The New York Times Descends Into Lunacy

Image result for new york times meme

Conservatives over the years have created a cottage industry dedicated to monitoring media bias at places like the New York Times. The formula is simple: Find some former liberal journalist who has repented of his ways (or at least a right-wing activist who knows his way around the press); create a blog or TV segment with a catchy name (*TimesWatch*); begin rooting through articles and transcripts for subtle examples of left-wing slant; slap them up on the screen; voila, instant outrage.

It’s a fun beat, one I once worked myself, though I do worry about its future. Because at least with the Times, there is no need for a middleman anymore. America’s paper of record has become patently and painfully ridiculous. No longer a rich if distinctly Manhattan chronicle of news, the Times today looks more like a Soviet satellite state written as farce, with woke purges and thoughtcrime convictions set to calliope music.

The latest example of this comes amid a controversy surrounding seasoned Times science reporter Donald McNeil, Jr. Back in 2019, McNeil represented the Times on a high school trip to Peru, where he was asked by one of the students whether a classmate should have been suspended for using the N-word in a video when she was 12. In answering the question, McNeil himself uttered the slur. He also reportedly challenged other woke shibboleths, such as that cultural appropriation is harmful. Parents promptly complained and Times editor Dean Baquet stepped in to investigate. He found that McNeil’s “remarks were offensive and that he showed extremely poor judgment, but that it did not appear to me that his intentions were hateful or malicious.” McNeil got off with a warning.

That is, until the rent-a-mob that the Times charitably calls “newsroom staff” got wind of what had happened. Out of the howling nether-regions of a Slack group chat came a furious letter signed by more than 150 Times employees that upbraided Baquet for being too lenient with McNeil. The signatories professed to be “deeply disturbed” by the paper’s response and to feel “disrespected” by McNeil. They then coughed up what may be the best description of postmodern American philosophic life that I’ve yet seen: “what matters is how an act makes the victims feel.” So said Socrates to Glaucon. Baquet quickly abandoned his deeply unreasonable position that decades of quality reporting ought to outweigh a single episode of insensitivity. McNeil was forced out. His witch trial is scheduled for next month.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-new-york-times-descends-into-lunacy/

Forum

The New York Times Descends Into Lunacy

Replies