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.
