Several hours ago, Allahpundit wrote about the backlash to the NY Times decision to publish an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton advocating that President Trump use troops to stop riots and looting in American cities. At the time he wrote that, the Times was still defending the publication. Editorial page editor James Bennet published a piece which said in part:
We published Cotton’s argument in part because we’ve committed to Times readers to provide a debate on important questions like this. It would undermine the integrity and independence of The New York Times if we only published views that editors like me agreed with, and it would betray what I think of as our fundamental purpose — not to tell you what to think, but to help you think for yourself.
But just over an hour ago the NY Times reversed course. Times’ media writer Marc Tracy and two other reporters just published a new piece in which the Times said publication of the essay was beneath its standards:
Near the end of the day, James Bennet, the editor in charge of the opinion section, said in a meeting with staff members that he had not read the essay before it was published. Shortly afterward, The Times issued a statement saying the essay fell short of the newspaper’s standards.
“We’ve examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication,” Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards. As a result, we’re planning to examine both short-term and long-term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reducing the number of Op-Eds we publish.”
This from the paper that published excerpts from Mein Kampf on June 22, 1941, the day the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
So what is going on here? How did the Times go from resisting the backlash to falling in line and deciding to publish fewer op-eds in the future? According to NY Times columnist Bari Weiss, there’s a civil war taking place inside the NY Times between the older liberal set that still believes in the traditional notion of free speech and the younger, woke crowd at the paper that wants to create a safe space.
The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same. (Thread.)
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020
The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it "safetyism," in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020
I've been mocked by many people over the past few years for writing about the campus culture wars. They told me it was a sideshow. But this was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020
Here's one way to think about what's at stake: The New York Times motto is "all the news that's fit to print." One group emphasizes the word "all." The other, the word "fit."
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020
If the answer is yes, it means that the view of more than half of Americans are unacceptable. And perhaps they are. https://t.co/2zltJkLXE3
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020
At least a dozen NY Times employees are now trashing Weiss over this thread and denying this is an accurate reflection of what is going on internally.
Bari Weiss wrote a thread about conflict in the NY Times.
Other NY staff are pulling it apart.
Whats the lesson?
It's easier to do stories based on simplistic free speech stereotypes when there are not a bunch of reporters in the room to immediately fact-check you pic.twitter.com/zLIlXt2QMR
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) June 4, 2020
Three other NYT staffers contradict Weiss. (If you see others, please reply and I will repost). As one points out, opinion writers are not subject to potential discipline for criticizing co-workers that other NYT employees are, meaning some are taking risks by disagreeing w Weiss pic.twitter.com/omMVzQMaz2
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) June 4, 2020
All previous sources in this thread were verified NYT staff. These are unofficial reports from people claiming to have knowledge of NYT slack discussions – again, staff can be punished for saying too much on twitter – so evaluate them in that light. Not good. pic.twitter.com/L1ddghQ1Us
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) June 4, 2020
Three more, including a contributing op-ed writer who has a bit more freedom to speak up.
To date, I've found 13 NYT staff who said Weiss is misrepresenting what happened, and zero who support her account. pic.twitter.com/fdzQbQi3J7— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) June 4, 2020
One thing we can count on is that if there’s any way for the media to go on another rant about Bari Weiss they will take that opportunity. So don’t be surprised if later tonight or tomorrow you see a long story from some progressive tech writer arguing about all the specific ways in which Weiss was wrong and quoting from various anonymous sources at the Times who are eager to drag her.
But the bottom line is that there has been major disagreement at the Times over the publication of something that polls show most Americans support (just as Weiss pointed out). Whatever painful, nuanced discussion they are having behind the scenes, the outcome is a binary choice. Either they should have published the op-ed or they should not have. At first they said the former, but just hours later they are saying the latter. That does suggest the internal backlash has had an impact.
The irony is that the Times has now decided it would have been better not to facilitate a public conversation about the content of Sen. Cotton’s op-ed even though that’s exactly the conversation Times staffers are having in private. It’s okay for them to talk about it’s merits and flaws, but at the end of the day they don’t really trust the rest of us to have the same conversation. They are rejecting what Bennet wrote earlier in defense of publication, i.e. that their job is, “not to tell you what to think, but to help you think for yourself.” It turns out a lot of people at the Times would just rather just tell you what to think.
Update: Someone is enjoying the battle inside the Times.
How is everyone at the @nytimes doing tonight?
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 5, 2020
