This essay has a great deal to unpack about the status of journalism in the 2020's. Bennet is rather petulant about his dismissal for the publication of an inflammatory op-ed essay from an...
Exemplary
This essay has a great deal to unpack about the status of journalism in the 2020's.
Bennet is rather petulant about his dismissal for the publication of an inflammatory op-ed essay from an established hard-line pro-Trump senator, in the midst of the protests over the death of George Floyd. It's worth reading the subsequently added prefix to that op-ed, explaining why it should have been fact-checked and edited more closely.
Bennet has fair criticism that the process of his firing depended too much on hasty capitulation to a staff Slack dogpile. But the philosophical problem of the "view from nowhere" in journalism remains at the heart of rebutting his claims.
Bennet makes an implicit claim that it is possible to segregate objective news from subjective opinion. He asserts that the progressive bias of the NYT newsroom preferences justice at the expense of objective truth, and that there is illiberalism at work in denying conservatives voice and opportunity for assessment of their truth claims.
There is merit to the argument that news and opinion are increasingly indistinguishable, and that this is problematic. Bennet did not, however, insist on the importance of fact-checking in the Opinion section, regardless of his claims of subjective bias entering the News department.
There's a worthy interview with Mark Jacobs, a former Chicago Tribune editor, on why simply publishing equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans is a disservice to readers.
It's been discussed elsewhere why the New York Times' efforts at the "balance" Bennet prefers only amplify controversy and cloud facts when there's a clear preponderance of evidence on one side, and real harm from not taking a position.
While Bennet begins with his bonafides in on-the-ground journalism, he neglects that the choice of stories to report has always entailed opportunities for bias. As Mark Jacobs noted, reporting quotes is not journalism. If Bennet is so concerned about the missing view from outside a coddled, insular newsroom, why is promotion of conservative political viewpoints in the Opinion pages more important than the real investigative work the Times is finally doing on inequality, rural poverty, environmental degradation, political corruption, addiction, housing, joblessness, declining life expectancy, and other "flyover country" issues that mainstream Democratic policies have historically neglected?
</set rant=off>
I'm not a journalist, just a long-time consumer of the product with my own biases. Feel free to discuss with more information or opinion below.
This is a bit of an aside to the topic at hand but I can't help but mention it. The Tom Cotton op-ed that you linked to is seared in my memory of 2020 and encapsulates how batshit insane that...
This is a bit of an aside to the topic at hand but I can't help but mention it. The Tom Cotton op-ed that you linked to is seared in my memory of 2020 and encapsulates how batshit insane that summer was. Looking back on it, it sometimes feels like a fever dream, where every aspect of society was in tumult and it felt like the future could go any which way. I remember reading that op-ed when it came out and could not believe that a sitting US senator was supporting using the US military on a massive scale to quell domestic unrest, and that the New York Times had published it. At the time it made me extremely uneasy and definitely anxious going in to that fall.
You point out exactly why The New York Times should obviously publish the piece: We may not like it, but it is imperative that these politically mainstream views that are represented in our...
You point out exactly why The New York Times should obviously publish the piece:
I remember reading that op-ed when it came out and could not believe that a sitting US senator was supporting using the US military on a massive scale to quell domestic unrest
We may not like it, but it is imperative that these politically mainstream views that are represented in our highest levels of government are reported on and published. Because that's what they are.
And reporting on them is the only way they and their movement can be dealt with in the public debate.
I think the linked piece points out massive and glaring issues with the NYT and how the politics of its employees are ensuring worse coverage for all readers. I'd go so far as to say it's very dangerous.
We cannot ignore that these extreme views are held by a large fraction of politicians and voters. They cannot be ridiculed or ignored away. They need to be dealt with through responsible reporting with adequate context.
These voters cannot and should not be shamed, but they and their views should be taken very, very seriously. And argued against over and over and over until we find ways of dealing with them so that their following drastically diminishes.
No one was demanding that the NYT censor its reporting of contrasting views - there was plenty of coverage on the news side. It's possible to report on contrary views without publishing them at...
No one was demanding that the NYT censor its reporting of contrasting views - there was plenty of coverage on the news side.
It's possible to report on contrary views without publishing them at length, verbatim, without context or fact-checking, which is how Bennet's subordinate insisted on presenting Cotton's op-ed. In fact, Bennet's piece indicates that Rubenstein collaborated with Cotton in toning down the op-ed's writing for palatability to the NYT audience and compliance with NYT editorial standards. This is literal platforming - a safe space was granted for unopposed presentation of a heinously violent, legally and factually unjustified position held by an establishment politician, larded with inflammatory assertions later found to be untrue. It's not excessive to call this work propaganda, given the context of ongoing protests and the Trump administration's demonstrated interest in a pretext for abusing its power.
I definitely agree with you that it is possible to report Cotton’s views without giving him a platform to spread his views. I think the NYTtimes failed to uphold its journalistic standards and...
I definitely agree with you that it is possible to report Cotton’s views without giving him a platform to spread his views.
I think the NYTtimes failed to uphold its journalistic standards and values by publishing Cotton’s op-ed as it was. It's not a matter of presenting a diversity of views, but of enabling a dangerous and authoritarian agenda.
I reckon a better approach would have been to emulate the Economist's approach with op-eds. They invited John Mearsheimer, who basically claims Russia's war in Ukraine is the fault of the West, to write a guest essay in 2022. Even though the Economist is staunchly against that assertion, they published the piece in its entirety.
However, the Economist also published a separate response by Sir Adam Roberts, who disagreed with Mearsheimer’s view, and invited their readers to share their opinions. That’s how you foster informed and respectful debate, not by platforming Cotton’s op-ed without any scrutiny or balance.
