You may remember James Bennet as the NY Times editor who managed the opinion section of the paper. Bennet was pushed to resign back in 2020 after agreeing to publish a piece by Sen. Tom Cotton. Cotton had argued the country should call out the National Guard to put an end to Black Lives Matter riots which had broken out around the country.
Bennet and his superiors had agreed in advance of publication that Cotton had a legitimate, albeit right-wing, view. But it wasn’t his alone. Other members of congress and possibly the president held it too, not to mention lots of regular people.
But the backlash inside the newsroom, led by black staffers and “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones, eventually frightened the publisher into submission. Shawn McCreesh, a former Times’ staffer who was present at the time, has described the mood behind the scenes as being “like a Maoist…
