Comment by fennecfoxen
6 years ago
Traditionally, newspapers' Opinion and Editorial sections have solicited contributions from major political figures. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, has run the following:
"The Change We Need" (by Barack Obama)
"A Partisan Impeachment, a Profile in Courage" (by Mike Pence)
"I Can Defeat Trump and the Clinton Doctrine" (by Tulsi Gabbard)
"Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis" (by Ron Paul)
"How Short-Termism Saps the Economy" (by Joe Biden)
"Why I Support the Ryan Roadmap" (by Sarah Palin)
"Why Americans Are So Angry" and "Trump Is the Worst Kind of Socialist" (by Bernie Sanders)
"Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders" (by Elizabeth Warren)
Readers of the Journal typically value these pieces as the newsworthy opinions of important figures, even if they disagree with the authors and the politics therein quite vehemently. Very few readers would mistake these pieces' publication for an endorsement, or for depraved and wanton profit-seeking. Rather, publication of these opinions is itself a form of journalism.
Readers of the Times today, however, seem to expect that the ethics of the Times ought to be driven by the Times waging total war on their common political enemies, and that to do otherwise is an offense against decency. The Times does a good job of waging such a war in the general case, sometimes quite laudably; when it does make its exceptions, however, allowing things like the Cotton editorial, it has generally been in the service of Journalism as well, communicating the newsworthy opinions of important figures.
You should not fear, my erstwhile Times-reading comrade! All signs indicate that the Times has capitulated, and your victory over the forces of Journalism has been secured.
(edit: Added the Bernie Sanders and Warren editorials to the list)
This is stunning false equivalence. None of the opinions you offered are similar to Tom Cotton’s apologia for “sending in the tanks”. The NYT Opinions section is still, for better or worse, still quite diverse in its opinions. Ross Douthat and David Brooks are not leaving anytime soon.
> None of the opinions you offered are similar to Tom Cotton’s apologia for “sending in the tanks”
What makes this matter? Precisely, why?
Does not the radical character of this editorial highlight, as starkly as ever, that this is grossly at odds with the official opinion of the Grey Lady?
Do you somehow impute a net persuasive power to its appearance in those pages? Do you therefore believe the publication presents an increased risk that such a scheme will be carried out? How?
Do you perhaps believe that many dangerous racists will find themselves emboldened by its publication, as if racists with a military-police fetish were notorious for subscribing to the Times and justifying their opinions with what is written on its pages? I think not, sir, though you may find them watching Fox.
The Times could write a thousand opinion columns to their decent readers, warning that Republicans aspire to quash protests with the military; their combined weight would be as nothing compared to the Republican himself telling you in his own words, putting to rest the possibility of doubt.
Precisely why it matters is that the debates you cite in the WSJ are in a completely different realm where you can have reasonable people disagree. I don’t think Cotton’s Op-Ed is novel territory for either the NYT or WSJ, but I think it’s a reasonable position that the NYT should not legitimize calls to violence as a resolution to an ongoing domestic issue.
The NYT operates on links, this is not cable news. Of course it will be shared on FB and elsewhere, so not getting your point at all.
As for the final point, I think there’s a reasonable debate to be had there! I don’t know exactly where I stand on it, I personally find the piece disturbing and it crosses the line in a functioning democracy. However, it certainly informed me beyond a doubt to Cotton’s and his colleagues’ opinions, so I just have to trust others felt similarly.
2 replies →
If you go back in time, the NY Times used to print a lot more conservative op-eds. For example, here's a classic, where William F Buckley, a well known conservative (from a different vein than modern conservatives) proposes tattooing a red letter A on the buttons of gay men infected with HIV:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-a...
Cotton could have written a far better editorial and people would complain a lot less. I tried to read it giving him the best intentions but it didn't take long to realize that he really just wanted to send out the military to beat people up.
Yep I’m not defending the NYT Opinions page or editorial board, in my opinion it’s an embarrassment for an otherwise solid paper of record (not defending NYT in general, either - they have made some serious mistakes).
However, the poster is trying to put the Cotton op-Ed in the same league as fairly mild policy debates in the WSJ. I find that dangerously close to legimitizing it.
The NYT has published op-eds from Vladimir Putin and the Taliban.
And that’s infinitely more on-point than some relatively mild policy debates in the WSJ! The difference in those cases would be the foreign policy concerns vs a domestic debate, so there’s still some context to discuss, but the comment I’m replying to is blowing this out of proportion and also legitimizing Cotton’s op-Ed by comparing it the prior ones.