On Sunday, The New York Times announced that their editorial page editor has resigned after blowback erupted because the paper published an op-ed by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton arguing that the government should “send in the troops” as a last resort in response to the wave of riots and looting that swept the country.
The Times had already issued a statement on Thursday saying that they should have never published Cotton’s op-ed. “We’ve examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication,” a spokesperson said. “This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards. As a result, we’re planning to examine both short-term and long-term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reducing the number of Op-Eds we publish.”
The resignation of the editorial page editor triggered Texas GOP senator Ted Cruz to issue a scathing obituary for the paper, writing:
The NYT literally fired their editorial page editor because he dared publish an op-ed that Leftists disagreed with.
The totalitarian Left will brook no dissent. To hell with Free Speech—we are Pravda.
New York Times: founded as an actual newspaper 9/18/1851.
Died: 6/7/2020.
The NYT literally fired their editorial page editor because he dared publish an op-ed that Leftists disagreed with.
The totalitarian Left will brook no dissent. To hell with Free Speech—we are Pravda.
New York Times: founded as an actual newspaper 9/18/1851.
Died: 6/7/2020. https://t.co/YIzBihdhtO
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 8, 2020
The publisher for the Times, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote a memo to the the paper’s staff arguing that the Times’ “essential role” requires “fearless engagement with ideas from across the political spectrum, particularly those we disagree with.”
Sulzberger also stated, “There are also fundamental questions to address about the changing role of opinion journalism in a digital world, and we will begin work to reinvent the op-ed format so that readers understand why we choose to elevate each argument and where it fits in the national debate. None of these changes mark a retreat from The Times’s responsibility to help people understand a range of voices across the breadth of public debate. That role is as important as it’s ever been.”
“We believe deeply in principles of fairness, equality and human rights,” he concluded. “Those values animate both our news report and our opinion report. Thank you for your dedication to helping us to live up to our highest ideals.”
After the Times issued the statement on Thursday saying Cotton’s op-ed should never have been published, Cotton fired back:
I can tell you my op-ed doesn’t meet The New York Times’ standards, it far exceeds their standards, which are normally full of left-wing sophomoric dribble. And I find it amazing that in the last 24 hours, the editor of “The New York Times” and the publisher of “The New York Times” have both defended the decision to publish the op-ed, but in the face of the woke mob of woke kids that are in their news room, they tucked tail and they ran, they confessed and said they were gonna go into reeducation camp and they were gonna cut the number of op-eds they run, and for that I will say to the world, you’re welcome for getting “The New York Times” to run less of the garbage that you normally see in their pages.
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