OUR BAD

New York Times Apologizes for Tom Cotton ‘Send in the Troops’ Op-Ed

A statement from Times leadership said it would beef up the fact-checking of opinion pieces and publish fewer of them.

The New York Times apologized Thursday for publishing an op-ed the day before by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) headlined “Send in the Troops” and calling for the use of U.S. military forces to quell violent protests over the police killing of George Floyd. The piece elicited strong backlash, most of all from the Times’ own staffers, who said the column’s overt call for violence endangered their black colleagues. They discussed their grievances at a meeting Thursday, which led to more grievances. The paper’s apology, posted by a Times media reporter, read, “We’ve examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication. This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards.” The paper promised to amp up the fact-checking operation in its opinion section—Cotton’s piece contained assertions Times journalists had publicly debunked—and publish fewer opinion pieces.