![]() ![]() He is sporadically interesting, often infuriating, but above all, pretty idiosyncratic. His conservatism, of Sam’s Club affectation, fiscal conservatism, tepid social liberalism, and genial trolling of center-leftists at Davos - whom does it speak for in today’s politics, beyond Brooks? It still hasn’t occurred to him to challenge them from the left, so he goes out looking for more conservatives.īut what kind of conservatives are on offer at the Times?Ĭonsider, oh, David Brooks. Bennet clearly believes liberals live in a bubble. This has led to entire subgenres of news journalism, like “ rural white people are very upset,” or “ Trump supporters still like Trump,” or “ get to know this Nazi he’s just like you and me.”īut it’s a different dilemma for the opinion page. The traumatic and unexpected 2016 victory of Donald Trump convinced a great many people in elite political circles that they are hopelessly out of touch, there is a whole parallel country of which they are only dimly aware, and they urgently need to understand the perspectives of the people who rallied behind Trump. Recently, that concern has taken on a new edge. “Points of view in disagreement with the editorial position of The Times,” said publisher Arthur Sulzberger, “will be particularly welcomed.” And still today, Bennet wrote to Splinter, “we’re looking to challenge our own and our readers’ assumptions.” The Times always had its own, generally liberal editorials, but the opinion page was established in 1970 to provide a venue for a wider range of opinions. The New York Times carries some conservatives, but it does not reflect conservative politics Who Should the New York Times Hire to Speak for the Bernie Left? /pyG3uaa2eT- Kevin Drum March 2, 2018īut representing what lies to the right of those confines is a different and more difficult matter. It stands on its own as a reasonably coherent social critique and policy program, involving greater social provision of basic services, and there are tons of writers who could do it credit. For starters, it could hire a columnist to represent the resurgent left, which rose alongside, but is not dependent on, Bernie Sanders. It wouldn’t be that hard for the Times to draw from what lies to the left of those narrow confines. In one of his characteristically scathing columns, Glenn Greenwald notes that the Times editorial stable currently contains only three women and no Arab-American or Latinx voices ideologically, it “spans the small gap from establishment centrist Democrats to establishment centrist Republicans.” As I said in a column on Stephens last year, “it takes a particular sort of insularity to hire a pro-war, anti-Trump white guy as a contribution to diversity on the NYT editorial page.” That defense doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. “Didn’t we learn from this past election that our goal should be to understand different views?” asked Baquet. The newspaper’s defense, articulated repeatedly by Bennet, news editor Dean Baquet, and onetime ombudsman Liz Spayd, is that the paper is pursuing diversity of opinion, attempting to challenge its readers. David Uberti at Splinter has a nice rundown of the various fights, along with some trenchant critique. There was the controversy over the op-ed/press release by Erik Prince of the security contractor Blackwater.Īnd so on. There was the controversy over hiring Bret Stephens, a climate denier and Woody Allen apologist. (FYI: There is no such epidemic.)īefore that was the controversy over hiring, and then quickly firing, Quinn Norton, who is friends with a Nazi. Most recently, new hire Bari Weiss linked to a fake Twitter account as virtually her only evidence in a column devoted to the supposed epidemic of totalitarianism sweeping US universities. The New York Times editorial page has come in for a great deal of criticism since it fell under the leadership of James Bennet, previously editor at the Atlantic, in March 2016. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |