NY Times capitulates to 'children' triggered by conservative opinion

FPI / June 9, 2020

Editorial page editor James Bennet on Sunday surrendered to the "woke children" who are now seemingly calling the shots at The New York Times, Sen. Tom Cotton said.

Staffers revolted over a June 3 op-ed by Cotton in which the Arkansas Republican argued in favor of using the military to restore order in U.S. cities that were being destroyed by rioters.

A Morning Consult poll found that 58 percent of registered voters supported the idea of sending in the military to quell the fires, looting and violence gripping America's cities.

Cotton said Monday he ultimately faulted the publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, for not standing up to the “woke mob of children at the New York Times who get triggered any time they hear a conservative opinion.”

“Within a day, it turned into something like a struggle session from the cultural revolution in Mao’s China, where the adults had to prostrate themselves and apologize in front of the woke children that apparently now run the New York Times newsroom,” Cotton said on “Fox & Friends.”

He also noted that the newspaper has said it plans to print fewer op-eds in response to the staffers' tantrum.

“They said last week they were going to reduce the number of opinion pieces that they run, so I will say in advance to the world you’re welcome for reducing the amount of left-wing nonsense that you have to read in the New York Times editorial pages,” Cotton said.

The uproar over Cotton's op-ed included black staffers saying that it made them feel unsafe.

David Marcus wrote for the New York Post on June 5 that, the day after Cotton's op-ed ran, "the paper folded like, well, The New York Times, and apologized for it."

Marcus added: "Once, the separation between the news and Opinion page — church and state — at the Times was held up as an exemplar of objectivity in journalism. Now, reporters are dictating what views the paper is and is not allowed to publish.

"Well, opinions of conservatives. If you’re the member of an organization that regularly blows up civilians and keeps women in servitude, come on in!"

Marcus was referencing the Times' decision in February to green-light on op-ed by Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani. No apologies or resignations were reported following Haqqani's piece.

Reason senior editor Robby Soave noted that Bennet's resignation "was an instructive show of force from those Times staffers who want the paper to be more transparently progressive. Their successful strategy — describe their opposition to someone else's speech as a matter of personal safety — is straight out of the woke left's playbook. Dismayingly, we should expect to see this tactic deployed more frequently in the future."

Free Press International