The New York Times has issued a mea culpa over the paper’s decision to publish an op-ed by the Republican senator Tom Cotton entitled: “Send in the troops”.
The decision to run the piece, which advocated for the deployment of the military against protesters rallying against police brutality toward black Americans, drew widespread criticism. Dozens of Times journalists voiced their opposition, noting that inciting a heavy-handed response to the protests put black journalists, and people of color more broadly, in danger.
Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”.
James Bennet, the newspaper’s editorial page editor, also defended the piece, saying in an essay on Thursday: “Readers who might be inclined to oppose Cotton’s positions need to be fully aware of it, and reckon with it, if they were to defeat it. To me, debating influential ideas openly, rather than letting them go unchallenged, is far more likely to help society reach the right answers.”
But in a remarkable reversal on Thursday evening, the paper issued a statement saying the piece fell short of its editorial standards.
“We’ve examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication,” said Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman. “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 decision follows a substantial backlash by staff members. Many spoke out on Twitter on Wednesday following the initial publication, posting the same message: “Running this puts Black @nytimes staffers in danger.”
“As a black woman, as a journalist, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this,” tweeted Nikole Hannah-Jones, who last month won a Pulitzer prize for her work on The 1619 Project on the legacy of slavery and racial injustice for black Americans.
The New York NewsGuild called the decision to publish Cotton’s piece “an irresponsible choice”, noting that “invoking state violence disproportionately hurts Black and brown people. It also jeopardizes our journalists’ ability to work in the field safely and effectively.”
On Thursday, more than a dozen employees at the Times also called in sick.
In his column, Cotton condemned “nihilist criminals” out for the thrill of destruction and “leftwing radicals” who want to exploit Floyd’s death to create anarchy. “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers,” he wrote.
Cotton’s op-ed also contained the claim that Antifa had “infiltrated marches”, which has been debunked by Times journalists.
The protest at the newspaper came as staff at the Philadelphia Inquirer also called in sick over the newspaper’s decision to use the headline “Buildings Matter, Too” on an architecture article, a choice considered tone deaf and insensitive to the Black Lives Matter movement. The Inquirer has since apologized for a “horribly wrong” decision.
Features reporter Brandon Bell wrote on Twitter that he was calling in “sick and tired” to work on Thursday. Some 30 members, out of a staff of about 210, skipped work for the same reason, a spokesman said.
Bell was among those who distributed an open letter of protest, saying African American journalists were tired of careless mistakes that make it harder to do their jobs and, at worst, put lives at risk.
“We’re tired of shouldering the burden of dragging this 200-year-old institution kicking and screaming into a more equitable age,” the letter read. “We’re tired of being told to show both sides of issues there are no two sides of.”