Last month, the New York Times published an opinion piece by the US senator, Tom Cotton, calling for the army to be used to quell rioters during the Black Lives Matter protests. Despite this proposition being supported by 52 per cent of Americans, the paper’s staff were not happy about its publication, and many publicly said the piece’s mere existence put their lives in danger.
Shortly afterwards, an ‘Editors’ Note’ was added to the piece and James Bennett, who had defended publishing the article, resigned from his position as editorial page editor. At the slightest sign of pressure from its staff, the Times completely buckled.
Over at the Wall Street Journal, it appeared that a similar dynamic might be playing out this week, after 280 of its journalists signed a letter to their publisher, complaining about the spread of ‘misinformation’ in the paper’s opinion section.
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