Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Times management spent the day defending the op-ed. Then, on Thursday evening, the Times PR team released a statement saying that Cotton’s op-ed “did not meet our standards.”
NEW: Times spokeswoman sends mea culpa pic.twitter.com/phBVjA21AT
— marc tracy (@marcatracy) June 4, 2020
Cotton referred to Black Lives Matter protestors as “rioters,” “looters,” and “insurrectionists,” repeated the false Trump claim (debunked earlier this week by the Times itself) that “antifa” have infiltrated the marches, and called for “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.”
Times staffers flooded Twitter on Wednesday to protest the op-ed, tweeting “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger” and “Running this puts Black people, including Black @nytimes staff, in danger.” In doing so, they chose to violate the Times’ controversial policy that forbids staffers from “taking sides” on social media.
Several Times employees also took sick days Thursday to protest the op-ed. “It has never been my expectation that every piece the New York Times publishes will confirm my personal worldview,” one employee wrote in a company Slack, “but it was also never my expectation The Times would run an op-ed calling for state violence that uses multiple false and misleading claims to make its argument, and which our own journalists report is impacting their safety and ability to source stories.”
Employees took “the unusual step of sending a letter to management asking for a number of corrections,” Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo reported, “as well as for ‘an editor’s note or follow-up, or, ideally, a fully reported news story’ to ‘examine’ what the letter calls ‘cherry-picked facts woven together with hyperbolic assumptions that were gross exaggerations.'” Slate’s Ashley Feinberg reported that as of midday Thursday the letter had been signed by nearly 500 Times staffers. (Another nugget from Feinberg’s story: According to one Times customer service rep, between 4 and 5 PM ET on Wednesday the paper received 203 editorial cancellations, “the highest hourly total ever in the data we have.”)
To be clear, this story endangers *all* black people, NYT staffers and not. But for this, this is a labor issue. This is our livelihood. This is embarrassing.
— Jazmine Hughes (@jazzedloon) June 4, 2020
I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but to not say something would be immoral. As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this. https://t.co/lU1KmhH2zH
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) June 4, 2020
I spent some of the happiest and most productive years of my life working for the New York Times. So it is with love and sadness that I say: running this puts Black @nytimes staff – and many, many others – in danger. pic.twitter.com/1EIvzgORWj
— Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen) June 4, 2020
PS: yes, I want opinion sections to run op-eds I disagree with. I love the @nytimes and am proud to work for it. Running a piece that calls on the military to quell a protest against deadly racism is an injury to the newspaper and the colleagues who make me proud every day.
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) June 4, 2020
Times employees received an upswell of support from journalists at other organizations and journalism-adjacent folks. Sewell Chan, a former New York Times op-ed editor, said the op-ed “falls short of sound journalistic practice,” adding, “The richest, largest and most powerful newspaper in America needs to exercise discretion and prudence in the use of its platform. This fell far short.”
But the Cotton piece isn't original, or even timely. it might have been 2 days ago, but Pentagon, @EsperDoD and Mattis have been clearly pushing back. The governors haven't asked for military deployments—in fact, several told Trump it would make things much worse.
— Sewell Chan (@sewellchan) June 3, 2020
Times management defended the op-ed. “I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions, even those we may disagree with, and this piece was published in that spirit,” Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote in a memo to staff Thursday. Times opinion editor James Bennet, who is widely seen as a possible successor to Times executive editor Dean Baquet, said on Twitter that “Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments” and claimed Cotton’s viewpoint required “public scrutiny and debate.” He elaborated further in a Thursday post: “I worry we’d be misleading our readers if we concluded that by ignoring Cotton’s argument we would diminish it.” It was later revealed that Bennet had not read the op-ed before it was published.
We understand that many readers find Senator Cotton's argument painful, even dangerous. We believe that is one reason it requires public scrutiny and debate.
— James Bennet (@JBennet) June 3, 2020
I'd like to hear the limits to this logic. Where would the Times draw the line on a counterargument that deserves to be heard? https://t.co/H91CzxbUkH
— Ryan D. Enos (@RyanDEnos) June 4, 2020
Comments on the op-ed were turned off when it first ran on Wednesday, then were turned back on. On Thursday morning, they were turned off again; by Thursday evening, they were back on. There are currently 1,932 comments on the op-ed.
The op-ed did not run in the Thursday print edition of the paper. As of Thursday evening, it could not be found on the front page of the Opinion section online at all.
NYT reports that some sources will no longer be providing them with information as a result of the Cotton op-ed. https://t.co/TIzJlHmmIR pic.twitter.com/emspyFc23b
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) June 4, 2020
The fight isn't fair. It is not my obligation to be reasonable in the face of it. Hatred dressed up as opinion is not something I have to withstand. HATEFUL IDIOT WANTS TO INVADE OWN COUNTRY is a great headline for a news story, and should be reported with some horror.
— Taffy Brodesser-Akner (@taffyakner) June 4, 2020
I am tired of this disingenuous argument! The people criticizing this are other journalists—by definition THE most media literate people! pic.twitter.com/9vuJceFlB5
— Kevin Nguyen (@knguyen) June 4, 2020
The emerging divide in journalism is not between "let all relevant arguments be heard" and "don't publish opinions we find repulsive." It's between those who ask, "is this something we should be amplifying?" and those who don't see the importance of putting the question that way.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 4, 2020
I am trying to cancel my subscription of @nytimes after their decision to run the Tom Cotton piece and it seems they have a special handler for all those who wish to cancel because of their editorials? "Sorry our wait times are longer than expected. Thank you for your patience." pic.twitter.com/Kc8EMIQYZi
— nanna thylstrup (@NThylstrup) June 4, 2020
this! canceling your subscription doesn’t …. help us fwiw https://t.co/2STcZCsbmb
— Jenna Wortham (@jennydeluxe) June 4, 2020
For example, the truth is that Senator Tom Cotton, in an opinion piece, misquoted Article IV Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which never says the federal government has a duty to the states to "protect each of them from domestic violence" but refers to state requests for aid. pic.twitter.com/dzPdI0TBcQ
— Jennifer Valentino-DeVries (@jenvalentino) June 4, 2020
This story is being updated frequently.
