New York Times opinion editor out

Opinion Editor James Bennet is out at the New York Times, resigning after the backlash to Tom Cotton's column calling for a military crackdown on Americans protesting police brutality.

Mr. Bennets swift fall from one of the most powerful positions in American journalism comes as hundreds of thousands of people have marched in recent weeks in protest of racism in law enforcement and society. The protests were set in motion when George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, died last month after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officers knee.

The foment has reached other newsrooms. On Saturday night, Stan Wischnowski resigned as top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer days after an article in the newspaper about the effects of protests on the urban landscape carried the headline Buildings Matter, Too. The headline prompted an apology published in The Inquirer, a heated staff meeting and a sickout by dozens of journalists at the paper.

The fascist politics of Cotton's column were revolting and inappropriate for promotion by the Times, but Bennet's resignation can be overthought. He jumped on Twitter to lecture readers about appreciating "counter-arguments" and "public scrutiny", but it turned out he hadn't even read it himself before it was published. Performing this level of sanctimonious incompetence in public would be humiliating even if the column were about Spongebob Squarepants. Read the rest