New York Sun Publisher Dovid Efune Talks Free Speech

BUCK: The First Amendment is under assault in this country in so many ways from Big Tech, from the woke left, from insane libs who don’t believe in basic free speech principles anymore. So we probably shouldn’t call them “liberals.” That’s a whole other discussion. Authoritarians is better. I will even take progressives over liberals. We’ll just call them libs ’cause that drives them insane. The New York Times has an op-ed out from the editorial board.

So this is from the combined intellectual might of such luminaries as Charles Blow and Maureen Dowd and — I don’t know who else works for the editorial there, but other folks — Thomas Friedman. They’re saying, “For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, 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,” end quote.

The problem is, the New York Times is the problem when it comes to the First Amendment and so many other places just like it. So I want to bring on our friend Dovid Efune right now. He’s a long-time friend of mine in the world of media. Dovid is the publisher of the newly relaunched New York Sun, NYSun.com. Dovid, great to have you on.

EFUNE: It’s always a pleasure, Buck.

BUCK: Something rich here about the New York Times suddenly discovering that the First Amendment is something that liberals no longer really hold to and therefore are not actually liberals in any classical sense. And beyond that I’m sure you saw, Dovid, that at Yale University, a speaker was shouted down — a conservative speaker — so aggressively that the police had to be called. This is at Yale!

EFUNE: Yeah. I mean, look, the trail of bodies is far too long for the New York Times to be taken seriously on this issue. I mean, look at the likes of Bari Weiss, Adam Rubinstein, James Bennet (their editorial page editor), Donald McNeil was a health correspondent. These are New York Times journalists who were forced out because they made others at the New York Times uncomfortable.

I mean, even as we speak there is a note appended to that infamous Tom Cotton or famous Tom Cotton op-ed where the New York Times says, ‘After publication this essay met strong criticism from many readers, and based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” So really —

BUCK: Can we just remind everybody, Dovid, that was about a sitting U.S. Senator writing that the National Guard should be sent in to stop massive riots in the summer of 2020 under BLM’s banner from continuing.

EFUNE: Right. Exactly right. And, you know, facing pushback instead of sticking up for Senator Cotton’s right to say what he has to say, even if it made some people at the Times uncomfortable. They still have a note on the website saying that “the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” It fell short because it made people uncomfortable.

So here’s the New York Times really engaging what I might call in firefighter arson. They’re responsible for setting these fires that they’re now claiming that they want to put out, and the fires that I’m talking about are creating — contributing to the creation of — an environment where many Americans, truthfully, don’t feel comfortable saying what they really think or what they feel.

BUCK: Also, in this New York Times op-ed they write, “Americans feel the burden of this and know it exists. In a national poll commissioned by the New York Times Opinion in Sienna College, only 34% of Americans said they believe that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. The poll found that 84% of adults said it is a very serious or somewhat serious problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism.”

To this, I just say, the 34% who believe Americans actually have free speech in this country, I think they’re the same ones who cheer on the Big Tech shutdown of the entirely accurate Hunter Biden laptop story: The hard-core authoritarian left which has managed to, decades ago, pretend to be about free speech, but now that they have seized the commanding heights of information dissemination and control of journalism and the news media, they want to shut everybody down, Dovid.

EFUNE: Yeah, I think there’s truth to that, and the numbers that the Times publishes there make it quite clear that those that are more in favor of that kind of policing of free speech, creating what you might call a lateral fear society. It’s not coming from the government per se but coming from others in society, especially major media outlets whose their role as, you know, policing what people can think on what they can say. They have really been the ones who created that environment, and the Times’ own numbers that they published show that a lot of that is coming from the far left.

BUCK: Speaking to Dovid Efune, publisher of the New York Sun, which has just been relaunched. Dovid, I wanted to ask you about that. This is a newspaper with a long history in New York City, and you’ve now taken the helm, and you and your team are working to make this, what, a kind of antidote to the madness of the New York Times? Tell us about it.

EFUNE: Well, there’s definitely that in the New York Sun’s history, and I want to encourage everybody to go and check it out — it’s www.NYSun.com — and consider being a part of it. The New York Sun was founded in 1833. That’s 18 years before the New York Times was founded. It’s got that 200 years of history, backed Lincoln during the Civil War.

It really has been a fundamental pillar of American journalism. But really what it specialized in is in its role of being in touch with the people and serving as a voice for the people. It’s masthead declares the same slogan, “It shines for all, a voice for all people,” not just for the woke or for limited audiences, and really that’s…

In bringing back the Sun, it’s been a response to our concern and the concern of many over the way that media — major media outlets — conduct themselves today, especially on this issue, especially in policing what thought is acceptable and what thought isn’t. And, you know, the Sun has this fantastic tradition, incredible history, 200 years of history. It’s got Pulitzer Prizes, that gothic masthead, New York broad sheets.

So in many ways it really is that parallel to the Times, and really competed with the Times in its first iteration and then more recently on the newsstands from 2002 until 2008 in New York City, and now we’re bringing it back primarily as a digital enterprise, but with a reach across the United States. Look, we know that there are a lot of people that are departing from standard media consumption — mainstream media consumption, if you will — but our thought is that the American way is to participate in building a better alternative, and that’s what we’re offering here with the New York Sun and invite everybody to be a part of it. NYSun.com.

BUCK: Dovid Efune, publisher of the newly relaunched New York Sun. Dovid, great to have you, my friend. We’ll talk soon.

EFUNE: Always a pleasure, Buck.