Edited by: TJVNews.com
It seems like the “woke” crowd has once again pervaded the internal structure of the New York Times. Maintaining a “politically correct” posture has always been the mantra at the alleged “paper of record” but now things are heating up due to the termination of veteran reporter Donald McNeil.
According to a report in the NY Post, McNeil tendered his resignation after a 45-year career with the Times over remarks he made to a group of teenage students during a Times-sponsored education trip to Peru in 2019 in which the N word was used.
Jumping to McNeil’s defense was Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens. The former Wall Street Journal columnist penned a column with a tentative title “Regardless of Intent” but according to Stephens the column was spiked by Times publisher AG Sulzberger.
Meanwhile, a battle royal of sorts is brewing inside the Times. According to the Post, staffers who demanded McNeil’s ouster for alleged racism are locking horns with those at the Times who have accused the paper of acquiescing to a cancel culture mob mentality.
In an internal email obtained by The Daily Beast on Thursday, Stephens said, “If you’re wondering why it wasn’t in the paper, it’s because AG Sulzberger spiked it,” he wrote atop the email. His claim was first reported by NBC’s Dylan Byers.
A copy of the column obtained and published by the New York Post late Thursday showed Stephens singling out New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and accusing The Times’ of hypocrisy, writing that “The Times has never previously been shy about citing racial slurs in order to explain a point,” according to the Daily Beast report.
According to the Daily Beast report, “more than 150 staffers sent an “outraged” email to the paper’s bosses, at one point telling Baquet that intent is “irrelevant” in this case. And so, upon the reporter’s exit last Friday, the Baquet wrote: “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent.” On Thursday, Baquet walked back the comment slightly saying, “Of course intent matters when we’re talking about language in journalism. Intent matters,” as was reported by the Daily Beast.
“Do any of us want to live in a world, or work in a field, where intent is categorically ruled out as a mitigating factor?” Stephens asked in his column. “Every serious moral philosophy, every decent legal system, and every ethical organization cares deeply about intention,” Stephens wrote. “It is the difference between murder and manslaughter. It is an aggravating or extenuating factor in judicial settings. It is a cardinal consideration in pardons (or at least it was until Donald Trump got in on the act). It’s an elementary aspect of parenting, friendship, courtship and marriage.”
“A hallmark of injustice,” Stephens added, “is indifference to intention.”
When the Daily Beast reached out to Stephens for a comment on the story he refused to speak with them and hung up abruptly.
Speaking to the Daily Beast in an interview, Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury
In an interview with the Daily Beast, Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury disputed Stephens’ account, telling them that while she consulted with Sulzberger about the column, it was her decision not to run the column.
“I have an especially high bar of running any column that could reflect badly on a colleague and I didn’t feel that this piece rose to that level,” she said, noting that she believed Baquet was planning on correcting the record about the paper’s view on “intent.”
“Bret and I had a professional conversation to kill the column on Monday night and he expressed his disappointment and we moved on,” she told the Daily Beast.
On Thursday, Baquet said his comments about “intent” were made “ham-handedly” and were an “oversimplification” that he chalked up to a “deadline mistake,” according to the Post report.
He added that” “Of course intent matters when we are talking about language in journalism. The author and his purpose also matter, the moment matters. The slur we’ve been discussing is a vile one. I’ve been called it. But it appears in our pages and it will no doubt appear in our pages again.
“It should not be used for effect. It comes with a grim history and it’s a blow to the gut … each use should be put to the test. That’s why we have a style book. But the main thing is of course intent matters.”
The Daily Beast reported that initially McNeil was reprimanded for his comments during the trip to Peru, however both parents and teachers were upset by use of this racial slur and for sexist remarks that he made. They registered their complaints to the top brass at the paper.
A statement was released from McNeil that said he initially did not understand how hurtful his use of the N-word had been and he was sorry to have uttered it, according to the Post report.
Rather than addressing how the racist comment affected students on the Peru trip, Stephens side stepped it and launched a rigorous defense of his colleague, according to his detractors.
While Stephens is the only columnist at the Times who extols politically conservative views on issues, he was not a Trump supporter and initially expressed revulsion over Trump’s candidacy in 2016.
According to a source who spoke to the Jewish Voice on the condition of anonymity, Stephens was questioned several years ago by a publisher of a local Jewish newspaper about his decision to move from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. The source said that Stephens verbally lambasted the publisher; using harsh language and raising his voice.