In regard to NYTimes' Cotton op-ed, they needed to make clear that this piece is a guest essay that does not reflect NYTimes' viewpoints. Don't work with him to 'sanewash' his message for NYTimes readers; instead, publish his actual views verbatim. Then, subsequently publish separate pieces that challenge or analyse his argument. This way, his unadulterated views are accurately reported on, alongside with the appropriate context that addresses his inaccurate and unfair assertations.
To make sure I understand: Are you saying that a publication should publish an op-ed from an establishment politician that has been fact-checked and properly edited to meet its editorial standards...
To make sure I understand:
Are you saying that a publication should publish an op-ed from an establishment politician that has been fact-checked and properly edited to meet its editorial standards due to the content of the politics in what the politician writes?
I would only want to deplatform people for breaking that platform's rules, not for their political opinions.
The primary source of Cotton has value. He's saying out loud what clearly is a terrible, but existing view politicians in office hold.
I think Bennet rightly points out massive issues with the NYT newsroom's coverage of the piece and how it was clearly mischaracterized and misrepresented. A NYT reader would only know this as the NYT published the original piece.
Otherwise the strawmanned caricature would be the only thing the readers were served by the NYT directly. That would be bad. And we clearly cannot trust the NYT to fairly represent what others write, even when that's subsequently corrected, in the case of the Cotton piece here at least.
An op-ed is also not verbatim in the contributor's words. A publication like the NYT that is selective in what it publishes, will edit for length, content, facts, errors, language, clarity and so on.
This is how Bennet describes the process pre-publication:
He and three other editors of varying ages, genders and races had helped edit it; it had been fact-checked, as is all our work.
Bennet also clearly acknowledges that the fact-checking in this instance was not good enough. As he writes:
Most of the union’s assertions were wrong, but in going back over the piece the fact-checker did find a minor error. Cotton had accidentally left some words from a legal opinion in quotation marks that he should have put in his own voice. Dao also dutifully itemised language that we might have softened, and said the headline, “Send in the Troops” should in retrospect have been made more palatable, if duller.
I think you're bang on the money in relation to how wrong it is to go far in making a politician's extreme views worded to be more palatable. That's not for the press to do, outside publishing content within their editorial guidelines.
I doubt these changes would have mattered, and to extract this list from Dao was to engage in precisely the hypocrisy I claimed to despise – that, in fact, I do despise. If Cotton needed to be held to such standards of politesse, so did everyone else. Headlines such as “Tom Cotton’s Fascist Op-ed”, the headline of a subsequent piece, should also have been tranquillised.
I strongly agree with this. I've been a daily reader of the NYT since circa 2016, and there has been a palpable shift in their coverage since Dean Baquet (previous executive editor) was replaced....
I strongly agree with this. I've been a daily reader of the NYT since circa 2016, and there has been a palpable shift in their coverage since Dean Baquet (previous executive editor) was replaced. By and large, their best reporters are still there doing fantastic investigative journalism around the world. My main issue is the daily front page headings often feel like "The economy is the best it has even better! Here's why that's bad for Joe Biden..." Reality has a well known liberal bias, so trying too hard to counteract that and appear unbiased can be awkward. It's hard to thread the needle between reporting the facts, providing sufficient context, and deciding what to write about.
Aside from the current state of the NYT, I don't love the "resist lib" slant that many publications have taken where they just can't stop talking about Trump, but it's important to report on politicians. George Santos somehow winning election and never being thoroughly vetted was a serious blunder. Though maybe that's more of a story about the decline of local news coverage. Social media can't truly replace investigative journalism.
I think this is exaggerating the stakes. I don't think it was terrible that the New York Times published the op-ed, and I don't think it would be terrible if they didn't. There are other options,...
I think this is exaggerating the stakes. I don't think it was terrible that the New York Times published the op-ed, and I don't think it would be terrible if they didn't. There are other options, like quoting or linking to an article published elsewhere, or writing about a speech that the senator gave.
Also, I haven't read it in years, but I'm doubtful that you can get a good idea of the range of views in the US by reading the New York Times op-ed page? A news site can link to articles published anywhere on the Internet. They should cover interesting stuff regardless of where it's published.
I didn't get that from the piece at all. He argues that the press tradition of clear separation of opinion-giving columnists from news reporters should be maintained. To ensure that journalists...
Bennet makes an implicit claim that it is possible to segregate objective news from subjective opinion.
I didn't get that from the piece at all. He argues that the press tradition of clear separation of opinion-giving columnists from news reporters should be maintained. To ensure that journalists don't have skin in the game when reporting on basic events, subsequently to give their opinions on them.
Secondly, the implicit argument in the piece relating to these issues deals with how the whole idea of edited press means you have someone who edits. That editing should follow clear guidelines and ideals that readers are aware of, like NYT standards. Bennet argues that the NYT has veered far from the expressed standards, and that creates huge bias issues. Not just in the final product readers are exposed to, but that it creates and insular, limited view within the reporting body and no strong enough exchange of competing ideas/counterpoints to ensure reporting holds the highest standard.
Thirdly, Bennet argues that the opinion-slant within the NYT newsroom (and NYT's commentariat) means important political stories simply aren't being reported on adequately. That views like Cotton's shouldn't be silenced or ignored because they're a part of political reality. NYT's reporting is worse because only parts of what's going on in US politics is being reported, Bennet argues,
Fourthly, Bennet seems to argue (somewhat implicitly) that the lack of context in reporting leads the NYT newsroom to give wrongful explanations and analysis of what is happening, why it's happening and what sublayers are going on. US politics is a lot more about related issues, getting attention for ideological issues and riling up potential voters than the actual text of suggested laws and other official political business in elected bodies.
