The New York Times – and more specifically, its publisher, A.G. Sulzberger – is whining loudly after being told a few hard-to-hear truths about itself by former editor James Bennet.

If you remember the story, Bennet – the op-ed editor, and brother of Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado – was forced out of his job after publishing an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton during the early days of the summer of 2020, as the rioting over George Floyd were beginning to hit their stride. The New York Times staff had pitched a hissy fit over Cotton’s op-ed being published, and Bennet resigned. Well, he is now spilling the proverbial beans on how that entire brouhaha went down in a very long form piece in The Economist, and it isn’t complimentary to the New York Times, its staff, and particularly the publisher Sulzberger.

It was the kind of crisis in which journalism could fulfil its highest ambitions of helping readers understand the world, in order to fix it, and in the Times’s Opinion section, which I oversaw, we were pursuing our role of presenting debate from all sides. We had published pieces arguing against the idea of relying on troops to stop the violence, and one urging abolition of the police altogether. But Cotton, an army veteran, was calling for the use of troops to protect lives and businesses from rioters. Some Times reporters and other staff were taking to what was then called Twitter, now called X, to attack the decision to publish his argument, for fear he would persuade Times readers to support his proposal and it would be enacted. The next day the Times’s union—its unit of the NewsGuild-cwa—would issue a statement calling the op-ed “a clear threat to the health and safety of the journalists we represent”.

Initially, Bennet says Sulzberger was fine with publishing the op-ed. But then he changed his tune.

The publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, who was about two years into the job, understood why we’d published the op-ed. He had some criticisms about packaging; he said the editors should add links to other op-eds we’d published with a different view. But he’d emailed me that afternoon, saying: “I get and support the reason for including the piece,” because, he thought, Cotton’s view had the support of the White House as well as a majority of the Senate. As the clamour grew, he asked me to call Baquet, the paper’s most senior editor.

Like me, Baquet seemed taken aback by the criticism that Times readers shouldn’t hear what Cotton had to say. Cotton had a lot of influence with the White House, Baquet noted, and he could well be making his argument directly to the president, Donald Trump. Readers should know about it. Cotton was also a possible future contender for the White House himself, Baquet added. And, besides, Cotton was far from alone: lots of Americans agreed with him—most of them, according to some polls. “Are we truly so precious?” Baquet asked again, with a note of wonder and frustration.

The answer, it turned out, was yes. Less than three days later, on Saturday morning, Sulzberger called me at home and, with an icy anger that still puzzles and saddens me, demanded my resignation. I got mad, too, and said he’d have to fire me. I thought better of that later. I called him back and agreed to resign, flattering myself that I was being noble.

While Bennet wanders around a little bit in order to get a few jabs in at Donald Trump, he eventually gets back to the point – the New York Times is talking to itself and publishing for itself – and no one else.

The Times’s problem has metastasised from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favour one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether. All the empathy and humility in the world will not mean much against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without an invaluable quality that Sulzberger did not emphasise: courage.

Since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in 1896, one of the most inspiring things the Times has said about itself is that it does its work “without fear or favour”. That is not true of the institution today – it cannot be, not when its journalists are afraid to trust readers with a mainstream conservative argument such as Cotton’s, and its leaders are afraid to say otherwise. As preoccupied as it is with the question of why so many Americans have lost trust in it, the Times is failing to face up to one crucial reason: that it has lost faith in Americans, too.

For now, to assert that the Times plays by the same rules it always has is to commit a hypocrisy that is transparent to conservatives, dangerous to liberals and bad for the country as a whole. It makes the Times too easy for conservatives to dismiss and too easy for progressives to believe. The reality is that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.

Bennet keeps going – and going, and going, because this is a VERY long read – about his own journalism career, the change in newsroom culture at the New York Times from obviously liberal-leaning to unhinged progressive ideology, and tosses in a few zingers along the way, like this gem about the journalists working at the Times:

As wave after wave of pain and outrage swept through the Times, over a headline that was not damning enough of Trump or someone’s obnoxious tweets, I came to think of the people who were fragile, the ones who were caught up in Slack or Twitter storms, as people who had only recently discovered that they were white and were still getting over the shock. Having concluded they had got ahead by working hard, it has been a revelation to them that their skin colour was not just part of the wallpaper of American life, but a source of power, protection and advancement. They may know a lot about television, or real estate, or how to edit audio files, but their work does not take them into shelters, or police precincts, or the homes of people who see the world very differently. It has never exposed them to live fire. Their idea of violence includes vocabulary.

Bennet, of course, still sees Donald Trump as a singular danger to American democracy, instead of a reactionary measure to leftist overreach. But he does – in a VERY wordy way – come to realize that the other side – the one he generally sided with – has become intolerant and crazed, especially in the newsroom, and how that fails the “standard” that the New York Times is supposed to be living up to.

Well, Sulzberger is offended. VERY offended.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger responds to James Bennet (see previous tweets): pic.twitter.com/GCYggxHiJD

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) December 15, 2023

In a written statement to POLITICO Magazine, Sulzberger pushed back against Bennet’s characterization of the culture at the Times.

“James Bennet and I have always agreed on the importance of independent journalism, the challenges it faces in today’s more polarized world, and the mission of The Times to pursue independence even when the path of less resistance might be to give into partisan passions. But I could not disagree more strongly with the false narrative he has constructed about The Times. Our commitment to independence is evident in our report every day.” He added: “James was a valued partner, but where I parted ways with him is on how to deliver on these values. Principles alone are not enough. Execution matters. Leadership matters.”

Methinks Sulzberger doth protest too much. There are two questions that put the lie to his defense. The first is asked here:

I feel like this could be debunked with one question: How many NYT staff do or would vote Republican? If the answer is less than 45% then the NYT is not a national paper, it's a Democratic paper. https://t.co/tIG2gyZKyB

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) December 15, 2023

I think we all know the answer to that one – which proves the point.

The second is asking Sulzberger point-blank why Bennet had to resign because the newsroom melted down. He says in the extended statement that the paper is “committed to independence,” “holding the powerful to account, and seeking to shed light rather than heat on the most divisive issues of our time, regardless of whom our coverage might upset.” So why did Sulzberger tell Bennet to resign? There was the “divisive issue,” there was an opinion, and the coverage “upset” the reporters in the newsroom, who went to the union and used that voice to wail loudly. Shouldn’t Sulzberger, by his own words, have told the newsroom to deal with it and move along? Bennet accuses him of lacking courage. Sulzberger’s response is to talk about “execution” and “leadership.” Well, where was his “leadership,” when the shit hit the fan in the newsroom, and all those progressive j-school graduates suddenly could not handle hearing an opinion that they disagreed with?

Bennet’s words are ringing a little more true than Sulzberger wants, so his response is to be offended. Kind of telling, isn’t it?

The institutions of journalism, just like the institutions of academia, are dead corpses being worn around with glee by progressive radicals. They control the decaying carcass which gives them power, even as it continues to rot away. But like the emperor’s new clothes, we are supposed to ignore the rot and the smell. Bennet dared to point out the rot, and now Sulzberger is upset that he was so uncouth to even mention it. Too bad for him.

Featured image via Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license