I met a CNN senior reporter. It did not go well.

Sharat Ganapati / CC BY 2.0

The other night, I was playing Texas hold’em with a group of journalists. Most of them were new faces. One of them was CNN senior reporter Marshall Cohen, who covers Justice Department investigations and congressional inquiries. In 2019, he won an Emmy for his coverage of the Trump-Russia probe. One of CNN’s finest. And, from the start, a smug prick. As we were introducing ourselves, he mentioned starting off his career as a researcher. When I asked where he conducted his research, he replied, “Uhh… on my computer?” as if I was an idiot for asking. Then he realized I was asking whether he worked in an office or remotely. Turns out, he had worked on CNN’s reporting of the Mueller report, and I think it’s fair to say CNN got things wrong there, and for the wrong reasons. They treated every new angle like a five-alarm fire and led with conclusions rather than facts, conclusions that turned out not to be entirely true. In other words, they were quick to make sloppy accusations. As I was about to learn, this was how Cohen conducted himself in social settings too.

The conversation eventually came round to the topic of The Free Press. Cohen referred to their reporting as “thin” and said Bari Weiss should not be running CBS, but hosting a podcast or writing a weekly opinion column. Others in the group seemed to agree that Weiss is in over her head. I like Weiss and I have a lot of respect for what she’s done. I know that she’s very strong on Israel, but so am I, and the conversation eventually turned to that. Others felt that Israel is a blind spot for her, that The Free Press has taken on an overly pro-Israel stance, and that its journalistic integrity has suffered as a result. Then people began to wonder why she took on the role of editor-in-chief at CBS News. I agreed that she had a good thing going at The Free Press and conceded that maybe she should have stayed where she was already doing so well, instead of taking a big swing and possibly whiffing in a big way. Then again, Weiss seems to have made an incredible career out of taking big swings and proving her critics wrong, so I’m willing to wait and see. I also happen to think one of the reasons she took this particular swing, in fact the main reason, is a noble one based on personal moral principle.

Specifically, antisemitism is at levels we haven’t seen since the Holocaust and Israel is in the midst of an existential crisis. We see students across universities protesting for Palestinian human rights but also, in many cases, explicitly in support of genocidal terrorism. We see protesters, even figures as powerful as Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of America’s largest city, repeating antisemitic slogans. And so, it’s entirely reasonable for a devout Jew and a Zionist to want to push back against antisemitic disinformation and help move the national discourse in a healthier and more honest direction. This, after all, is the main role of a journalist — to push for truth. Naturally, one can disagree with her politics. Not everyone is a Zionist like myself. But her heart is in the right place. And of course, any journalist who believes in their beat wants to have a bigger voice to make an impact for the better. So I said that I thought she took the role for multiple different reasons, but that the big one was to have that kind of influence in the media when it comes to that particular issue. And I think her Jewish identity and her Zionism is quite obviously what gives her that fire in her belly. I hope she does have that influence. I pray to HaShem that she succeeds. Who else in the mainstream media is trying to push back against antisemitic and anti-Zionist narratives in such a way?

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“What do you mean more influence in the media?” asked Cohen. It was as if he was reading into my comment that I was saying Jews control the media, which is funny, because we had just finished discussing my Seattle cancellation and the stupidity of people who tear single comments completely out of context and then accuse people of bigotry for making perfectly rational observations. That kind of behavior is why the nation had to go through roughly a decade of cancel culture and a regime of ideological conformity in which people used accusations of bigotry to attack rather than to understand, and to gain social purchase where they could not do so through reasoned debate. But maybe I was being unfair. Maybe that isn’t where he was going with this at all. So I explained what I had meant by my remark, but Cohen began to needle me on the point, and he wouldn’t let up. It got weird. Everyone sat in awkward silence, held hostage by whatever insecurities Cohen was working out on me.