The large issue Bennet points to in the newsroom isn't unfactual reporting, but editorial slant making the reporting less useful, especially as many simply won't find the stories they think are most important, and that other medias perceived to have a different political slant have. Essentially, the news landscape is too fractured.
This fourth area leads many to believe the NYT is simply getting its reporting wrong, are biased or untrustworthy. Although it's not spelled out, public trust in the mainstream media is essential for any democracy to function.
Without trust in reporting and a strong, fact-based public debate where a large majority acknowledges that those of differing views also want the best for their society, the very foundations of democracy are being negatively impacted and become less useful. There's no trust in the system working, or the best ideas winning voters in the marketplace of ideas.
The NYT i sclearly a left-wing publication in US terms, even though many will deride that as reality "having a left-wing bias", and other social media slogans. That's due to story selection, what views and opinions get coverage and how that coverage is presented, and the editing of the newsroom.
You write:
He asserts that the progressive bias of the NYT newsroom preferences justice at the expense of objective truth, and that there is illiberalism at work in denying conservatives voice and opportunity for assessment of their truth claims.
I don't think Bennet is about objective truth. This paragraph stuck out to me:
This last fact was of particular concern to the elder Sulzberger. He told me the Times needed more conservative voices, and that its own editorial line had become predictably left-wing. “Too many liberals,” read my notes about the Opinion line-up from a meeting I had with him and Mark Thompson, then the chief executive, as I was preparing to rejoin the paper. “Even conservatives are liberals’ idea of a conservative.” The last note I took from that meeting was: “Can’t ignore 150m conservative Americans.”
I think it's bang on the money. As you summarize,
I'm not a journalist, just a long-time consumer of the product with my own biases.
Herein lies the issue Bennet is getting at, but doesn't manage to clearly state. The text is about too many things, and isn't structured to conclude in the different thematic areas.
To me Bennet's issue on facts/slant seems to be this:
His whole issue is that the NYT shouldn't only be for those of one political view (and that this is a huge problem for US politics/media overall), but that the NYT should be a place for everyone.
As Bennet writes:
If Opinion published a wider range of views, it would help frame a set of shared arguments that corresponded to, and drew upon, the set of shared facts coming from the newsroom. On the right and left, America’s elites now talk within their tribes, and get angry or contemptuous on those occasions when they happen to overhear the other conclave. If they could be coaxed to agree what they were arguing about, and the rules by which they would argue about it, opinion journalism could serve a foundational need of the democracy by fostering diverse and inclusive debate. Who could be against that?
Out of naivety or arrogance, I was slow to recognise that at the Times, unlike at the Atlantic, these values were no longer universally accepted, let alone esteemed.
And that's a very real and important problem. I think he's right.
I don't see the issue in presenting conservative opinions, as long as all factual claims are fact-checked ("contextualizing" is a different question). There's a question of what balance there...
I don't see the issue in presenting conservative opinions, as long as all factual claims are fact-checked ("contextualizing" is a different question). There's a question of what balance there should be between Democrats and Republicans, and I'd say that any newspaper/magazine interested in giving neutral coverage of the issues (plenty don't, which is fine) should represent voices roughly based on the amount of cachet the individual has with the voting public.
Side note: I think it's a decent litmus test is to see if someone can at least strawman steelman conservatism. It's fine to have a strong conviction of what makes more or less sense, but I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who is out to paint the very concept of conservatism as evil (not conservatism as it exists today or the American flavor of conservatism, but the basic platonic notion of political conservatism). (I'm not sure why so many fall into this camp in the US specifically. I'm guessing it has to do with what is perceived as conservatives being on the wrong side of history every step of the way. Though, John Adams is widely considered a conservative and was on the right of side of slavery compared to Jefferson; Lincoln was also a Whig (a generally conservative party) and at one point described the Republican party as decidedly a conservative party—on the whole, he could probably be best described as what was then known as a liberal conservative. So, I'm not sure if this is a historically accurate argument. Intensely liberal readers who look at history seem to too often shift the goal post of what is liberal and conservative to include all good and evil respectively.)
One of the reasons why I hate the terms liberal and conservative is that they effectively don’t have meaning. You talk about a concept of conservatism, but there isn’t actually such a thing - just...
One of the reasons why I hate the terms liberal and conservative is that they effectively don’t have meaning. You talk about a concept of conservatism, but there isn’t actually such a thing - just as there is no real philosophy of liberalism either. They are too vague and nebulous, and mean different things to diffeeent people and change depending on the context. There is no coherency; it’s just feeling. And so people who consider themselves to be one or the other will not be convinced to switch sides based on logical arguments.
However flawed, the Political Compass is still a useful tool in describing what we're really talking about, instead of whatever "liberal" and "conservative" are parsed to in current political...
However flawed, the Political Compass is still a useful tool in describing what we're really talking about, instead of whatever "liberal" and "conservative" are parsed to in current political discourse. I'd assert that there's a missed foreign policy axis (isolationist vs interventionist), and there's no shortage of other models. But for purposes of determining fair coverage, we can talk about economic or personal liberties against various regimes of restriction.
For clarity's sake, it's not accurate to call today's Republican Party "conservative" - properly speaking, it's reactionary. It demands authoritarian power to roll back previously granted personal freedoms (freedom from persecution on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin; freedom from undue deprivation, environmental poisons and destruction of the natural world, unsafe products, and exploitation in employment; and freedom to vote, control one's own person, marry, divorce, constitute a family...), and expand economic freedom for the wealthy. There may be rational arguments and facts in support of these positions, depending on whose interests are under consideration. However, there's substantial historical evidence that the outcomes of these reactionary policies are bad for the vast majority of citizens, for the national economy and the world in general, and there's no honest way to present the facts otherwise.
