What began as an undercurrent of newsroom grumbling built into an unusual Twitter tidal wave of public outrage among journalists at The New York Times over their newspaper's decision to publish an opinion column by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., calling for military intervention in U.S. cities wracked by violent protests.
But after 24 hours of debate and acrimony -- during which both the paper's publisher and editorial-page editor and publisher strongly defended the need to showcase diverse and controversial viewpoints -- the paper late Thursday abruptly announced that Cotton's op-ed was the result of a "rushed editorial process" and "did not meet our standards."
The statement from a Times spokesperson and shared online by a Times staff writer did not apologize for the op-ed nor explain if it would be marked with a correction.
The swift backlash, which later spilled over to Twitter, came from dozens of staffers across the organization and included opinion writers, reporters, editors and magazine staff members. Several tweeted the same message -- "Running this puts Black nytimes staffers in danger" -- with an image of the editorial's headline, "Tom Cotton: Send In The Troops."
In his op-ed, Cotton defended the invocation of the Insurrection Act, claiming that "rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy," with looting that has nothing to do with Floyd's death, and that an "overwhelming show of force" is needed to "restore order to our streets."
"I'll probably get in trouble for this, but to not say something would be immoral," tweeted Nikole Hannah-Jones, who recently won the Times a Pulitzer for her "1619 project. "As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this."
The Times was not the only major U.S. newspaper to experience a staff backlash Wednesday. Journalists at the Philadelphia Inquirer protested the decision to give an opinion piece about damage to city buildings during protests the headline of "Buildings Matter, Too" -- a riff on "Black Lives Matter" that many felt equated the toll on architecture to the deaths of blacks at the hands of police. The paper apologized, but about 40 minority-group staff members signed a protest letter, with many choosing to call in sick Thursday.
But it was the Cotton piece that more sharply reflected the tensions that have long existed between the news and opinion sections of newspapers -- separate and distinct staffs, run independently of each other while co-existing under the same brand.
On Thursday morning, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger stood by the decision to publish the Cotton essay, saying in a letter to the staff that it's crucial to "provide readers a diversity of perspectives" -- especially "those that challenge the positions taken by our Editorial Board."
But he acknowledged that many staffers had raised concerns about many aspects of the story and promised to hear them out "with an open mind."
In his letter, Sulzberger maintained that the Times does not "publish just any argument -- they need to be accurate, good faith explorations of the issues of the day."
But in their private discussions about the op-ed on Wednesday, Times staffers took issue with many of Cotton's assertions, such as his argument that Americans would welcome military intervention into their cities and that "cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa [are] infiltrating protest marches." As one Times reporter pointed out, the antifa claim has been debunked in Times reporting as misinformation.
"There's broad agreement about it being perfectly fine that we have a diverse range of opinions in our op-ed pages," said one reporter, who did not want to be named. "I just felt like we didn't add enough context." The reporter added it would have been more useful to cover Cotton's argument within a news story, which could then have included context, fact-checking and counterarguments.
Roxane Gay, a contributing op-ed writer for the Times, tweeted: "We are well served by robust and ideologically diverse public discourse that includes radical, liberal, and conservative voices. This is not that. His piece was inflammatory and endorsing military occupation as if the Constitution doesn't exist."
Editorial Page Editor James Bennet explained the decision to run Cotton's essay both on Twitter late Wednesday and in a published column Thursday as part of an obligation "to our readers to show them counterarguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy."
"I strongly oppose the idea of using federal troops," he wrote, noting that that perspective has come across in many pieces by the paper's editorial board, which has also praising protesters and called for police reform; and that op-eds by other outside contributors have also undermined the arguments for deploying troops to cities. And he disagreed with the argument that the Times had lent legitimacy to Cotton's stance by publishing it.
"I believe the public would be better equipped to push back if it heard the argument and had the chance to respond to the reasoning," Bennet wrote. "Readers who might be inclined to oppose Cotton's position need to be fully aware of it, and reckon with it, if they hope to defeat it."
Times employees are planning to send a letter to the organization's management, according to a statement from the New York NewsGuild, which called the op-ed's publication "an irresponsible choice." The union argued that "invoking state violence disproportionately hurts Black and brown people. It also jeopardizes our journalists' ability to work in the field safely and effectively."
Information for this article was contributed by Paul Farhi and Sarah Ellison of The Washington Post.
A Section on 06/05/2020