James Bennet, the former New York Times editorial page editor who was ousted for publishing a column by a prominent Republican senator, issued a “trigger warning” to an op-ed written by a conservative before being fired by the Gray Lady. He said he was encouraged to add a .
In a blistering 17,000-word cover story, Bennett accused the so-called “paper of record” of “illiberal bias.” economist The article, titled “When the New York Times Lost its Way,” was published Thursday.
Bennett, who was forced to resign in 2020 after internal outrage over the publication of an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), accused publisher AG Sulzberger of bowing to pressure from angry staffers. denounced.
In this hard-hitting article, Bennett delves into the events that led to his resignation after three years of reflection. He said the incident was emblematic of the “dangerous problems” plaguing the Times newsroom.
“The Times' problem has metastasized from liberal bias to non-liberal bias, from a tendency to take sides in the national debate to an urge to shut down the debate entirely,” said John, now a columnist for The Economist. Bennett, the senior editor, wrote:
He recalled that during his four years as Times editorial page editor from May 2016 to June 2020, many top editors showed signs of left-leaning bias.
“Bias was so pervasive that it became unconscious even among senior newsroom editors,” Bennett wrote. “To be helpful, one of my top news editors encouraged me to start putting trigger warnings on conservative articles. He had no idea what impact the Times' own biases would have on the rest of the world.”
The Times did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Bennett's story.
Cotton's op-ed, which led to Bennett's ouster, argued that President Donald Trump should call in the U.S. military to suppress protests following the death of George Floyd. Many of the protests turned into violence against police and looting.
He was forced to resign amid backlash over the publication of Cotton's editorial. Getty Images
Times staffers complained that the paper seemed to endorse Mr. Cotton's views by publishing the op-ed, and some said the screed put black colleagues at risk. There were also people.
Mr. Bennett and then-Times editor-in-chief Dean Baquet believed Times readers should listen to Mr. Cotton's views, which are shared by many Americans, and Mr. Sulzberger said the article was published. He said he even “understood” the reason.
Bennett said Baquet was frustrated and surprised by the backlash, and one day asked out loud, “Are we really that precious?”
But as anger built up, both Mr. Baquet and Mr. Sulzberger began to change their attitudes. And Mr. Bennett soon realized that editorial bias was eroding the paper's professed objectivity.
In an interview with Baquet, the top editor said that as a black man, “When I leave my apartment wearing a hoodie and a mask to protect myself from the coronavirus, I have a sense of vulnerability that white people don't have.”
Bennett countered that while he had privilege as a white man, as a reporter he had been in a vulnerable position in conflict zones. He added that he wanted to have an open dialogue about his own approach to the cotton issue, but noted that no one wanted to discuss it further.
Sulzberger then pressured Bennett to publish an “editor's note” explaining what was wrong with Cotton's op-ed, but to his surprise, once it was published, the article “disapproved of this article far more than I expected and said it should never have been published at all.” ”
The next day, Bennett received the fateful phone call from Sulzberger asking him to resign.
“Saturday morning, Mr. Sulzberger called me at home and demanded my resignation in a cold anger that still leaves me confused and saddened,” Bennett wrote. “I was angry too and he said he had to fire me. I thought about it later. I called him back and agreed to resign and told myself I was being noble. I praised him.”
Mr. Bennett said that compared to the old days when reporters pounded the pavement, Times reporters' “vocabulary” was at risk.
“They may know a lot about television or real estate or how to edit audio files, but their work takes them to shelters, police stations, or the homes of people who see the world in a completely different way. It’s not something you take with you,” he wrote.
He went on to say that the Times newspaper is trying to address “one of the key reasons why so many Americans have lost faith in the Times: They have also lost faith in the American people.” He added that he has spent too much time navel gazing without thinking.
“I think about it many times staff “Little do we realize how insular our world has become, or how far we are from fulfilling our promise to our readers to show the world 'without fear or favour.'” wrote. “And sometimes the bias was overt. One news editor said he felt he needed to push his department further to the left because I was publishing so many conservative stories. .”
Bennett's widespread takedown also called into question the paper's coverage of Trump, with the Times saying, “Trump's ties with Russia aren't as good as expected, Hunter Biden's laptop makes Trump's “He was slow to inform readers of his possible concerns.” Indeed, the new coronavirus came from a Chinese lab. ”
He also said that while the lines between opinion and news journalism are blurred compared to rivals like the Wall Street Journal, which features conservative voices on its opinion pages, it's important to note that the line between opinion and news journalism is more clearly reflected in its reporting. He said that there would be no such thing.
“The Times could learn something from the Wall Street Journal, which has maintained its journalistic composure,” Bennett concluded. “It maintains a stricter separation between news and opinion journalism, including cultural criticism, thereby protecting the integrity of its work.”