A newspaper can present evidence as to whether an individual politician or public servant has violated existing laws, whether their acts are in conflict with their stated positions, and what evidence there is for or against a defined policy. But presenting opinion without context or doing factual analysis offers the public nothing but amplification of unsubstantiated claims.
A fundamental problem with the GOP, IMO, is that the Democrats already have their own in-house conservative wing which makes much of the GOP redundant. Conservative Democrats seriously need to...
A fundamental problem with the GOP, IMO, is that the Democrats already have their own in-house conservative wing which makes much of the GOP redundant. Conservative Democrats seriously need to switch parties to allow Democrats to pursue a solidly left vision and to dilute the "reactionary" elements of the GOP.
Here's the thing though: Conservatism is, at best, a force for maintaining the status quo. "Things are fine now, we shouldn't change them because they are fine." It is a philosophy born,...
Here's the thing though: Conservatism is, at best, a force for maintaining the status quo. "Things are fine now, we shouldn't change them because they are fine."
It is a philosophy born, charitably, from a position of comfort, justice, and privilege. Let's look at the greatest hits from the wikipedia page:
The conservatism that prevailed in the Thirteen Colonies before 1776 was of a very different character than the conservatism that emerged based on revolutionary principles. This old conservatism centered on a landed elite and on an urban merchant class that was Loyalist during the Revolution. In Virginia, the largest, richest and most influential of the American colonies, conservatives held full control of the colonial and local governments. At the local level, Church of England parishes handled many local affairs, and they in turn were controlled not by the minister, but rather by a closed circle of rich landowners who comprised the parish vestry.
Intellectually, Federalists, while devoted to liberty, held profoundly conservative views attuned to the American character. As Samuel Eliot Morison explained, they believed that liberty is inseparable from union, that men are essentially unequal, that vox populi [voice of the people] is seldom if ever vox Dei [the voice of God], and that sinister outside influences were busy undermining American integrity.
By the 1830s, the Whig Party emerged as the national conservative party. Whigs supported the national bank, private business interests, and the modernization of the economy in opposition to Jacksonian democracy, which represented the interests of poor farmers and the urban working class, represented by the newly formed Democratic Party. They chose the name "Whig" because it had been used by patriots in the Revolution.
Ok, that's enough. I'm not even to the civil war. The point is that conservatives, at their core, are a party of the upper class doing whatever it takes to improve their standing, justice and other classes be damned. They lean heavily into religion and nationalism, using them as tools to sway others to their interests.
Labor movements are never spearheaded by conservatives. Neither are voting rights movements. Nor are fights for ending discrimination. Those are people fighting to attain comfort or justice. The conservatives fight this, tooth and nail...because it threatens their comfort.
Not to say there isn't room for conservative and liberal philosophy to intermingle. But it's very much a yin and yang, and proudly declaring oneself a conservative really raises a a lot of questions about moral values that declaring oneself a liberal does not.
I think I remember a quote somewhere: Conservatives, more than anything, believe that some people are better able to govern than others. And that view is antithetical to the building and strengthening of democracy.
If you look at the UK, a decent argument can be made that the Tories cared slightly more about the poor than the Liberal party (look at Disraeli or the difference in how the Tories and Liberals...
If you look at the UK, a decent argument can be made that the Tories cared slightly more about the poor than the Liberal party (look at Disraeli or the difference in how the Tories and Liberals treated Ireland during the Potato Famine--obviously labour movements will represent working class interests better, but I don't think you can take it as given that classical conservatives favor the elite while classical liberals favor the working class. Take a look at John Adams' concern about the emergence of an oligarchy in place of strong state institutions. You also can't ignore that in the American context, the working class populists often in conflict with the Whigs in the pre-Civil War era saw slavery as a form of social mobility for white men.) Also, look at "Red Toryism" and "Progressive Conservatism" in Canada.
Could you explain what you mean by this (perhaps by adding a clarification in your original post)? I think it would be helpful to pin down exactly what you mean by this to avoid people talking...
not conservatism as it exists today or the American flavor of conservatism, but the basic platonic notion of political conservatism
Could you explain what you mean by this (perhaps by adding a clarification in your original post)? I think it would be helpful to pin down exactly what you mean by this to avoid people talking past each other.
Intensely liberal readers who look at history seem to too often shift the goal post of what is liberal and conservative to include all good and evil respectively.)
Could this just be that ideas change over time? If conservatism suffers from status quo bias (which I believe it does) then it is quite natural that over time it seems quite antiquated.
and at one point described the Republican party as decidedly a conservative party
In the context of the abolilitionist movement, Lincoln was conservative, but perhaps not as much in the scheme of the US at the time. Tradition is a powerful rhetorical tool, and even the most radical of protest movements can find it very powerful to claim to be on the side that is "natural". It can be politically salient to claim to be a "moderate" option (even when you aren't) to try to shift the Overton window.
That was long, but I finally finished it. I thought he made some very good points, and as someone who's both a subscriber and daily reader of the Times and wishes they were not so biased, I...
That was long, but I finally finished it. I thought he made some very good points, and as someone who's both a subscriber and daily reader of the Times and wishes they were not so biased, I appreciated hearing an insider's take.
I pulled out some of the sections that spoke to me the most in case others don't have the time to read the full thing:
Don’t get me wrong. Most journalism obviously doesn’t require anything like the bravery expected of a soldier, police officer or protester. But far more than when I set out to become a journalist, doing the work right today demands a particular kind of courage: not just the devil-may-care courage to choose a profession on the brink of the abyss; not just the bulldog courage to endlessly pick yourself up and embrace the ever-evolving technology; but also, in an era when polarisation and social media viciously enforce rigid orthodoxies, the moral and intellectual courage to take the other side seriously and to report truths and ideas that your own side demonises for fear they will harm its cause.
