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Happy Friday, Roca Nation. In today’s news:
Hamas and Israel take steps toward ending the war (free)
Concerns of an AI bubble grow
Italy moves to ban Muslim face coverings (free)
China further restricts exports of rare-earth metals
The DoJ charged New York Attorney General Letitia James with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution
By Max Frost
A few weeks ago, my co-founder Max Towey wrote an article about The Free Press – the upstart media company launched in 2021 by Bari Weiss. Weiss had quit her job as a columnist and editor at The New York Times in 2020 after publishing a fiery open letter accusing the paper of being a toxic, leftist cesspool that rejected intellectual diversity.
The letter fired us up: Just before Weiss published it, we had the idea for Roca after reaching a similar conclusion about what ailed outlets like the Times. When Weiss launched Common Sense as an independent newsletter a few months later, we were probably among the first subscribers. When she rebranded it to The Free Press and declared her intent to launch an ideologically independent news outlet to challenge Big News, we cheered her on.
We would have liked to think of Weiss and co. as competitors. After all, we both launched upstart news companies seeking to shake up the media industry at the same time. But we would have been flattering ourselves: We launched Roca as three friends with no clue what we were doing. No audience, no experience, no access. Weiss was one of the world’s foremost media writers and had a Rolodex to make any journalist jealous. So, competitors we were not.
In the years since, The Free Press has done some phenomenal reporting and assembled a staff of intelligent, heterodox writers. They held debates and ran rival perspectives more than any other large outlet. And they did so with the biggest names in the game: Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben Shapiro, JK Rowling, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Palantir founder Alex Karp, to name a few.
On the one hand, we felt jealous: We had no shot of getting a sit-down with JK Rowling or Peter Thiel. Could you imagine if we had that chance!
But on the other hand, we felt free.
We didn’t worry that reporting the wrong thing would cost us a relationship with the next tech baron; that an unfavorable story would lead a world leader to cut us out. We could report the news without worrying about how powerful people would receive it.
And through this freedom, we grew.
While The Free Press had interviews with the most powerful people in the world, we had our co-founder Billy Carney making meme covers that mocked them. We had this newsletter, which highlighted achievements, hypocrisies, and failures – regardless of who was involved. And this attitude built our brand and our business.
As we grew alongside The Free Press, we never saw our way as better or worse. We shared its articles and, of course, wanted the interviews with Sam Altman and co. Yet we did notice one thing: Mission creep.
As The Free Press grew, so did its ideological conformity – the type of conformity Weiss warned about at The New York Times. This was particularly apparent on one issue: Israel-Palestine.
On every major topic – vaccines, trans rights, the war in Ukraine – The Free Press published dueling perspectives. Not so for Israel/Palestine, which has been arguably the most important issue during the outlet’s existence. The Free Press hasn’t granted the topic a single debate or two-sided look. Many influential X users and podcasters promote the theory that this is because nefarious Israeli money bought out the outlet. Some say this in blatantly anti-Semitic ways.
Personally, I don’t agree. I believe the lack of coverage is twofold: Because Weiss – who authored a book on anti-Semitism and grew up attending the Pittsburgh synagogue where a neo-Nazi shooter murdered 11 people in 2018 – believes that reporting on the horrors of the war misses the forest for the trees. In other words: She and her colleagues believe that Hamas is a terror group that committed an atrocity and continues to hold hostages, and so reporting on the day-to-day of the war misses those facts and gives Hamas what it wants.
And secondly, that as the outlet grew through sympathetic coverage of Israel, it worried that reporting anything counter to that risked alienating the audience and losing readers, money, and growth. That’s a lot of pressure for a startup that’s seeking an acquisition.
That’s all just my opinion, yet regardless of the cause, The Free Press’ failure to report both sides of one of the great issues of our time fueled exactly what it set out to prevent: Distrust in the media.
So that begs a question: How will The Free Press cover Big Tech, now that it’s been bought out by Big Tech billions?
On Monday, Paramount Skydance announced a deal to buy The Free Press for $150M and place Weiss in charge of CBS News, where she’ll oversee influential programs like 60 Minutes.
Skydance is owned by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison – the Trump-aligned founder of Oracle, who, for a brief period last month, was the world’s richest person. Skydance merged with Paramount this summer after promising the White House that it would have ideologically diverse content, then bought The Free Press. On top of this, The New York Times reports that David Ellison is looking to buy CNN. David’s money, of course, comes from his dad, Larry, who last month was handed the keys to TikTok by President Trump (more on that tomorrow).
You can agree with Skydance’s pledge to have more ideological diversity – we certainly do – and still worry about the political implications of getting a deal through by making concessions to the administration. You can also be happy for Weiss’ success and worry that one of the world’s leading independent outlets can no longer fairly report on Big Tech or the power of the most wealthy people.
