On October 27, Erik Wemple, Washington Post media critic, issued a fascinating, and revealing mea-culpa about the scandalous firing of James Bennet, former New York Times editorial editor, in the summer 2020. Bennet had written an opinion piece by Republican Senator Tom Cotton suggesting sending in troops to quell rioting sparked by Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd. The headline was simple: “James Bennet was Right.”
The essay is based on Bennet’s thoughts as they were relayed to Ben Smith, a media reporter, in October.
Wemple relayed Bennet’s shameful treatment of Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger as told to Smith: “He set my face on fire, threw me in garbage, and used my reverence towards the institution against me.”
Wemple responded by placing 100% of the blame on The Times, its cowardly administration and its vengeful woke staff.
This might sound like the angst from a man who is still upset at losing his job. It is, and it is, for a compelling cause: Bennet is correct. He is right about Sulzberger, Cotton op-ed and the lessons that linger after his turbulent final days at The Times.
He also established a personal mea-culpa.
It is also past time to question why more people who claim they uphold journalism freedom and free expression — such as the Erik Wemple blog — didn’t speak out in Bennet’s defense.
We were afraid to.
In the wake of the BLM rioting, there was intense media peer pressure to condemn Cotton’s op-ed. There was an immediate “backlash…with Times staffers in the forefront of the critique.” Times staffers even claimed that “Running this puts Black @NYTimes employees in danger.”
Wemple observed “an amazing up-is-down moment” in which Times management didn’t try to defend its product but instead “scrambled for pulverize essay in order to vindicate objections roll in from Twitter.” To justify its post-publication condemnation, the editors even ordered a post-mortem fact check to uncover egregious errors that were not found in the original review.
Wemple contributed withering sarcasm and discussion to the Times’ ideologically based revism.
Other criticisms were made by the editor’s notes. They stated that the essay needed “further substantial revising” and that it contained an “overstatement” about police being the “brunt of the rioting”. They also said that the tone was “needlessly harsh” and that more context was required.
Okay, that last one is a joke.
It would be even more difficult to compile …. a 317-word collection.
Wemple was no different.
875 days after the Twitter storm, our criticism of it is too late. Despite the obvious hollowness of Bennet’s internal outburst, we responded with an honest critique of the Times flip-flop and not the unapologetic defense that journalism required. Our position was one of cowardice, midcareer risk management. We added one more regret to a controversy already rife with them.
