It is one thing to suspect that legacy papers like The New York Times are more than just completely politically biased. It is quite another to comprehend that they are the literal propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. The latter suspicion was confirmed during an interview last week between Bari Weiss and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.

Weiss, a former New York Times journalist, free thinker, and opponent of cancel culture, is hardly a right-wing fanatic. She is, however, a writer who believes in the importance of hearing and debating ideas in the public space. She famously quit The New York Times in 2020 because the newspaper had hired her to be a more centrist voice and yet allowed her colleagues to smear her and undermine her work. Since then, she has been on a mission to confront the stifling of essential American voices and ideas. As she said in her resignation letter: “I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.”

On her podcast, “Honestly with Bari Weiss,” she shared with her guest, Tim Scott, her experience with one of his op-ed submissions that had been brought forward to The New York Times for publication. Her story is as follows:

Weiss: Here’s what happened. I was at The New York Times and you or your staff sent in an op-ed about the [police chokehold] bill and why it fell apart. And this is the part I’m not sure if you know — there was a discussion about the piece and whether or not we should run it, and one colleague, a more senior colleague, said to a more junior colleague who was pushing for the piece, “Do you think the Republicans really care about minority rights?”

Scott: Wow.

Weiss: And the more junior colleague said, “I think Tim Scott cares about minority rights.” And then — and here’s the pretty shocking part — the more senior colleague said, “Let’s check with Senator Schumer before we run it.”

Scott: Wow.

Weiss: And the colleague, the younger one, refused. Because he said — because that colleague said — it wasn’t an ethical thing to do.

Scott: Wow.

The Times has denied that this is the way it does business after Senator Scott posted on social media about this revelation. Weiss’s story, though, has been corroborated by a former colleague at the paper with other documentation to back up her claim.

Scott might have said the word “wow,” but he was not surprised by the bald partisanship of The New York Times or other legacy papers. He infamously had his life story fact-checked by The Washington Post in a hit piece intended to besmirch his integrity. His voice and his ideas are incredibly important perspectives to add to the cultural and political conversation, and yet it is voices like his that are particularly attacked and silenced by the Left because he is a black American who is conservative.

Sadly, Scott’s experience is not a one-off. Conservatives have seen it done over and over again to their voices on public forums. The rabid Left is bound and determined to create an echo chamber of ideas. As Weiss also said in her resignation letter to the Times, “The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people.”

We have seen this with cancel culture, Twitter bans, and media bias. Can we really call ourselves a free nation when roughly half the population is routinely silenced and forced out of the public sphere?

The answer is no.