Taking That James Bennet Article Seriously

A month later, what to make of it?

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces. We are publishing a day early this week to avoid a scheduling problem.

When James Bennet’s magnum opus on his misadventures at the New York Times appeared almost a month ago, I quickly recommended it as must-reading, and said there would be lots to discuss later. I think the time has come for that discussion.

The Bennet piece is sprawling (says the newsletter writer who edits himself), so it’s hard to decide where to begin, but I want to lay out a few different things, including why so many people in our business were entitled to dislike the piece, a number of very important (even if ultimately unpersuasive) arguments I think it nevertheless advances, and a few other reflections occasioned by it. I promise to do so in way less than 16,000 words.

What Bennet missed

First, in writing a piece variously about the changing culture at the Times, his ill-fated publishing of an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton headlined “Send in the Troops” in early June 2020 and his own dismissal as Times Opinion editor, Bennet challenged the standards of the nation’s leading news organization without holding himself to as high a standard as he should have.

The Cotton op-ed was simply not a good piece of work. As an editor’s note published two days later recognized, its assertion that “cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa [were] infiltrating protest marches” after the murder of George Floyd was at best unsubstantiated, and probably bogus. Saying that police “bore the brunt” of the violence was at best an “overstatement.” The editor’s note didn’t say so, but the article’s claim that “the riots were carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich,” sourced to one tweet from a reporter, was nonsense. And what looked like a quote from the Constitution was no such thing.

Nor did any editor apparently ask Cotton why dispatching the military to quell urban riots in 2020 was likely to be more successful than it was, for instance, in Newark in 1967 or Detroit, Washington, Chicago and Baltimore in 1968. On the other hand, the headline on the piece, which all sides have disowned, seems in retrospect on target, even if inflammatory: it’s pithy and accurately sums up the argument.

The Cotton brouhaha was the last straw for Bennet, in a way about which he’s less than forthcoming. His mistakes with a Sarah Palin editorial are afforded one sentence. Publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon in the international edition for which an apology had to be made isn’t mentioned, nor is an over-the-top op-ed by Louise Mensch. All four incidents were noted in the Times’s own article on his forced resignation. There was more.

Bennet defends his failure to even read the Cotton piece before publication, noting the masthead rank of his deputy, but that’s unpersuasive, at least to me. In his assertion that the outcome would have been the same even if he had edited the piece, Bennet actually does himself too little credit.

The Cotton op-ed came two days after this. (White House photo)

That’s because the critics also misremember the Cotton piece. The day of Trump’s at once menacing and ridiculous Bible-toting march through Lafayette Park, Cotton tweeted advocating “no quarter” for rioters, which is military lingo (he was an Army Ranger) for killing them en masse. Two days later, Cotton in the Times didn’t use that loaded phrase, but was warning of “insurrectionists;” his operative language called for the President to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military in “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” A very bad idea, but hardly, as some have said, a war crime. (Give Cotton some credit for consistency, by the way: he also called for the Insurrection Act to be used seven months later, on January 6.) But, again, an attentive editor would have insisted that he explain or withdraw his earlier statement on “no quarter.”

What Bennet’s critics need to grapple with

All of that said, and even putting aside the Cotton op-ed disaster, Bennet articulates a sustained critique of the Times, the most serious fundamental intellectual challenge it has faced since Dan Okrent, in his column as public editor 20 years ago, called it a liberal newspaper.

I think anyone who admires the Times and wishes it well (as I do) needs to take Bennet’s assertions seriously. Here are a few of the key passages:

• “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.”

• “the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist.”

• “More than 95% of Times subscribers described themselves as Democrats or independents, and a vast majority of them believed the Times was also liberal. A similar majority applauded that bias; it had become ‘a selling point’, reported one internal marketing memo.”

• “The newsroom’s embrace of opinion journalism has compromised the Times’s independence, misled its readers and fostered a culture of intolerance and conformity.”

• “Because the newsroom officially does not do opinion – even though it openly hires and publishes opinion journalists – it feels free to ignore Opinion’s mandate to provide a diversity of views.”

• “[Publisher A.G. Sulzberger] told me once that he would like to restructure the paper to have one editor oversee all its news reporters, another all its opinion journalists and a third all its service journalists, the ones who supply guidance on buying gizmos or travelling abroad. Each of these editors would report to him.”

I checked with the Times on the 95% figure and the purported marketing memo. Senior Vice President Danielle Rhoads Ha said that, “While we don't release audience demographics, they're more diverse than the numbers quoted.” On the ostensible Sulzberger three-part plan, she said, “The structure of The Times -- including the separation of news and opinion -- has served its readers well for generations. It's not true that there have been plans to change it."

editor vs. publisher

Claiming, as some people I like and respect did, that there is nothing worth discussing in all this only tends to lend support to Bennet’s point about illiberalism. Deriding his work as “dreck” is no more persuasive than most such name-calling.

I am not asking that people accept Bennet’s critique, although some surely will. But I do think it requires substantive response of more than a conclusory nature, and more on the merits than it has received.

Where I come out

For myself, I am more certain of what I think on some aspects than others. On the extensive move of the Times News Department into opinion, I think Bennet is too concerned about the internal turf dispute. But he may well be on to something in saying that if News is going to publish so much opinion, including in the realm of culture, it may be under an obligation to achieve greater balance in the range of such opinions.

The only principled alternative, I think, would be for the Times’s own Opinion section to surrender its commitment to a range of voices and cast itself as more of a mirror-opposite of the Wall Street Journal, which places all opinions (including cultural reviews) together and eschews any pretense of balance. That would be a loss.

In fairness, the Times has downgraded opinion on its site homepage and the front page of its app (in marked contrast with, for instance, the Washington Post), and trimmed the ranks of news columnists somewhat, including by not replacing its last media columnist. But the cultural coverage, including of film and television, does seem to me to pursue an agenda from the left.

And Bennet is on more solid ground when he derides the objections to the Cotton piece on the ground it supposedly endangered Times staffers. Like much of Cotton’s own argument, that assertion always seemed largely unsupported. In any event, and much more important, the effect of what is published on readers should almost always be of greater concern than the implications for people in the bastions of privilege that are well-resourced newsrooms.

On his central point about illiberalism, I hope Bennet is wrong, and am confident the jury remains out more than he believes. When Bennet, for instance, analogizes to newsrooms in saying that “liberal-minded college presidents lost control of their campuses,” I think he reveals more than he intends. Universities, perhaps a bit like op-ed pages, are not analogous to newsrooms in being appropriately subject to “control.” Rather, they ought to be places where diversity of all sorts, very much including in views, are among the attributes most highly prized.

A month later, and having now read the Bennet piece several times, I maintain the view that it’s worth your time. More than that, its arguments, even if you vigorously reject them, deserve your engagement. At a moment in our history when illiberalism (a polite word for it) seems ascendant on both ends of the political spectrum— even if far from symmetrically— grappling with these issues is an urgent task for all of us.

Correction: Dan Okrent’s public editor column terming the Times a “liberal newspaper” was not his last in that role, as this piece originally said.