeared in the paper—though less often. Today, though, she verified the rumors by writing her farewell column, which you can read by clicking the headline below or seeing it archived here.  And it’s clear from what she writes that she parted ways with the paper over her ideology and determination to tell the truth as she saw it. The NYT doesn’t like the truth if it doesn’t comport with “progressivism”.

A few quotes from Paul’s piece (indented). They lead me to believe that yes, she’s leaving because of what she wrote about and said.

This is my final column for The Times.

In the memo I wrote three years ago when applying for this job after 11 years at The Times Book Review, I vowed “to write to Times readers rather than to Twitter or to Slack.” I knew my positions, fundamentally liberal but often at odds with what had become illiberal progressive dogma, would ruffle feathers. But as I explained, “I want to write about that vast center/liberal space and to address what people really think and believe but are often too afraid to say.”

. . . I wasn’t looking to be loved or even liked. I had friends and family for that. I wanted to write what I believed to be the truth, based on facts and guided by fairness, but never driven by fear.

She lists some topics that, I’m guessing, the NYT probably wasn’t keen on:

But the reporting I’m most proud of is when I used my voice to stand up for people whose lives or work had come under attack, whether they were public figures or were dragged into the public eye because they’d dared to speak or act in ways that unjustly elicited professional or social condemnation: A popular novelist ostracized for alleged “cultural appropriation.” A physician assistant who was excoriated on social media for standing up to bullies. A Palestinian writer whose appearance at a prominent book fair was canceled. An early beneficiary of affirmative action who dared to explore its unintended consequences. Vulnerable gay teenagers who described being misled by a politicized medical establishment into dubious gender transition treatments. A public university president who was driven away by a campus besieged with political division. Social work students and faculty undermined by a school that had betrayed its own principles. A public health expert who risked opprobrium from his peers by calling out his profession on groupthink.

And it seems to me that much of her piece is simply a disguised lecture to the paper, letting them know that, as Jack Nicholson said, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Several years ago, The Times ran a campaign with the tagline “The truth is hard.” The way I’ve interpreted this is that the truth may be hard for some people to hear, but the truth should never be hard for journalists to tell. In our efforts to shed light on difficult subjects or to question conventional wisdom, we should never refrain from speaking what we believe to be the truth. Not because we think others can’t handle it and certainly not because we cannot handle it ourselves.

Readers are smarter and more thoughtful than the news media sometimes gives them credit for. They don’t need our protection. When journalists hold back, readers can sense they aren’t getting the full story. This sows doubt and skepticism at a time when readers desperately need news they can trust.

At the end, she thanks the readers for their feedback, both good and bad, and expresses hope that her pieces led people to examine their own views.  Here’s the sad last paragraph:

Though I am leaving The Times, I will not be leaving behind these principles in my work as a journalist. Readers depend on our telling the truth more than ever.

This is a brave woman, for she surely realized that her columns and their topics wouldn’t go down well with her editors. Nevertheless, she persisted. I wish her Ceiling-Cat-speed and hope she continues to publish her views at some other widely-read venue. Thanks, Ms. Paul, for your contributions.