In a roughly 15,000-word profile published last week by the Atlantic, CNN chief executive Chris Licht, who has complained that the network’s journalists were too opinionated when Donald Trump was president, gave a lot of, well, opinions.
After the firestorm created by the Atlantic article, Licht is now stepping down from his post. But all of the harsh criticism is a bit unfair to Licht. In particular, his skepticism of left-wing causes, and his view that people who don’t agree with the left are constantly attacked and shamed, isn’t some outlier stance. These ideas are regularly expressed in many of the nation’s most prominent news outlets. If you spend a lot of time talking to White men in Democratic politics, as I do, you have to nod along as comments like Licht’s are made, even if you don’t agree with them, to signal that you are a reasonable person worth talking to.
Licht’s comments embody an anti-woke centrism that is increasingly prominent in American media and politics today, particularly among powerful White men who live on the coasts and don’t identify as Republicans or conservatives. It’s deeply flawed, and it’s pushing some important U.S. institutions to make bad decisions.
By anti-woke, what I mean is skepticism of progressive causes and ideas, especially on issues of gender, race and sexuality. The term “woke” is vague and imprecise. But I think it does capture the movements toward greater equality such as Black Lives Matter that have gained strength and prominence over the past decade, particularly since the protests after the killing of George Floyd.
What I am describing is softer than the outright opposition on the political right to ideas such as critical race theory. Licht, for example, did not say he wants to see racial diversity initiatives at workplaces overturned or to ban gender-affirming care.
You might call this centrism — and, to some extent, it is. But this is not the centrism of say, President Biden, who opposes some left-wing causes but doesn’t spend a lot of time deriding people who support them. Anti-woke centrism is really about emphasizing differences with progressives, who are inaccurately cast as Twitter-obsessed college graduates who constantly use terms like Latinx and are out of touch with ordinary Democratic voters.
Also, this kind of centrism isn’t usually described with that term by the people who practice it. Instead, they cast themselves as nonideological and neutral, while arguing that those who criticize them are dogmatic and nonobjective. Licht repeatedly referred to those who don’t share his journalism vision as looking to do “advocacy.”
Likewise, Chuck Todd, in his announcement this past Sunday that he is stepping down as moderator of “Meet the Press,” cast those who didn’t like how he hosted the show as “partisans.” New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and former Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron have recently written pieces suggesting critics of the mainstream media don’t properly understand and appreciate objectivity and journalistic independence.
It really matters that these anti-woke centrists often live in deeply Democratic areas. If you are in a red state, like me, you are constantly in fear of your state government adopting conservative policies — such as new limitations on reproductive freedom, transgender rights and honest education about race. But if you live in D.C. New York City or San Francisco, a much more realistic concern is that a “woke” liberal with whom you don’t agree gains political power — or sharply criticizes you in public.
“Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned,” the New York Times declared in the first sentence of a March 2022 editorial.
In reality, there has never been a right to voice your opinion without the possibility of being shamed or shunned (terms without precise meanings) — and there shouldn’t be. Shaming and shunning people are free expression, too. What I suspect this editorial was actually calling for is for self-described Democrats and liberals to be able to express more conservative views (such as skepticism about transgender rights) but without being attacked in the way that conservatives often are for such views (being called bigots).
People who are not White men sometimes express Licht’s sentiments. (See Democratic Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.) But it’s hard to ignore that the people most invested in these sentiments tend to be White and male. The left-wing movements of the past decade, particularly Black Lives Matter, say America is dominated by white supremacy, patriarchy and out of control capitalism. So it is not surprising that rich White men view these movements, particularly their more radical ideas, with some skepticism.
Licht and Elon Musk, who has expressed similar sentiments, control two hugely important media platforms. Their views matter. That they have become consumed by this anti-wokeism has meant that great journalists were fired at CNN for being too anti-Trump and that Twitter’s verification system was disabled it seemed because Musk felt it gave too much prominence to left-wing people.
It’s discouraging that Sulzberger is caught up in Twitter bashing, recently casting the platform as “fostering a type of groupthink inside the profession.” Is Sulzberger carefully reading tweets from local news organizations in small and midsize cities across the country and concluding that the coverage is groupthink? I doubt it. He is just rebuking left-leaning activists who use the site to critique the Times. There was plenty of groupthink inside elite news outlets such as the Times before Twitter existed — but not really an easy way to alert their reporters to police shootings of unarmed Black men.
There can and should be open debate about police reform, diversity, covid-19 policies and other issues — both between the two parties and among progressives and other non-Republicans. But when we have a left that is pushing America to finish the work of the 1960s and create a true multicultural democracy and a right that is banning Black intellectual ideas from public schools, it’s a huge mistake for powerful non-Republicans in society to spend so much time bashing the left. This anti-woke centrism often sounds as though people are auditioning to be today’s version of the “white moderates” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. castigated six decades ago.
Chris Licht doesn’t have to be woke. Everyone in America doesn’t need to put their preferred pronouns in their Twitter bios or use the term “birthing people.” I don’t do either of those things.
But Licht and others like him should definitely stop being so anti-woke. It is disappointing that some of the most powerful people in the country think the problem in America is that people are too critical of the police and insufficiently critical of transgender activists. I can’t tell if the anti-woke don’t understand what’s actually happening in America — or if they actively oppose a more equitable country.
