News Information and Media Site: Byers Market: The New York Times faces the speech debate

June 4, 2020

By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles &

AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco

Good morning. 🗣️ Top talker: Former Defense Secretary James Mattis says President Donald Trump is a threat to the U.S. Constitution, and likens his response to the protests over George Floyd's death to Nazi tactics.

• The big picture: It is "an extraordinary condemnation," The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg writes, one in which a former secretary of defense "denounces the president for dividing the nation."

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Future of speech

The speech debate lands at The New York Times' door

Moving the Market: The national debate over speech policy that has rocked Silicon Valley in recent days has now landed at the door of The New York Times, as dozens of employees protested the paper's decision to publish an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., in which he calls on the president to mobilize the military against rioters.

• The big picture: Times staffers' opposition to the decision, which reached a fever pitch on social media last night, will test the Times' ambition of providing a broad range of perspectives on its editorial page, especially when those opinions appear to stand in the way of fiercely important causes like racial justice and freedom of assembly.

• It will also add kindling to a broader discussion over whether tech and media platforms that claim to champion free speech should remain agnostic or take sides in debates by limiting certain speech. (See: Facebook, Twitter and the Trump tweets.)

• Finally, it will provide a gut check on the status of a rising trend in corporate America, which is the growing power of employees to force change at their organizations through collective protest.

The op-ed: In the column, headlined "Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops," the Republican senator argues that rioters and looters (which he distinguishes from peaceful protesters) have exploited George Floyd's death and created an "orgy of violence."

• "These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives," Cotton writes. He goes on to argue that "an overwhelming show of force" is necessary to "restore order to our streets."

The blowback: Dozens of Times staffers protested Cotton's op-ed on Twitter, with many tweeting: "Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger." Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Times Magazine wrote, "As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this."

• The NewsGuild of New York, which represents many Times journalists, said the op-ed "promotes hate" and argued that media organizations "have a responsibility to hold power to account, not amplify voices of power without context and caution."

The response: James Bennet, the Times editorial page editor and an Atlantic alum, responded via Twitter: "Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy."

• "We understand that many readers find Senator Cotton's argument painful, even dangerous. We believe that is one reason it requires public scrutiny and debate." (When asked for comment, a Times spokesperson referred us to Bennet's tweets).

What's next: According to a Morning Consult poll conducted between May 29 and June 1, a majority of Americans — 58 percent — support cities using the U.S. military to bolster local law enforcement. That is very different than what Cotton proposes, which is the president invoking the Insurrection Act to unilaterally mobilize the military. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to dismiss military mobilization as a fringe idea among the American public.

• The question for The New York Times is whether or not it believes that such an idea deserves to be articulated in its Opinion pages. Bennet says it does, so that it may be scrutinized and debated. His critics say that he is recklessly empowering a dangerous idea.

One thing is certain: The debate over Cotton's column has drawn a great deal more attention to it, which means that his proposal for mobilizing the military is about to be the subject of even more scrutiny and debate — for better or for worse.

🗣️ Speech logic, con't 🗣️

In yesterday's newsletter, we examined the logic behind Mark Zuckerberg's decision to take no action on Trump's posts. Ben Thompson, who I quoted extensively in that examination, has since followed up with an even more full-throated endorsement of Zuckerberg's decision.

• "Interfering with the public utterances of the President of the United States is bad for the tech industry," he says, and "deciding what should or should not be fact-checked is a logistical nightmare."

As with Thompson's earlier post, this one is worth reading in full.

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Snap judgment

Evan Spiegel takes action on Trump content

Big in the Bay, big in the Beltway: Snapchat will no longer promote President Trump's content in its Discover section, staking out its own lane in the ongoing debate over political speech on social media, my colleague Ben Collins and I report.

• "We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover," Snapchat said. "Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society."

• Snapchat's change will remove Trump from the Discover section. But the president's account will remain visible on the platform, and anyone can follow the account for updates.

The big picture: Snap chief Evan Spiegel is taking a symbolic stand against Trump's rhetoric without really interfering with it, arguably putting him somewhere between Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg (who has taken no action) and Twitter's Jack Dorsey (who has placed warning labels on certain tweets).

• But the move is really more analogous to Daniel Ek's decision in 2018 to stop promoting R. Kelly's music on Spotify without actually removing it from the platform. You could still listen to "Ignition," but Spotify's algorithm wasn't going to encourage you to do so.

• In Trumpland, this is a distinction without a difference: In a dramatic and mostly factually inaccurate statement, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale called Spiegel a "radical" and accused Snapchat of trying to rig the election. (Joe Biden's response to the news on Snapchat probably only reinforced these suspicions).

What's next: When Spotify made its decision about R. Kelly, it did so as part of a policy against "hate content" and artists who demonstrate hateful conduct — an abstract guideline that raised questions about every artist from Robert Johnson and Miles Davis to Ozzy Osbourne and Dr. Dre. (Spotify later reversed the policy.)

• Spiegel may run into his own problems trying to determine what qualifies as an incitement of racial injustice on Snapchat. Those contours are certainly far easier to define than a broad-sweeping ban on "hate content," but there will still be plenty of gray area.

Market Links

• Sundar Pichai faces a data-tracking lawsuit (Axios)

• Bob Iger pledges $5m to NAACP, social justice groups (Variety)

• Jack Dorsey gives $3m to Colin Kaepernick's organization (CNBC)

• Tom Steyer hosts a virtual fundraiser for Joe Biden (Forbes)

• Gary Shapiro plans to hold CES 2021 in person (Verge)

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🏀 Sports report

The NBA nears its return

Talk of TV Land: The NBA's board of governors is expected to approve a proposal today to restart the 2019-2020 season on July 31 with 22 teams in Orlando, bringing professional basketball back after a four-and-a-half-month hiatus, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reports.

• The big picture: The return of the NBA could restore some semblance of normalcy to American life and provide much-needed revenue to the league and its media partners.

How it works: The plan would see 13 Western Conference teams and nine Eastern Conference teams play eight regular-season games before the playoffs. All games would take place at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando.

• "The top 16 teams in the Eastern and Western conferences will be joined by teams currently within six games of eighth place in the two conferences," Woj reports.

• "Prior to the playoffs, there may be a play-in tournament including the No. 8 and No. 9 teams."

What's next: The NBA's board of governors will hold a conference call and vote today at 12:30 p.m. ET.

📺 What's next: HBO Max is a hit with the kids. Despite being home to "The Sopranos," "Game of Thrones" and "Sex and the City," the most popular shows are "Looney Tunes Cartoons" and "The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo," per Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw.

See you tomorrow.