“This feels like Seattle again,” I said. Cohen replied that I was being like Seattle, but didn’t explain what he meant. Then he said the three main issues that concern Weiss most are Israel, the trans issue, and anti-wokeness. I granted that. But no one disputed that the main issue in her life is her Jewish faith and love of Israel. Once Cohen got me to clarify that I thought the reason she wanted to have more influence on this issue over others is because of her Jewish identity, he accused me of being “bigoted.” And there it was. In less than half an hour of meeting me, he had wormed his way to a position of moral outrage and pearl-clutching. It was page one out of the woke handbook. Cry racism.

But what bothered me most was the mechanism itself. I don’t think people who dodge questions like “what is a woman?” are stupid or confused. They’re performing conformity. The point isn’t belief. It’s signaling obedience. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother demands that people say “two plus two is five” not because anyone really thinks that it is. The point is that everyone knows it isn’t, and therefore by saying it, you prove your obedience. What keeps this engine running is that, as with Vaclav Havel’s greengrocer, most people just want to keep their heads down and carry on. But some people want to be the one to crack the whip. In that game, accusing someone of bigotry is checkmate. And after Cohen did it, he was done with the conversation. It was gross, and I found him to be a disgusting person.

At one point, I asked him flatly, “What do you think is the most important issue to Weiss?” He said Israel. “And why do you think that is?” He dodged, but I asked again. Why does Nicole Hannah-Jones care about black people specifically and not Latinos or Asians? Is it racist to say it’s because she is black? But instead of asking that, I repeated my question, “Why do you think that is?” Eventually, he said because she’s Jewish. And there it was. I threw my hands up, “Well, okay then.” As far as I was concerned, that was checkmate. He had now conceded each of the pillars of my argument. As Jacob Savage wrote in his recent essay, it’s not that these people object to the facts of what you say. It’s that they object to people noticing things that they think people are not supposed to notice.

In this case, it’s not okay to say being Jewish is the reason that some Jewish journalists have an interest in garnering more media influence when it comes to the topic of Jewish identity and Israel — because if you try hard not to think about it, that sounds a little like saying Jews want to control the media. That said, if you don’t think her personal identity has anything to do with her interest in Israel, or her desire to help Israel by having more influence, fine. You can disagree. We can talk about it. But don’t pretend like I’m being a bigot because you don’t agree with my perspective. Eventually, Cohen had a brief moment of self-awareness and realized he was killing the mood for everyone. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not offended, you know.” I looked at him. “I’m offended,” I said. Here was Mr. Research, who could have made his case using logic and evidence but instead resorted to cheap ad hominem attacks.

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Cohen is a frail man, built like a young Woody Allen and half-blind with thick glasses that make him look like Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys. I don’t say this to be mean. It’s relevant because during the exchange, he got out of his seat as he was needling me, leaned over slightly, and would not back off with the questions. Given his physical presence, or lack thereof, such posturing only further suggested a lack of self-awareness. I stayed in my seat. I answered his questions. When he was leaving, I shook his hand like a gentleman. I was civil. Besides, in the end, this is not a story about a spat with a CNN reporter. It’s disheartening in a much bigger way because we all have these views of mainstream media and the clowns who run the show at those places, and to have all that confirmed this way was a bit too on the nose, and sad.

It’s sad because you meet one of those people and realize it’s no surprise at all that places like CNN have gone in the direction that they have. Here was an institutional CNN man who thinks like an institutional CNN man and that’s exactly why CNN is the way that it is. One could arguably boil the whole problem with today’s mainstream media down to that single impulse. The rush to judge rather than understand, to label rather than discuss, to constantly accuse people of making bigoted remarks rather than making any attempt at good-faith dialogue, to instead reach for lazy tropes and easy answers. People like that are everything that’s wrong with mainstream media, and the reason places like Bluesky are such a cesspool of purity testing. Another takeaway is that although their accusations are invariably dressed up as political or moral in nature, these individuals are usually just acting out personality issues. And that’s depressing because it means they’re unlikely to change. This is who they are.