One of the glories of embracing illiberalism is that, like Trump, you are always right about everything, and so you are justified in shouting disagreement down. In the face of this, leaders of many workplaces and boardrooms across America find that it is so much easier to compromise than to confront – to give a little ground today in the belief you can ultimately bring people around. This is how reasonable Republican leaders lost control of their party to Trump and how liberal-minded college presidents lost control of their campuses. And it is why the leadership of the New York Times is losing control of its principles.
As the number of subscribers ballooned, the marketing department tracked their expectations, and came to a nuanced conclusion. More than 95% of Times subscribers described themselves as Democrats or independents, and a vast majority of them believed the Times was also liberal. A similar majority applauded that bias; it had become “a selling point”, reported one internal marketing memo. Yet at the same time, the marketers concluded, subscribers wanted to believe that the Times was independent.
When you think about it, this contradiction resolves itself easily. It is human nature to want to see your bias confirmed; however, it is also human nature to want to be reassured that your bias is not just a bias, but is endorsed by journalism that is “fair and balanced”, as a certain Murdoch-owned cable-news network used to put it. As that memo argued, even if the Times was seen as politically to the left, it was critical to its brand also to be seen as broadening its readers’ horizons, and that required “a perception of independence”.
Perception is one thing, and actual independence another. Readers could cancel their subscriptions if the Times challenged their worldview by reporting the truth without regard to politics. As a result, the Times’s long-term civic value was coming into conflict with the paper’s short-term shareholder value. As the cable networks have shown, you can build a decent business by appealing to the millions of Americans who comprise one of the partisan tribes of the electorate. The Times has every right to pursue the commercial strategy that makes it the most money. But leaning into a partisan audience creates a powerful dynamic. Nobody warned the new subscribers to the Times that it might disappoint them by reporting truths that conflicted with their expectations. When your product is “independent journalism”, that commercial strategy is tricky, because too much independence might alienate your audience, while too little can lead to charges of hypocrisy that strike at the heart of the brand.
It matters that conflicting views do not just appear before different audiences in politically rivalrous publications or cable news networks, but instead in the same forum, before the same readers, subject to the same standards for fact and argumentation. That is also, by the way, an important means by which politicians, like Cotton, can learn, by speaking to audiences who are not inclined to nod along with them. That was our ambition for Times Opinion – or mine, I guess. Americans can shout about their lack of free speech all they want, but they will never be able to overcome their differences, and deal with any of their real problems, if they do not learn to listen to each other again.
The Times’s failure to honour its own stated principles of openness to a range of views was particularly hard on the handful of conservative writers, some of whom would complain about being flyspecked and abused by colleagues. One day when I relayed a conservative’s concern about double standards to Sulzberger, he lost his patience. He told me to inform the complaining conservative that that’s just how it was: there was a double standard and he should get used to it. A publication that promises its readers to stand apart from politics should not have different standards for different writers based on their politics. But I delivered the message. There are many things I regret about my tenure as editorial-page editor. That is the only act of which I am ashamed.
I did not hear from Sulzberger, but the speechwriter who drafted many of his remarks, Alex Levy, contacted me just before the meeting began to tell me to use whatever question I got first to apologise, and at some point to acknowledge my privilege.
A Zoom call with a couple of thousand people is a disorienting experience, particularly when many of them are not particularly mindful of your “full humanity”. I do not recommend it. As my first turn to speak came up, I was still struggling with what I should apologise for. I was not going to apologise for denying my colleagues’ humanity or endangering their lives. I had not done those things. I was not going to apologise for publishing the op-ed. Finally, I came up with something that felt true. I told the meeting that I was sorry for the pain that my leadership of Opinion had caused. What a pathetic thing to say. I did not think to add, because I’d lost track of this truth myself by then, that opinion journalism that never causes pain is not journalism. It can’t hope to move society forward.
As he asserts the independence of Times journalism, Sulzberger is finding it necessary to reach back several years to another piece I chose to run, for proof that the Times remains willing to publish views that might offend its staff. “We’ve published a column by the head of the part of the Taliban that kidnapped one of our own journalists,” he told the New Yorker. He is missing the real lesson of that piece, as well.
That op-ed was a tough editorial call. It troubles my conscience as publishing Tom Cotton never has. But the reason is not that the writer, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the deputy leader of the Taliban, kidnapped a Times reporter (David Rohde, now of nbc, with whom I covered the Israeli siege of Jenin on the West Bank 20 years ago; he would never be afraid of an op-ed). The case against that piece is that Haqqani, who remains on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list, may have killed Americans. It’s puzzling: in what moral universe can it be a point of pride to publish a piece by an enemy who may have American blood on his hands, and a matter of shame to publish a piece by an American senator arguing for American troops to protect Americans?
As Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, said on the Senate floor about the Times’s panic over the Cotton op-ed, listing some other debatable op-ed choices, “Vladimir Putin? No problem. Iranian propaganda? Sure. But nothing, nothing could have prepared them for 800 words from the junior senator from Arkansas.” The Times’s staff members are not often troubled by obnoxious views when they are held by foreigners. This is an important reason the paper’s foreign coverage, at least of some regions, remains exceptional. It is relatively safe from internal censure. Less than four months after I was pushed out, my former department published a shocking op-ed praising China’s military crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong. I would not have published that essay, which, unlike Cotton’s op-ed, actually did celebrate crushing democratic protest. But there was no internal uproar.
This essay has a great deal to unpack about the status of journalism in the 2020's.
