“The Free Press” That Isn’t That Free

Bari Weiss built The Free Press on the claim that she was liberating journalism from “ideological capture.” In reality, she has constructed a slick, well-funded propaganda mill that dresses partisanship up as independence, laundering hard-right narratives into the mainstream under the comforting banner of free speech. Its recent coverage of Gaza famine is not brave reporting—it is denialism masquerading as skepticism, and it puts the outlet in the shameful lineage of publications that enable atrocity by muddying the waters of truth.

Follow the Money, Follow the Power

Weiss left The New York Times in 2020 painting herself as a martyr of “cancel culture.” It was a carefully curated story: a plucky outsider, punished by the liberal establishment, who would go on to “save” journalism by founding The Free Press. In reality, Weiss has always been the consummate insider—backed by billionaire investors and Silicon Valley money. The outlet raised $15 million in 2024, valuing it at $100 million, and by mid-2025 she was exploring a sale for as much as $250 million.

Her “independence” is a branding exercise, not a principle. Critics have shown again and again that The Free Press is ideologically narrow, relentlessly pro-Israel, and allergic to any framing that might implicate Israel in war crimes, let alone genocide.

It is no coincidence that The Free Press thrives financially while independent Gaza reporters risk their lives and are often killed by Israeli airstrikes. Weiss has turned denial into a business model. By late 2024, the outlet already had over 136,000 paying subscribers, generating roughly $10 million in annual revenue.The lesson is clear: there is a lucrative market for narratives that sanitize Israel’s crimes and demonize its critics.

Gaza: From Journalism to Denialism

The Free Press’s August 2025 investigation into photos of starving Palestinian children is a textbook case of weaponized nitpicking. Reporters Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova claimed that several viral images of emaciated children actually depicted kids with preexisting conditions such as cerebral palsy. That detail, they argued, undermined reports of famine in Gaza.

Here’s the problem: Gaza is starving. Multiple independent sources—including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and humanitarian experts—have documented systematic deprivation of food and water, amounting to acts of genocide

To zero in on a handful of images and proclaim a revelation is not journalism, it is spin. It echoes the tactics of climate denialists who seize on a single error in an IPCC report to dismiss decades of scientific consensus. The Free Press’s famine story does not disprove starvation. It minimizes it. It reframes an atrocity as a media scandal. And that is not investigative courage—it is complicity.

Scholars of genocide note that denial is not an afterthought—it is part of the process. By insisting Gaza’s suffering is exaggerated, Weiss and her writers are not outside the story, they are actors within it. Their journalism provides cover for inaction, furnishing Western leaders with excuses to delay intervention and justify military support for Israel.

This is why Mitchell Plitnick’s recent essay comparing Gaza genocide denial to Holocaust denial is so damning. One distorts history; the other distorts the present, while bombs are still falling and children are still starving. The Free Press, in this light, is not watchdog journalism but a propaganda organ enabling ongoing atrocity.

Bari Weiss likes to claim she is defending liberal values against dogma. But when it comes to Gaza, her platform has chosen a side: not the side of the oppressed, not the side of truth, but the side of power and denial. The Free Press’s famine coverage was not just bad journalism—it was an act of violence against the truth.

History will not be kind to genocide deniers, no matter how slick their Substack redesigns or how many millions they raise. Journalism has two choices: to document atrocity or to erase it. Bari Weiss and The Free Press have chosen erasure. And the cost is measured in Palestinian lives.

©TNPP