By Michael Goodwin | New York Post
In a lecture at Hillsdale College last year about the erosion of standards at The New York Times, I borrowed a memorable exchange from Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises.”
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asks. “Two ways,” Mike
responds. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
For the Times, “suddenly” has arrived. Its
standards are now bankrupt.
The revolt of the paper’s newsroom over the publication
of Sen. Tom Cotton’s op-ed and the craven surrender of management marks the
end of any semblance of basic fairness. The gradual metamorphosis of the
Times from a great newspaper into a leftist propaganda sheet is complete.
Stick a fork in the Gray Lady.
Her obituary is a sad day and not just for journalism.
Because the Times is a singularly powerful institution in terms of shaping public
opinion, its cult of conformity is a dark day for America.
Last week’s developments amounted to a hostile takeover
of the paper, as a friend put it. It’s an apt description because the 800
staff members who objected to the publication of Cotton’s support for using the
military to quell the riots declared their hostility to the fundamental
traditions of journalism.
Previous op-ed pieces from American adversaries —
including Vladimir Putin and the Taliban — brought no such staff
complaints. Nor did one from Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the
world leader in locking up journalists. But Tom Cotton, an American senator,
was beyond the pale.
For a day, the climactic battle over his piece was touch
and go, but then the defenders of traditional standards raised the white flag.
Actually, they did something far worse. They
switched sides and attacked the cause they had defended hours earlier.
Publisher Arthur G. Sulzberger said in a statement
Thursday that “I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions,
even those we may disagree with, and this piece was published in that spirit.”
By Friday’s group gripe session, he was calling the same
article “contemptuous” and said it “should not have been published.”
In between, the paper gave him cover to flip-flop by
saying the process leading to publication did not meet the paper’s “standards.”
That’s an Orwellian choice of words because the only
standards at the Times are double standards. Even on the op-ed page,
supporting President Trump is forbidden and that’s the standard Cotton
violated.
Events began when Trump said he would send in the
military if mayors and governors didn’t protect their citizens from violent
rampages connected to the George Floyd protests. Other presidents have deployed
troops in similar situations and Cotton thought it was a good idea this time
The paper’s op-ed staff contacted his office with an
invitation to explain why in the pages of the Times.
That offer kept faith with the original intent of the
Sulzberger family when it created the modern op-ed page 50 years ago. The point
was to present ideas that didn’t conform to the paper’s own positions.
Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, was perfect for the job
because of his credibility on military matters. The Harvard Law School grad was
a decorated infantry leader in Iraq and Afghanistan and serves on the Senate’s
Armed Services Committee.
Perhaps the oddest part of the debacle is that the man
ultimately responsible had no direct role in the Cotton piece. But Executive
Editor Dean Baquet’s fingerprints are all over the revolt.
Baquet runs the newsroom, which is distinct from the
editorial and op-ed pages. Or at least it was until the 2016 presidential
campaign.
That’s when Baquet, after Trump secured the GOP
nomination, opened the floodgates by letting reporters voice their opinions
in supposedly straight-news stories.
Surprise, surprise, the result was a daily
drumbeat declaring Trump unfit to be president, starting on Page One. That
would have been shameful enough, but the Times also led the charge in
spreading the Russia collusion story, which turned out to be false.
Although the paper did a mea culpa after the 2016
election by admitting its coverage failed to see the possibility of Trump’s
victory, it never conceded that its collusion coverage was deeply flawed and
misleading.
The core problem was Baquet’s decision to
allow reporters to corrupt news articles with their personal bias.
Without the check that fairness and restraint impose, the coverage reflected
more leftist talking points than real reporting.
The opinion-dominated paper violates the standards that
originated when Adolph Ochs bought control of the Times in 1896.
Ochs vowed his newspaper would be “clean, dignified,
trustworthy and impartial.” He also added the famous motto “All the news that’s
fit to print.”
Nearly 125 years later, Baquet and Sulzberger have fully
severed the Times from those roots.
It is noteworthy that Baquet’s reporters, and
not opinion writers, led the attacks on Cotton.
Accustomed to having their views rule the news pages, newsroom staffers have
been itching to control the opinion pages as well.
Now they do. Their determination to silence opposing
ideas resembles the heckler’s veto that students have been granted on many
college campuses. When the rare conservative is invited to speak, the result is
more often a riot than a debate.
So the virus of intolerance has conquered The New York
Times. It is a safe space, where no inconvenient facts and ideas will be
heard.
But if Sulzberger thinks he has appeased his in-house
mob, he will soon learn there is no limit to progressives’ lust for power.
Whatever you give them, it’s never enough.
Now that he’s shown he can be rolled, pressure will grow
on the young publisher to silence anyone at the paper who doesn’t endorse
the notion that America is and always was a gigantic system of oppression,
with white men holding everyone else down.
The view that America is racist to its core was part of
the complaint against Cotton — that his support for troops puts black people at
risk, including Times reporters. The outrageous claim proves the staff is
anti-military as well as anti-police.
Not incidentally, the idea that America was born out of
racism and slavery is the centerpiece of the paper’s misbegotten 1619 Project.
It has been roundly denounced by eminent historians, black and white, for
presenting a simplistic and error-ridden version of the nation’s founding.
But the Times is no longer restricted by facts and
reality. Its oppression narrative guides front-to-back coverage on
everything, from politics to business to sports to entertainment.
As such, the 1619 Project and the revolt against Cotton
are two aspects of the same obsession. Both reveal that the paper’s virulent anti-Trumpism
isn’t just about him. More broadly, his America First agenda offends their
elitist and globalist sensibilities.
Of course, it’s true that nearly everybody at
the Times actually hates Trump. But it’s also clear that
nearly everybody at the Times has contempt for most Americans, too.
From now on, nothing published in the Times will
challenge their bias.
