Post by Optimus on Oct 11, 2020 18:25:19 GMT -5
So, as I'm sure many of you know, the NYT has recently gone full woke. Their newsroom and editorial board has become infested with a cancerous ideology that destroys the capacity for fair, reality-based critical thinking and replaces it with mental fealty to a cult-like worldview.
So much so that NYT employees have demanded cancellation of their own peers to the point that liberals like Bari Weiss have left and editors have been forced out for allowing any kind of voices from "the other side" (unless, of course, the opinion column is Chinese communist propaganda, then it's totally fine to print).
Well, part-time unhinged crybaby Bret Stephens recently posted a pretty good critique of the NYT's foolish and braindead support of their intellectually dishonest 1619 Project, which eschews accepted historical facts in favor of woke horseshit.
His excellent column is here and I recommend reading it: www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opinion/nyt-1619-project-criticisms.html
Now, in what should come as a surprise to actually no one with a functioning brain, several NYT's employees and their union are opening calling for cancellation of yet another peer for the crime of "wrongthink." This time, of course, the target is Stephens.
Glen Greenwald has a really good breakdown of the (un)believable hypocrisy here: theintercept.com/2020/10/11/the-new-york-times-guild-once-again-demands-censorship-for-colleagues/
So much so that NYT employees have demanded cancellation of their own peers to the point that liberals like Bari Weiss have left and editors have been forced out for allowing any kind of voices from "the other side" (unless, of course, the opinion column is Chinese communist propaganda, then it's totally fine to print).
Well, part-time unhinged crybaby Bret Stephens recently posted a pretty good critique of the NYT's foolish and braindead support of their intellectually dishonest 1619 Project, which eschews accepted historical facts in favor of woke horseshit.
His excellent column is here and I recommend reading it: www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opinion/nyt-1619-project-criticisms.html
Now, in what should come as a surprise to actually no one with a functioning brain, several NYT's employees and their union are opening calling for cancellation of yet another peer for the crime of "wrongthink." This time, of course, the target is Stephens.
Glen Greenwald has a really good breakdown of the (un)believable hypocrisy here: theintercept.com/2020/10/11/the-new-york-times-guild-once-again-demands-censorship-for-colleagues/
Without weighing in on the merits of Stephens’ critiques, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, it is hardly debatable that his discussing this vibrant multi-pronged debate is squarely within his function as a political op-ed writer at a national newspaper. Stephens himself explained that he took the unusual step of critiquing his own employer’s work because “the 1619 Project has become, partly by its design and partly because of avoidable mistakes, a focal point of the kind of intense national debate that columnists are supposed to cover,” contending that avoiding writing about it out of collegial deference “is to be derelict in our responsibility” to participate in society’s significant disputes.
BUT HIS COLLEAGUES in the New York Times Guild evidently do not believe that he had any right to express his views on these debates. Indeed, they are indignant that he did so. In a barely-literate tweet that not once but twice misspelled the word “its” as “it’s” — not a trivial level of ignorance for writers with the world’s most influential newspaper — the union denounced Stephens and the paper itself on these grounds:
...
It is a short tweet, as tweets go, but they impressively managed to pack it with multiple ironies, fallacies, and decrees typical of the petty tyrant. Above all else, this statement, and the mentality it reflects, is profoundly unjournalistic.
To start with, this is a case of journalists using their union not to demand greater editorial freedom or journalistic independence — something one would reasonably expect from a journalists’ union — but demanding its opposite: that writers at the New York Times be prohibited by management from expressing their views and perspectives about the controversies surrounding the 1619 Project. In other words: they are demanding that their own journalistic colleagues be silenced and censored. What kind of journalists plead with management for greater restrictions on journalistic expression rather than fewer?
Apparently, the answer is New York Times journalists. Indeed, this is not the first time they have publicly implored corporate management to restrict the freedom of expression and editorial freedom of their journalistic colleagues. At the end of July, the Guild issued a series of demands, one of which was that “sensitivity reads should happen at the beginning of the publication process, with compensation for those who do them.”
...
As creepy as “sensitivity readers” are for fiction writing and other publishing fields, it is indescribably toxic for journalism, which necessarily questions or pokes at rather than bows to the most cherished, sacred pieties. For it to be worthwhile, it must publish material — reporting and opinion pieces — that might be “potentially objectionable” to all sorts of powerful factions, including culturally hegemonic liberals.
BUT HIS COLLEAGUES in the New York Times Guild evidently do not believe that he had any right to express his views on these debates. Indeed, they are indignant that he did so. In a barely-literate tweet that not once but twice misspelled the word “its” as “it’s” — not a trivial level of ignorance for writers with the world’s most influential newspaper — the union denounced Stephens and the paper itself on these grounds:
...
It is a short tweet, as tweets go, but they impressively managed to pack it with multiple ironies, fallacies, and decrees typical of the petty tyrant. Above all else, this statement, and the mentality it reflects, is profoundly unjournalistic.
To start with, this is a case of journalists using their union not to demand greater editorial freedom or journalistic independence — something one would reasonably expect from a journalists’ union — but demanding its opposite: that writers at the New York Times be prohibited by management from expressing their views and perspectives about the controversies surrounding the 1619 Project. In other words: they are demanding that their own journalistic colleagues be silenced and censored. What kind of journalists plead with management for greater restrictions on journalistic expression rather than fewer?
Apparently, the answer is New York Times journalists. Indeed, this is not the first time they have publicly implored corporate management to restrict the freedom of expression and editorial freedom of their journalistic colleagues. At the end of July, the Guild issued a series of demands, one of which was that “sensitivity reads should happen at the beginning of the publication process, with compensation for those who do them.”
...
As creepy as “sensitivity readers” are for fiction writing and other publishing fields, it is indescribably toxic for journalism, which necessarily questions or pokes at rather than bows to the most cherished, sacred pieties. For it to be worthwhile, it must publish material — reporting and opinion pieces — that might be “potentially objectionable” to all sorts of powerful factions, including culturally hegemonic liberals.
