The senator’s essay has raised important questions.
 | By Kathleen Kingsbury Acting Editorial Page Editor |
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As a reader of this newsletter, you are likely aware of the Op-Ed we recently published from Senator Tom Cotton and the debate it has generated. If you missed my newsletter on the subject from earlier in the week, you can read it here. |
Beyond issues of editorial quality, the piece raised questions about what qualifies as a subject of legitimate debate on opinion pages. “We as a news organization must air the opinion of someone like Senator Tom Cotton, but in a news article where we can check the facts, where we can push back,” our colleague at The New York Times Magazine, Nikole Hannah-Jones, said on CNN’s Reliable Sources. Others outside The Times have also used this as an opportunity to explore the role journalism should play in the age of Trump. Some are sounding alarm bells about the potential chilling effects the response to the Op-Ed may cause. |
You, our readers, have also weighed in with your views on the piece and its fallout, and I encourage you to continue writing in. |
You won’t be surprised to hear we’ve spent a lot of time talking about what we stand for in Times Opinion over the past few days. Michelle Goldberg explored how Donald Trump’s presidency has undermined the traditional model of op-ed pages. Kara Swisher urged news organizations and social media companies to more deeply consider who gets to use their platforms to voice ideas. Roxane Gay, chatting with readers, called out what she saw as real errors in judgment that led to the Cotton Op-Ed being published and, ultimately, the resignation of The Times’s editorial page editor. Nick Kristof addressed this topic in his newsletter this week, and Jamelle Bouie has shared some of his thoughts on Twitter. |
Today, two of our more conservative voices, Bret Stephens and Ross Douthat, also weigh in. “The value of Cotton’s Op-Ed doesn’t lie in its goodness or rightness,” Bret writes. “It lies in the fact that Cotton is a leading spokesman for a major current of public opinion. To suggest our readers should not have the chance to examine his opinions for themselves is to patronize them. To say they should look up his opinions elsewhere — say, his Twitter feed — is to betray our responsibility as a newspaper of record.” |
Why all this discussion? The upheaval that followed Senator Cotton’s Op-Ed has generated a necessary dialogue about the dangers and merits of creating a forum for debate in a time of political division and misinformation. The perspectives of our Opinion writers, plus the thoughtfulness of my newsroom colleagues and our readers, have elevated a conversation worth having and will help inform what discourse looks like in a polarized world. |
Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
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