New York Times says Cotton’s op-ed didn’t meet standards

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton is shown in this file photo.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton is shown in this file photo.

NEW YORK — The New York Times said Thursday that an opinion piece it ran by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton advocating the use of federal troops to quell nationwide protests about police mistreatment of black Americans did not meet its standards.

Cotton’s op-ed, titled “Send in the Troops” and first posted online late Wednesday, caused a revolt among Times journalists, with some saying it endangered black employees. Some staff members called in sick Thursday in protest.

The Times said in a statement that a “rushed editorial process” led to publication of a piece that did not meet its standards.

The Arkansas Republican’s piece remained on the Times’ website Thursday evening. The Times said it was still determining whether the column will be corrected or what to say in an editor’s note attached to it.

Cotton on Thursday tweeted that he commended “the courage” of the Times for publishing his op-ed.

“They ran my piece—even if they disagreed with it—and stood up to the woke progressive mob in their own newsroom,” Cotton tweeted. “This was the right thing to do.”

Earlier Thursday, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and editorial page editor James Bennett defended the op-ed’s publication, saying they believed it was important to discuss controversial ideas in a public forum rather than keep them quiet.

But, the Times reported that later, Bennett revealed that he had not read Cotton’s piece prior to its publication.

“As a result, we’re planning to examine both short term and long term changes” to its opinion pages including expanding its fact-checking operation and reducing the number of op-eds, which are opinion pieces written by outside contributors that it publishes, the Times said its statement.

Cotton’s column supported President Donald Trump’s call to use federal troops to stop violence associated with protests against police treatment of minorities. He denounced “nihilist criminals” out for loot and “left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit [George] Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.”

However, it was pointed out online that a Times news story on June 1 said “conservative commentators are asserting with little evidence that antifa, the far-left anti-fascism activist movement coordinates the riots and looting.”

Among the Times journalists who had protested publication of Cotton’s piece was Nikole Hannah-Jones, who last month won a Pulitzer Prize for her magazine piece, “The 1619 Project,” about black Americans since the first arrival of slaves.

“As a black woman, as a journalist, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this,” Hannah-Jones tweeted.

Cotton’s piece was posted online two days after a peaceful demonstration outside the White House was cleared with tear gas and flash bangs, clearing the way for Trump to stage a photo-op outside a nearby church.

Bennett had written that he personally disagreed with Cotton and believed troops could lead to innocent people being hurt. The Times’ opinion page had published several pieces with that view, he said.

“Readers who might be inclined to oppose Cotton’s positions need to be fully aware of it, and reckon with it, if they were to defeat it,” Bennett wrote in an essay. “To me, debating influential ideas openly, rather than letting them go unchallenged, is far more likely to help society reach the right answers.”

Still, he said, “I know that my own view might be wrong.”

Information for this article was contributed by Tali Arbel of The Associated Press.

Upcoming Events