Bennet is rather petulant about his dismissal for the publication of an inflammatory op-ed essay from an established hard-line pro-Trump senator, in the midst of the protests over the death of George Floyd. It's worth reading the subsequently added prefix to that op-ed, explaining why it should have been fact-checked and edited more closely.
Bennet has fair criticism that the process of his firing depended too much on hasty capitulation to a staff Slack dogpile. But the philosophical problem of the "view from nowhere" in journalism remains at the heart of rebutting his claims.
Bennet makes an implicit claim that it is possible to segregate objective news from subjective opinion. He asserts that the progressive bias of the NYT newsroom preferences justice at the expense of objective truth, and that there is illiberalism at work in denying conservatives voice and opportunity for assessment of their truth claims.
There is merit to the argument that news and opinion are increasingly indistinguishable, and that this is problematic. Bennet did not, however, insist on the importance of fact-checking in the Opinion section, regardless of his claims of subjective bias entering the News department.
There's a worthy interview with Mark Jacobs, a former Chicago Tribune editor, on why simply publishing equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans is a disservice to readers.
It's been discussed elsewhere why the New York Times' efforts at the "balance" Bennet prefers only amplify controversy and cloud facts when there's a clear preponderance of evidence on one side, and real harm from not taking a position.
While Bennet begins with his bonafides in on-the-ground journalism, he neglects that the choice of stories to report has always entailed opportunities for bias. As Mark Jacobs noted, reporting quotes is not journalism. If Bennet is so concerned about the missing view from outside a coddled, insular newsroom, why is promotion of conservative political viewpoints in the Opinion pages more important than the real investigative work the Times is finally doing on inequality, rural poverty, environmental degradation, political corruption, addiction, housing, joblessness, declining life expectancy, and other "flyover country" issues that mainstream Democratic policies have historically neglected?
</set rant=off>
I'm not a journalist, just a long-time consumer of the product with my own biases. Feel free to discuss with more information or opinion below.
This is a bit of an aside to the topic at hand but I can't help but mention it. The Tom Cotton op-ed that you linked to is seared in my memory of 2020 and encapsulates how batshit insane that summer was. Looking back on it, it sometimes feels like a fever dream, where every aspect of society was in tumult and it felt like the future could go any which way. I remember reading that op-ed when it came out and could not believe that a sitting US senator was supporting using the US military on a massive scale to quell domestic unrest, and that the New York Times had published it. At the time it made me extremely uneasy and definitely anxious going in to that fall.
You point out exactly why The New York Times should obviously publish the piece:
We may not like it, but it is imperative that these politically mainstream views that are represented in our highest levels of government are reported on and published. Because that's what they are.
And reporting on them is the only way they and their movement can be dealt with in the public debate.
I think the linked piece points out massive and glaring issues with the NYT and how the politics of its employees are ensuring worse coverage for all readers. I'd go so far as to say it's very dangerous.
We cannot ignore that these extreme views are held by a large fraction of politicians and voters. They cannot be ridiculed or ignored away. They need to be dealt with through responsible reporting with adequate context.
These voters cannot and should not be shamed, but they and their views should be taken very, very seriously. And argued against over and over and over until we find ways of dealing with them so that their following drastically diminishes.
Before it's too late.
No one was demanding that the NYT censor its reporting of contrasting views - there was plenty of coverage on the news side.
It's possible to report on contrary views without publishing them at length, verbatim, without context or fact-checking, which is how Bennet's subordinate insisted on presenting Cotton's op-ed. In fact, Bennet's piece indicates that Rubenstein collaborated with Cotton in toning down the op-ed's writing for palatability to the NYT audience and compliance with NYT editorial standards. This is literal platforming - a safe space was granted for unopposed presentation of a heinously violent, legally and factually unjustified position held by an establishment politician, larded with inflammatory assertions later found to be untrue. It's not excessive to call this work propaganda, given the context of ongoing protests and the Trump administration's demonstrated interest in a pretext for abusing its power.
I definitely agree with you that it is possible to report Cotton’s views without giving him a platform to spread his views.
I think the NYTtimes failed to uphold its journalistic standards and values by publishing Cotton’s op-ed as it was. It's not a matter of presenting a diversity of views, but of enabling a dangerous and authoritarian agenda.
I reckon a better approach would have been to emulate the Economist's approach with op-eds. They invited John Mearsheimer, who basically claims Russia's war in Ukraine is the fault of the West, to write a guest essay in 2022. Even though the Economist is staunchly against that assertion, they published the piece in its entirety.
However, the Economist also published a separate response by Sir Adam Roberts, who disagreed with Mearsheimer’s view, and invited their readers to share their opinions. That’s how you foster informed and respectful debate, not by platforming Cotton’s op-ed without any scrutiny or balance.
In regard to NYTimes' Cotton op-ed, they needed to make clear that this piece is a guest essay that does not reflect NYTimes' viewpoints. Don't work with him to 'sanewash' his message for NYTimes readers; instead, publish his actual views verbatim. Then, subsequently publish separate pieces that challenge or analyse his argument. This way, his unadulterated views are accurately reported on, alongside with the appropriate context that addresses his inaccurate and unfair assertations.
To make sure I understand:
Are you saying that a publication should publish an op-ed from an establishment politician that has been fact-checked and properly edited to meet its editorial standards due to the content of the politics in what the politician writes?
I would only want to deplatform people for breaking that platform's rules, not for their political opinions.
The primary source of Cotton has value. He's saying out loud what clearly is a terrible, but existing view politicians in office hold.
I think Bennet rightly points out massive issues with the NYT newsroom's coverage of the piece and how it was clearly mischaracterized and misrepresented. A NYT reader would only know this as the NYT published the original piece.
