Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

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Traditionally, newspapers' Opinion and Editorial sections have solicited contributions from major political figures. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, has run the following:

"The Change We Need" (by Barack Obama)

"A Partisan Impeachment, a Profile in Courage" (by Mike Pence)

"I Can Defeat Trump and the Clinton Doctrine" (by Tulsi Gabbard)

"Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis" (by Ron Paul)

"How Short-Termism Saps the Economy" (by Joe Biden)

"Why I Support the Ryan Roadmap" (by Sarah Palin)

"Why Americans Are So Angry" and "Trump Is the Worst Kind of Socialist" (by Bernie Sanders)

"Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders" (by Elizabeth Warren)

Readers of the Journal typically value these pieces as the newsworthy opinions of important figures, even if they disagree with the authors and the politics therein quite vehemently. Very few readers would mistake these pieces' publication for an endorsement, or for depraved and wanton profit-seeking. Rather, publication of these opinions is itself a form of journalism.

Readers of the Times today, however, seem to expect that the ethics of the Times ought to be driven by the Times waging total war on their common political enemies, and that to do otherwise is an offense against decency. The Times does a good job of waging such a war in the general case, sometimes quite laudably; when it does make its exceptions, however, allowing things like the Cotton editorial, it has generally been in the service of Journalism as well, communicating the newsworthy opinions of important figures.

You should not fear, my erstwhile Times-reading comrade! All signs indicate that the Times has capitulated, and your victory over the forces of Journalism has been secured.

(edit: Added the Bernie Sanders and Warren editorials to the list)

This is stunning false equivalence. None of the opinions you offered are similar to Tom Cotton’s apologia for “sending in the tanks”. The NYT Opinions section is still, for better or worse, still quite diverse in its opinions. Ross Douthat and David Brooks are not leaving anytime soon.

> None of the opinions you offered are similar to Tom Cotton’s apologia for “sending in the tanks”

What makes this matter? Precisely, why?

Does not the radical character of this editorial highlight, as starkly as ever, that this is grossly at odds with the official opinion of the Grey Lady?

Do you somehow impute a net persuasive power to its appearance in those pages? Do you therefore believe the publication presents an increased risk that such a scheme will be carried out? How?

Do you perhaps believe that many dangerous racists will find themselves emboldened by its publication, as if racists with a military-police fetish were notorious for subscribing to the Times and justifying their opinions with what is written on its pages? I think not, sir, though you may find them watching Fox.

The Times could write a thousand opinion columns to their decent readers, warning that Republicans aspire to quash protests with the military; their combined weight would be as nothing compared to the Republican himself telling you in his own words, putting to rest the possibility of doubt.

Precisely why it matters is that the debates you cite in the WSJ are in a completely different realm where you can have reasonable people disagree. I don’t think Cotton’s Op-Ed is novel territory for either the NYT or WSJ, but I think it’s a reasonable position that the NYT should not legitimize calls to violence as a resolution to an ongoing domestic issue.

The NYT operates on links, this is not cable news. Of course it will be shared on FB and elsewhere, so not getting your point at all.

As for the final point, I think there’s a reasonable debate to be had there! I don’t know exactly where I stand on it, I personally find the piece disturbing and it crosses the line in a functioning democracy. However, it certainly informed me beyond a doubt to Cotton’s and his colleagues’ opinions, so I just have to trust others felt similarly.

> the debates you cite in the WSJ are in a completely different realm where you can have reasonable people disagree

I began to write by discussing one of those pieces in the WSJ as a moral equivalent or worse, discussing how I would like to say that no reasonable person could disagree — yet in fact, I must admit that they could.

But forget that. My real point is about journalism.

We are met, on one side, by those like Cotton, who fête thuggish, authoritarian, militaristic oppression, as you are well aware. It is one threat to our freedom. Journalism by itself will not save us, of course, but at the same time, I do not see how we can be saved without journalism.

But those who oppose it, especially the journalists? They are cut from grain of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy. Did you learn in your history lessons about the Red Scare? There were once bona fide Communist spies in our nation's government, in great number, and he set out to bring them down — and yet, when we speak today of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and when we speak of McCarthyism, it is not because they saved us from these spies. It is because they fomented a culture of repression, paranoia and fear which chilled our freedoms and harmed our democracy — and, incidentally, did a poor job of rooting the spies.

Today we do not have the benefit of a single leader like McCarthy to illustrate in so concentrated a manner the disgusting nature of what is being done. We have no singular Mr. Welch to ask him, "Have you left no sense of decency?" when, for nothing more than his own self-aggrandizement, this leader smears an innocuous nobody in a Congressional hearing. But we do have the Washington Post, smearing an absolute nobody in the national press for not being refused from a non-company holiday party two years prior. We have the self-righteousness of those would-be crusaders, and we have the self-censorship for fear of bringing down their wrath.

And in particular, we save a special set of poisons, not for the overt racists, nor even for those who fail to oppose them, but for those who would dare temper their opposition with some other principle. James Bennett's true crime was poisoning the purity of his allegiance to the cause by favoring Journalism. For this he was ejected from the paper. He is far from the only one who will lose his job or be blacklisted in the purges.

So good on you and everyone else for unsubscribing in the name of purity.

Ok, I think we just disagree on what is journalism and that’s fine. The Opinion page is not journalistic, it’s just other people’s op-eds selected by an editorial board and said board is not immune from either bias nor criticism.

The rest of the paper is generally outstanding, though they have some high profile screw ups. Can’t trust anything 100% ever, but I don’t think this incident reflects on the rest of the paper. Regular NYT subscribers (myself included) already know what they’re getting in Opinion, and I personally think it’s trash.

The NYT has published op-eds from Vladimir Putin and the Taliban.

And that’s infinitely more on-point than some relatively mild policy debates in the WSJ! The difference in those cases would be the foreign policy concerns vs a domestic debate, so there’s still some context to discuss, but the comment I’m replying to is blowing this out of proportion and also legitimizing Cotton’s op-Ed by comparing it the prior ones.

If you go back in time, the NY Times used to print a lot more conservative op-eds. For example, here's a classic, where William F Buckley, a well known conservative (from a different vein than modern conservatives) proposes tattooing a red letter A on the buttons of gay men infected with HIV:

http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-a...

Cotton could have written a far better editorial and people would complain a lot less. I tried to read it giving him the best intentions but it didn't take long to realize that he really just wanted to send out the military to beat people up.

Yep I’m not defending the NYT Opinions page or editorial board, in my opinion it’s an embarrassment for an otherwise solid paper of record (not defending NYT in general, either - they have made some serious mistakes).

However, the poster is trying to put the Cotton op-Ed in the same league as fairly mild policy debates in the WSJ. I find that dangerously close to legimitizing it.

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