Written by by Stacey Matthews at legalinsurrection.com
Over the last several years, the New York Times has been undergoing an “awokening” of sorts, with the deeply flawed, historically illiterate 1619 Project being one of the more notable turning points for their reporters and editors going from being mouthpieces for the activist left to becoming Democrat activists themselves.
It’s a mission that gained momentum at the start of the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, when Times reporters staged what was called an “open revolt” over the now-infamous Tom Cotton op-ed that suggested the best way to quell the rioting was for then-President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
“Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger,” several of them tweeted, followed by a “sickout,” meltdowns, and eventually the forced resignation of their editorial page editor, James Bennet. Nearly three years later, former Times reporter Shawn McCreesh likened the uproar over the op-ed to a “Maoist struggle session.”
Among other things that happened in the aftermath of what essentially was a woke left takeover of the newsroom was another forced resignation. Veteran Times health and science reporter Donald McNeil Jr. was pushed out in February 2021 after 150 staffers were triggered over him saying the “n-word” contextually after a student asked him about its usage during a 2019 NYT-sponsored student trip to Peru.
A couple of months later, the Times put out an ad actively seeking a director of opinion strategy, where one of the key responsibilities would be “connecting and ensuring alignment between efforts in Opinion and around the wider newsroom and company.” While not a surprise considering the paper had already been hiring people from “outlets that practiced advocacy journalism,” it was still an eye-opening moment.