NYT Editor Fired For Publishing Cotton Op-Ed Blasts Paper in First Comments Since Ouster: ‘Set Me on Fire and Threw Me in the Garbage’

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Former New York Times editor James Bennet wants to make it clear he did not and does not apologize for the op-ed authored by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK).

The controversial 2020 piece took on protests following the death of George Floyd, and the Republican senator getting his thoughts on the subject in the Times stirred up a wave of pushback, including from employees. Bennet ended up leaving his position as the head of the paper’s Editorial Page.

Bennet took a look back at the events surrounding his departure from the Times, and he believes the paper missed an opportunity that came from the fallout from Cotton’s piece.

“My regret is that editor’s note. My mistake there was trying to mollify people,” Bennet told Semafor co-founder Ben Smith for a report on Bennet and Smith’s former employer.

Bennet accused Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger of missing a “big opportunity” at the time of the Cotton controversy.

“[Sulzberger] blew the opportunity to make clear that the New York Times doesn’t exist just to tell progressives how progressives should view reality. That was a huge mistake and a missed opportunity for him to show real strength,” he said.

He had harsher words for Sulzenberger, accusing the publisher of completely abandoning him.

“When push came to shove at the end, he set me on fire and threw me in the garbage and used my reverence for the institution against me. This is why I was so bewildered for so long after I had what felt like all my colleagues treating me like an incompetent fascist,” Bennet said.

Though it appeared he held little back in his discussion, Smith reported that Bennet reached out after their interview to add one final defiant thought.

“One more thing that sometimes gets misreported: I never apologized for publishing the piece and still don’t,” he declared.

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