Magnificent News: The Week in Ideas: How do we decide what speech should be published in a national newspaper?

Sunday, October 30, 2022

The Week in Ideas: How do we decide what speech should be published in a national newspaper?

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Opinions you may have missed.

By Christine Emba
Opinion columnist and editor

"James Bennet was right," Erik Wemple wrote last week.

Our media columnist was reassessing what he describes as "one of the most consequential journalism fights in decades": the 2020 firing of the New York Times's editorial page editor, who lost his job at the paper after publishing a now-infamous op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton suggesting that the National Guard be called in to quash rioters during the George Floyd protests.

It's an unexpected and eye-opening piece, a deep-dive into the internal workings of one media outlet's politics and personalities that explores how self-protective instincts and social media pile-ons can stifle discourse around controversial topics, and the ramifications for the field of journalism at large.

Wemple does a great deal of digging into exactly what happened back in 2020, and admits that he himself got it wrong: "To date, the lesson from the set-to — that publishing a senator arguing that federal troops could be deployed against rioters is unacceptable — will forever circumscribe what issues opinion sections are allowed to address. It's also long past time to ask why more people who claim to uphold journalism and free expression — including, um, the Erik Wemple Blog — didn't speak out then in Bennet's defense."

His conclusion?

"It's because we were afraid to."

Wemple reflects on his decision — wrong, he thinks in hindsight — not to object to Bennet's firing, and raises bigger questions about our current media environment.

How do we decide what speech should be published in a national newspaper, and who should make the call? Are terms like "violence" and "danger" being overused to stifle important debate? And what happens when silencing happens from within?

Let us know what you think.

James Bennet was right

The top opinion editor left the New York Times in June 2020 over a controversy that Publisher A.G. Sulzberger mishandled.

By Erik Wemple ● Read more »

Here's what it's like to be persecuted for your hair

The Iranian journalist and activist, who spent much of her life being forced to contain her curls, explains how compulsory hijab laws hurt both women and men.

By Alyssa Rosenberg and Masih Alinejad ● Read more »