Earlier today, Sen. Tom Cotton published an opinion piece in the New York Times, arguing that the federal government should respond to violent riots and looting with military force. In response, a handful of New York Times staffers have taken to social media to publicly shame the paper’s editorial board.
“Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger,” they wrote alongside a screenshot of Cotton’s article.
You can agree with Cotton’s position, or you can disagree with it. But the New York Times was right to publish the thoughts of a U.S. senator who is actively shaping the federal government’s response to the current conflict. Cotton’s opinion might very well become policy, and the public deserves to know why.
This is why editorial pages exist. Written opinions are supposed to inform, challenge, and (hopefully) persuade readers, while at the same time bolstering the democratic values, the right to a free press and the necessity of democratic debate, upon which our system of governance depends. The New York Times opinion pages should not merely confirm their readers’ worldview, nor do they exist to appease the preconceived opinions of its staffers. The opinion page, in fact, was specifically created to offer a range of opinions that may differ from the institutional editorial position.
It is also important to note that Cotton’s opinion isn’t as controversial as some New York Times staffers would like to think. A majority of voters and nearly 40% of black voters actually agree that calling in the military to assist local law enforcement might be necessary if the violence and unrest continues, according to a survey released this week. So not only are New York Times staffers trying to silence an opinion with which they disagree, they’re trying to silence an opinion that much of the rest of the country shares.
And where was this righteous indignation when the New York Times published a Taliban terrorist leader? Or how about the time the New York Times published Russian President Vladimir Putin or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
This feels like an outdated and standard term at this point, but truly, this is elitism at its finest. And the New York Times opinion editors should not give in to the demands of elitists who think they know better than anyone else. Let the public be the final arbiters of whether Cotton’s argument is worth consideration.
