'Chasm' between old-fashioned journalists and 'woke' staffers at the NY Times: Kurtz
Fox News host of 'MediaBuzz' Howard Kurtz gives his take on the cancel culture taking place at The New York Times.
Fox News’ “Media Buzz” host Howard Kurtz feels The New York Times needs to cover President-elect Joe Biden fairly, instead of fawning over the Democrat, if the paper wants to re-establish itself as a credible news organization.
Kurtz joined “American’s Newsroom” on Thursday to discuss a scathing New York magazine piece that examined the “open secret” that the paper is “published by and for coastal liberals” and questioned if it “can again become the paper of record," while pointing out that several staffers agreed with Bari Weiss' infamous resignation letter painting the once-proud paper as toxic workplace with leftist viewpoints.
SEVERAL NEW YORK TIMES STAFFERS AGREED WITH BARI WEISS' SCATHING RESIGNATION LETTER, REPORT CLAIMS
“When even the liberal New York magazine is calling The New York Times ‘the paper of the resistance,’ that tells you something about the climate,” Kurtz said.
New York contributing editor Reeves Wiedeman detailed the Times’ liberal staffers who lost it earlier this year when their paper published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton headlined “Send in the Troops” at the height of nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody. The backlash over the opinion piece eventually resulted in then-editor James Bennet’s abrupt exit after internal backlash.
The magazine reiterated a claim by then-columnist Weiss that the paper had a “civil war” going on internally, with young liberal staffers feuding with the industry veterans. Weiss went on to quit the Times with a scathing letter in which she said was bullied by colleagues in an "illiberal environment,” noting she doesn’t understand how such toxic behavior is allowed inside the newsroom.
The magazine reported that many Times staffers agreed with Weiss’ resignation letter critiques.
“While Bari Weiss’s description of a young woke mob taking over the paper was roundly criticized, several Times employees I spoke to saw truth to the dynamic,” Wiedeman wrote.
“It seems to me, that according to this piece, not only did people agree with her but that colleagues are sniping at each other… there is a chasm, in my view, between old-fashioned journalist at the paper, which includes executive editor Dean Baquet, who want to at least have some attempt at being fair, and some of the more woke digital staffers and African-American staffers who feel the paper must take a stand,” Kurtz said.
Kurtz noted that even the paper’s opinion section, which “is supposed to be devoted to some diversity,” is against Trump and Republicans.
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Kurtz said “the questions hanging over the future of the newspaper” are whether or not it covers President-elect Joe Biden as aggressively as it covered Trump.
“You have a situation now where the paper, it was so successful to bash Trump, digital subscriptions more than doubling… whether or not the Times can now make a turn, and sort of re-establish itself as a more credible source for people that don’t agree with the liberal editorial pages will really depend on whether the newspaper decides to cozy up to Joe Biden when he is in the White House,” Kurtz said.
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