Three days ago, Erik Wemple, the Washington Post media critic, confessed in his column that he felt guilty for not objecting to the 2020 firing of James Bennet, the New York Times Editorial Page Editor. Wemple bemoaned the fact that neither he nor any of his fellow journalists had defended Bennett, admitting the failure was out of “cowardice and midcareer risk management.” Two-year-old regret is akin to 'close' in horseshoes.
In June of 2020 The Times OP-ED page had run a piece by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK), calling for the use of federal troops to put down unrest in US cities. Minority journalists in The Times’ newsroom set the twiterverse afire, claiming all sorts of evil on Cotton’s part, and charging that the column made them feel unsafe. They demanded all sorts of things, but most importantly, they wanted Bennett’s head. After a brief defense of his editor, The Times’ publisher, A. G. Sulzberger, gave them their skin and fired Bennett, along with the usual mea culpas of current cancel culture. Cotton’s piece was even analyzed for every possible grammatical error, just to “prove” its unworthiness. The NewsGuild of New York, Bennett’s union, defended the firing as promoting workplace safety. That’s certainly Woke Newspeak. Oh, I forgot. The President said there is no such thing as Woke.
Free speech is only a constitutional guarantee against government control. The Times is a private enterprise, but it’s not just any private enterprise. It’s the leading newspaper in the United States, often called “our newspaper of record.” It is, or was, a fervent defender of free speech. Perhaps free speech at The Times, and other newspapers, has died with the migration of the fragile snowflakes from our campuses to our centers of journalism.
The whole affaire de Bennett died quickly and left our radar screens, yet not one of our great journalists has ever pressed the question, even now: “What in Senator Cotton’s column made [these reporters] feel unsafe?” I didn't say "asked", I said "pressed". That's what real journalists do. On campus, the gentle snowflakes would yell, scream, and occasionally riot if a speaker they disagreed with was invited to campus. The cry was always the same: “That speaker’s presence makes us feel unsafe.” But now that they’ve put on big boy and big girl pants, they’ve transferred their desire to not grow up to the real world. And their bosses are just as afraid of them as the college deans were.
The issue isn’t whether Cotton’s idea was a good one — it was a horrible idea, and it wasn’t going to happen. But with it we got the measure of Senator Tom Cotton, Just like we got the measure of Senator Bernie Sanders when he proposed his positions.
It's a truth of our time that liberals are afraid to speak many truths lest they be cancelled. Conservatives can’t seem to stop talking, and have all sorts of trouble differentiating truth from fiction. What was once the nation’s greatest newspaper shouldn’t be a place where people can’t have their say, no matter what. I suppose the likes of former Times greats like William Safire, Flora Lewis, and James Reston would no longer be welcome in their old offices.
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