Otherwise the strawmanned caricature would be the only thing the readers were served by the NYT directly. That would be bad. And we clearly cannot trust the NYT to fairly represent what others write, even when that's subsequently corrected, in the case of the Cotton piece here at least.
An op-ed is also not verbatim in the contributor's words. A publication like the NYT that is selective in what it publishes, will edit for length, content, facts, errors, language, clarity and so on.
This is how Bennet describes the process pre-publication:
Bennet also clearly acknowledges that the fact-checking in this instance was not good enough. As he writes:
I think you're bang on the money in relation to how wrong it is to go far in making a politician's extreme views worded to be more palatable. That's not for the press to do, outside publishing content within their editorial guidelines.
I strongly agree with this. I've been a daily reader of the NYT since circa 2016, and there has been a palpable shift in their coverage since Dean Baquet (previous executive editor) was replaced. By and large, their best reporters are still there doing fantastic investigative journalism around the world. My main issue is the daily front page headings often feel like "The economy is the best it has even better! Here's why that's bad for Joe Biden..." Reality has a well known liberal bias, so trying too hard to counteract that and appear unbiased can be awkward. It's hard to thread the needle between reporting the facts, providing sufficient context, and deciding what to write about.
Aside from the current state of the NYT, I don't love the "resist lib" slant that many publications have taken where they just can't stop talking about Trump, but it's important to report on politicians. George Santos somehow winning election and never being thoroughly vetted was a serious blunder. Though maybe that's more of a story about the decline of local news coverage. Social media can't truly replace investigative journalism.
I think this is exaggerating the stakes. I don't think it was terrible that the New York Times published the op-ed, and I don't think it would be terrible if they didn't. There are other options, like quoting or linking to an article published elsewhere, or writing about a speech that the senator gave.
Also, I haven't read it in years, but I'm doubtful that you can get a good idea of the range of views in the US by reading the New York Times op-ed page? A news site can link to articles published anywhere on the Internet. They should cover interesting stuff regardless of where it's published.
I didn't get that from the piece at all. He argues that the press tradition of clear separation of opinion-giving columnists from news reporters should be maintained. To ensure that journalists don't have skin in the game when reporting on basic events, subsequently to give their opinions on them.
Secondly, the implicit argument in the piece relating to these issues deals with how the whole idea of edited press means you have someone who edits. That editing should follow clear guidelines and ideals that readers are aware of, like NYT standards. Bennet argues that the NYT has veered far from the expressed standards, and that creates huge bias issues. Not just in the final product readers are exposed to, but that it creates and insular, limited view within the reporting body and no strong enough exchange of competing ideas/counterpoints to ensure reporting holds the highest standard.
Thirdly, Bennet argues that the opinion-slant within the NYT newsroom (and NYT's commentariat) means important political stories simply aren't being reported on adequately. That views like Cotton's shouldn't be silenced or ignored because they're a part of political reality. NYT's reporting is worse because only parts of what's going on in US politics is being reported, Bennet argues,
Fourthly, Bennet seems to argue (somewhat implicitly) that the lack of context in reporting leads the NYT newsroom to give wrongful explanations and analysis of what is happening, why it's happening and what sublayers are going on. US politics is a lot more about related issues, getting attention for ideological issues and riling up potential voters than the actual text of suggested laws and other official political business in elected bodies.
The large issue Bennet points to in the newsroom isn't unfactual reporting, but editorial slant making the reporting less useful, especially as many simply won't find the stories they think are most important, and that other medias perceived to have a different political slant have. Essentially, the news landscape is too fractured.
This fourth area leads many to believe the NYT is simply getting its reporting wrong, are biased or untrustworthy. Although it's not spelled out, public trust in the mainstream media is essential for any democracy to function.
Without trust in reporting and a strong, fact-based public debate where a large majority acknowledges that those of differing views also want the best for their society, the very foundations of democracy are being negatively impacted and become less useful. There's no trust in the system working, or the best ideas winning voters in the marketplace of ideas.
The NYT i sclearly a left-wing publication in US terms, even though many will deride that as reality "having a left-wing bias", and other social media slogans. That's due to story selection, what views and opinions get coverage and how that coverage is presented, and the editing of the newsroom.
You write:
I don't think Bennet is about objective truth. This paragraph stuck out to me:
I think it's bang on the money. As you summarize,
Herein lies the issue Bennet is getting at, but doesn't manage to clearly state. The text is about too many things, and isn't structured to conclude in the different thematic areas.
To me Bennet's issue on facts/slant seems to be this:
As Bennet writes:
And that's a very real and important problem. I think he's right.
I don't see the issue in presenting conservative opinions, as long as all factual claims are fact-checked ("contextualizing" is a different question). There's a question of what balance there should be between Democrats and Republicans, and I'd say that any newspaper/magazine interested in giving neutral coverage of the issues (plenty don't, which is fine) should represent voices roughly based on the amount of cachet the individual has with the voting public.
Side note: I think it's a decent litmus test is to see if someone can at least
strawmansteelman conservatism. It's fine to have a strong conviction of what makes more or less sense, but I have a hard time taking seriously anyone who is out to paint the very concept of conservatism as evil (not conservatism as it exists today or the American flavor of conservatism, but the basic platonic notion of political conservatism). (I'm not sure why so many fall into this camp in the US specifically. I'm guessing it has to do with what is perceived as conservatives being on the wrong side of history every step of the way. Though, John Adams is widely considered a conservative and was on the right of side of slavery compared to Jefferson; Lincoln was also a Whig (a generally conservative party) and at one point described the Republican party as decidedly a conservative party—on the whole, he could probably be best described as what was then known as a liberal conservative. So, I'm not sure if this is a historically accurate argument. Intensely liberal readers who look at history seem to too often shift the goal post of what is liberal and conservative to include all good and evil respectively.)One of the reasons why I hate the terms liberal and conservative is that they effectively don’t have meaning. You talk about a concept of conservatism, but there isn’t actually such a thing - just as there is no real philosophy of liberalism either. They are too vague and nebulous, and mean different things to diffeeent people and change depending on the context. There is no coherency; it’s just feeling. And so people who consider themselves to be one or the other will not be convinced to switch sides based on logical arguments.