Upon announcing its acquisition, The Free Press vowed not to change: “Same mission. Same values. Bigger Stage,” it wrote on Instagram.
But the Roca view is that that can’t be true. Until now, Weiss worked for herself, and her staff worked for her. They were independent. Now, she works for the Trump-supporting son of a Big Tech mogul who is occasionally the “World’s Richest Man.” Before, she had the power; now, a father-son billionaire-Big Tech duo does. Their power and money dwarf hers, and she and her staff are now on their payroll. Much independence may remain; but some must be lost.
This week, The Free Press became, by definition, less free.
Editor’s Note
We are proud to be Roca: Honest, grassroots, and fiercely independent. If you support that and shudder at the thought of Big Tech buying us out, please consider becoming a Roca Member. That’s what keeps us independent (and in business). We exist only because of our members.
Thanks to all of you who made it this far. What do you think? Can an “independent” media company remain so when it’s bought out? Let us know by replying to this email.
And thanks to those of you who wrote in yesterday in response to our story on declining IQ rates. We loved reading all of the emails; we share a sample below.
Egri wrote:
I wonder how the World Wars could have caused an increase in IQ. The wars created developments in all aspects of areas as the technologies used by soliders were then applied to households, making life easier. What if this ease in everyday tasks contributed to higher rates of free time, letting people explore? But also, increase in technologies required adaptation, leading to increase in adaptability skills, and it is known that the better you can adapt the more intelligent you are!
So, more free time + higher adaptation skills = increase in IQ.
In terms of decline in IQ, I think the way people build their life so it is as comfortable as it can be comtributescto it. Comfort doesn't require you to have challenging thoughts, safe to say people don't have to adapt to anything anymore in the Western world (the decline in tolerance toward others can additionally prove my point).
Paula from Apex, NC said:
It definitely is due to the fact in part to automation. I go to the grocery store and if I give the cashier the exact amount so they don’t have to give me change back, but they didn’t enter it into the register, they don’t know how to do that. It’s completely Incomprehensible. They grew up using computers and calculators. And yes, why read a book when you can watch TV or play a video game. They don’t know how to think for themselves.
Nicolas wrote:
I think there are a few different factors at play here, and in general the cause of IQ score changes can be very muddy waters to look into.
The Danish study in 2021 identified a 2-3 point drop in military age men between the years 1980 and 2000. That's a decline of about 0.15 points per year, which isn't as scary as the droopy graph suggests. I think more data presentations and specifically data from the past 20 years would have been a valuable addition to the article, because I just found myself scratching my head, wondering what's considered a meaningful decline. I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't think someone 5 points below me to be especially stupid, but I might start to think that at 15-20 points removed.
Additionally, the function of IQ as a bell curve means that you won't ever have a population (except perhaps a very small one) that constantly increases IQ; the average will always eventually shift back to the middle of the curve. Even if everyone is getting smarter, it becomes an "if everyone's smarter, no one is" situation because of how the score is designed to collect averages.
Then there's the fact that leaded gasoline was in use in the US until it was banned in 1996 (although it was on the decline since 1970), making people growing up and being born in the time period between 1960 and 1975 or so especially susceptible to higher levels of lead in their bodies, which is known to contribute to lower IQ. So I think more attention needs to be paid to environmental factors alongside socioeconomic factors.
Finally, there's the impact of technology, and specifically personal cell phones. I don't think those are contributing to IQ declines nearly as much as pearl-clutching millennials want to believe, although I DO think that they're a major contributor to the stark decline in reading teens.
Aris said:
I'm studying mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech and last year we had a guest lecturer, who was looking to revamp one of the lowest rated courses in the mechanical engineering curriculum called design and manufacturing. One thought he had that I agreed with was that because our information is so streamlined we lack finding out about adjacent information. I have my textbooks online and I simply "CTRL + F", when I find language in an assignment I don't understand, but previous generations had to sift through and pick up much more context to the information than I did. This perhaps extends to quick google searches for answers, rather than extensive research. This must have some impact on your intelligence over time.
And Spencer from FL wrote in:
I would be very interested to see the demographic breakdown of the samples taken in the countries with declining IQs over the decades. Same goes with those whose IQs have continually climbed. I have a feeling that mass immigration from countries where education was not as important as survival may be lowering the scores, and we may see the Flynn effect return to normal as those countries slow immigration and the immigrants who are already there adapt to a Western way of life.
And if you’ve gotten this far in our email and STILL want more reading, check out our latest stories below:
Thanks, we’ll be back with more tomorrow.
—Max and Max
