Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said free speech protections should not apply to Sen. Tom Cotton’s controversial opinion article published by the New York Times last week because his piece contained falsehoods.
“Free speech is not that I, as a sitting senator, or I, as someone sitting in my living room, has a right to run my opinions in the New York Times unedited and unchecked. That’s not what free speech is,” Hannah-Jones said Sunday on CNN. “Senator Cotton certainly has the right to write and say whatever he wants in this country, but we as a news organization should not be running something that is offering misinformation to the public unchecked.”
The Times, Hannah-Jones’s employer, on Wednesday published an opinion article from the Republican senator from Arkansas, titled “Send in the Troops” that advocated for the deployment of active-duty military to cities to quell civil unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd while in police custody earlier this month.
“The American people aren’t blind to injustices in our society, but they know that the most basic responsibility of government is to maintain public order and safety,” Cotton wrote. “In normal times, local law enforcement can uphold public order. But in rare moments, like ours today, more is needed, even if many politicians prefer to wring their hands while the country burns.”
Cotton also claimed “radical left-wing” groups were using the protests to destroy civilized society.
Publication of the piece sparked intense debate online and within the Times’s own newsroom, where several high-profile reporters publicly criticized the editors who ran Cotton’s piece and suggested doing so puts lives, especially those of African Americans participating in the largely peaceful protests, at risk.
“The basic arguments advanced by Senator Cotton — however objectionable people may find them — represent a newsworthy part of the current debate,” the Times responded in a lengthy editor’s note attached to the top of Cotton’s submission. “But given the life-and-death importance of the topic, the senator’s influential position and the gravity of the steps he advocates, the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny.”
The Times blamed a “rushed and flawed” editing process that left senior members of the newsroom’s leadership out of the conversation about whether to publish Cotton’s assertions.
“Beyond those factual questions, the tone of the essay in places is needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate,” the newspaper said. “Editors should have offered suggestions to address those problems. The headline — which was written by The Times, not Senator Cotton — was incendiary and should not have been used.”
Hannah-Jones, one of the company’s most high-profile journalists and author of the 1619 Project, said Cotton’s statements should not be allowed to run in the Times, not because they are controversial or unpopular, but because they lack a foundation in fact.
“Many of us journalists said, ‘There should have just been a news article where his views were aired but in a way that was factual,'” she said. “Because we know we are struggling with Americans getting misinformation, and our role as journalists is to give people correct information so they can make decisions.”
