Former New York Times editor James Bennet, who was forced to resign after an internal uproar over the now-infamous Tom Cotton op-ed, revealed details Thursday about his forced resignation and "pathetic" comments he felt forced to make on a Zoom meeting with upset staffers.
In the days of civil unrest following George Floyd's murder, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., penned a piece under the headline written by the Times, "Send in the Troops," suggesting the military should be deployed to quell the riots if such violence continued in cities across the country.
The piece sparked fierce backlash not just by liberals on Twitter but by New York Times employees, many of them claiming Cotton's piece "puts Black @NYT staff in danger." After initially defending the op-ed, the Times published a lengthy editor's note expressing regret for running the piece, saying it "fell short of our standards." Bennet was later forced to resign in one of the most bizarre and controversial media scandals in recent memory.
Bennet, now a columnist for The Economist and the brother of Democratic Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, noted the Cotton piece caused significant internal backlash, which was one of many "cycles of Twitter outrage" sparked by Times stories and opinion pieces over the years. He said "the leadership of the New York Times is losing control of its principles" in a piece headlined, "When The New York Times Lost Its Way."
"The publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, who was about two years into the job, understood why we’d published the op-ed. He had some criticisms about packaging; he said the editors should add links to other op-eds we’d published with a different view. But he’d emailed me that afternoon, saying: ‘I get and support the reason for including the piece,’ because, he thought, Cotton’s view had the support of the White House as well as a majority of the Senate. As the clamour grew, he asked me to call [Dean] Baquet, the paper’s most senior editor," Bennet wrote.
"Like me, Baquet seemed taken aback by the criticism that Times readers shouldn’t hear what Cotton had to say. Cotton had a lot of influence with the White House, Baquet noted, and he could well be making his argument directly to the president, Donald Trump. Readers should know about it. Cotton was also a possible future contender for the White House himself, Baquet added," he continued. "And, besides, Cotton was far from alone: lots of Americans agreed with him—most of them, according to some polls. ‘Are we truly so precious?’ Baquet asked again, with a note of wonder and frustration."
Bennet continued:" The answer, it turned out, was yes. Less than three days later, on Saturday morning, Sulzberger called me at home and, with an icy anger that still puzzles and saddens me, demanded my resignation. I got mad, too, and said he’d have to fire me. I thought better of that later. I called him back and agreed to resign, flattering myself that I was being noble."
Prior to stepping down, Bennet explained that he was forced to apologize on a company-wide Zoom.
"The plan had been for the newsroom to talk about its coverage of the protests. Now the only subject was going to be the op-ed. Early that morning, I got an email from Sam Dolnick, a Sulzberger cousin and a top editor at the paper, who said he felt ‘we’ – he could have only meant me – owed the whole staff ‘an apology for appearing to place an abstract idea like open debate over the value of our colleagues’ lives, and their safety.’ He was worried that I and my colleagues had unintentionally sent a message to other people at the Times that: ‘We don’t care about their full humanity and their security as much as we care about our ideas,’" Bennet wrote, noting that he was contacted by a Sulzberger ally and advised to both apologize and acknowledge his "privilege."
Bennet ruefully wrote a "Zoom call with a couple of thousand people is a disorienting experience."
"I do not recommend it. As my first turn to speak came up, I was still struggling with what I should apologize for. I was not going to apologize for denying my colleagues’ humanity or endangering their lives. I had not done those things. I was not going to apologize for publishing the op-ed. Finally, I came up with something that felt true," he wrote. "I told the meeting that I was sorry for the pain that my leadership of Opinion had caused. What a pathetic thing to say. I did not think to add, because I’d lost track of this truth myself by then, that opinion journalism that never causes pain is not journalism. It can’t hope to move society forward."
He continued: "As I look back at my notes of that awful day, I don’t regret what I said. Even during that meeting, I was still hoping the blow-up might at last give me the chance either to win support for what I had been asked to do, or to clarify once and for all that the rules for journalism had changed at the Times."
Bennet said his remarks were immediately vilified on the company's internal Slack messaging system.
"The next morning I was told to resign," he wrote.
He added the lengthy editor's note attached to the piece saying it should never have been published went further than he anticipated.
The New York Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