However flawed, the Political Compass is still a useful tool in describing what we're really talking about, instead of whatever "liberal" and "conservative" are parsed to in current political discourse. I'd assert that there's a missed foreign policy axis (isolationist vs interventionist), and there's no shortage of other models. But for purposes of determining fair coverage, we can talk about economic or personal liberties against various regimes of restriction.
For clarity's sake, it's not accurate to call today's Republican Party "conservative" - properly speaking, it's reactionary. It demands authoritarian power to roll back previously granted personal freedoms (freedom from persecution on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin; freedom from undue deprivation, environmental poisons and destruction of the natural world, unsafe products, and exploitation in employment; and freedom to vote, control one's own person, marry, divorce, constitute a family...), and expand economic freedom for the wealthy. There may be rational arguments and facts in support of these positions, depending on whose interests are under consideration. However, there's substantial historical evidence that the outcomes of these reactionary policies are bad for the vast majority of citizens, for the national economy and the world in general, and there's no honest way to present the facts otherwise.
A newspaper can present evidence as to whether an individual politician or public servant has violated existing laws, whether their acts are in conflict with their stated positions, and what evidence there is for or against a defined policy. But presenting opinion without context or doing factual analysis offers the public nothing but amplification of unsubstantiated claims.
A fundamental problem with the GOP, IMO, is that the Democrats already have their own in-house conservative wing which makes much of the GOP redundant. Conservative Democrats seriously need to switch parties to allow Democrats to pursue a solidly left vision and to dilute the "reactionary" elements of the GOP.
Here's the thing though: Conservatism is, at best, a force for maintaining the status quo. "Things are fine now, we shouldn't change them because they are fine."
It is a philosophy born, charitably, from a position of comfort, justice, and privilege. Let's look at the greatest hits from the wikipedia page:
The conservatism that prevailed in the Thirteen Colonies before 1776 was of a very different character than the conservatism that emerged based on revolutionary principles. This old conservatism centered on a landed elite and on an urban merchant class that was Loyalist during the Revolution. In Virginia, the largest, richest and most influential of the American colonies, conservatives held full control of the colonial and local governments. At the local level, Church of England parishes handled many local affairs, and they in turn were controlled not by the minister, but rather by a closed circle of rich landowners who comprised the parish vestry.
Intellectually, Federalists, while devoted to liberty, held profoundly conservative views attuned to the American character. As Samuel Eliot Morison explained, they believed that liberty is inseparable from union, that men are essentially unequal, that vox populi [voice of the people] is seldom if ever vox Dei [the voice of God], and that sinister outside influences were busy undermining American integrity.
By the 1830s, the Whig Party emerged as the national conservative party. Whigs supported the national bank, private business interests, and the modernization of the economy in opposition to Jacksonian democracy, which represented the interests of poor farmers and the urban working class, represented by the newly formed Democratic Party. They chose the name "Whig" because it had been used by patriots in the Revolution.
Ok, that's enough. I'm not even to the civil war. The point is that conservatives, at their core, are a party of the upper class doing whatever it takes to improve their standing, justice and other classes be damned. They lean heavily into religion and nationalism, using them as tools to sway others to their interests.
Labor movements are never spearheaded by conservatives. Neither are voting rights movements. Nor are fights for ending discrimination. Those are people fighting to attain comfort or justice. The conservatives fight this, tooth and nail...because it threatens their comfort.
Not to say there isn't room for conservative and liberal philosophy to intermingle. But it's very much a yin and yang, and proudly declaring oneself a conservative really raises a a lot of questions about moral values that declaring oneself a liberal does not.
I think I remember a quote somewhere: Conservatives, more than anything, believe that some people are better able to govern than others. And that view is antithetical to the building and strengthening of democracy.
If you look at the UK, a decent argument can be made that the Tories cared slightly more about the poor than the Liberal party (look at Disraeli or the difference in how the Tories and Liberals treated Ireland during the Potato Famine--obviously labour movements will represent working class interests better, but I don't think you can take it as given that classical conservatives favor the elite while classical liberals favor the working class. Take a look at John Adams' concern about the emergence of an oligarchy in place of strong state institutions. You also can't ignore that in the American context, the working class populists often in conflict with the Whigs in the pre-Civil War era saw slavery as a form of social mobility for white men.) Also, look at "Red Toryism" and "Progressive Conservatism" in Canada.
Did you mean steelman instead of strawman?
Could you explain what you mean by this (perhaps by adding a clarification in your original post)? I think it would be helpful to pin down exactly what you mean by this to avoid people talking past each other.
Could this just be that ideas change over time? If conservatism suffers from status quo bias (which I believe it does) then it is quite natural that over time it seems quite antiquated.
In the context of the abolilitionist movement, Lincoln was conservative, but perhaps not as much in the scheme of the US at the time. Tradition is a powerful rhetorical tool, and even the most radical of protest movements can find it very powerful to claim to be on the side that is "natural". It can be politically salient to claim to be a "moderate" option (even when you aren't) to try to shift the Overton window.
That was long, but I finally finished it. I thought he made some very good points, and as someone who's both a subscriber and daily reader of the Times and wishes they were not so biased, I appreciated hearing an insider's take.
I pulled out some of the sections that spoke to me the most in case others don't have the time to read the full thing: