"The opinion section in general is a case study in how essentially liberal institutions are undermined by the tools of their own liberalism. Illiberalism seeps into the hollows created by seemingly high-minded values about debate and the marketplace of ideas. The settled science about climate gets quickly unsettled by a columnist like Bret Stephens, a Bennet hire, who smuggles climate denialism onto the page by couching it in progressive-sounding language about debate, certainty and ecumenicism...
In any case, none of Stephens’ infelicities really matter if writing and thinking are valued primarily as exercises in provocation rather than persuasion. In the December meeting, Bennet described columnists as “people who are paid to have very, very strong convictions, and to believe that they’re right.” This creates what he called the “real moral hazards in the opinion environment in which we want to, say, we want to convene lots of voices from lots of point of view.”
In Bennet’s view, editorials — the unsigned pieces attributed to the Times editorial board as a whole — offer an antidote to morally or factually ambiguous pieces published on the opposite page. While the rest of the section is enacting a spirited performance of epistemological inquiry, the editorials get to carry the tablets down the mountain...
“People were not satisfied with his answers,” one staffer who attended the meeting told HuffPost in a text message, “since his answers were equivocal bullshit that didn’t really address that the opinion section abuses fact and elevates white male conservative voices under the guise of ‘diversity of thought.’ And that he admits to making mistakes without any concern or even acknowledgement of what the consequences of those ‘mistakes’ actually are.”
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a8db27de4b0273053a70f47
Related: at least two others on the NYT opinions page
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