Over the last several years, the New York Times has been undergoing an “awokening” of sorts, with the deeply flawed, historically illiterate 1619 Project being one of the more notable turning points for their reporters and editors going from being mouthpieces for the activist left to becoming Democrat activists themselves.

It’s a mission that gained momentum at the start of the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, when Times reporters staged what was called an “open revolt” over the now-infamous Tom Cotton op-ed that suggested the best way to quell the rioting was for then-President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

“Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger,” several of them tweeted, followed by a “sickout,” meltdowns, and eventually the forced resignation of their editorial page editor, James Bennet. Nearly three years later, former Times reporter Shawn McCreesh likened the uproar over the op-ed to a “Maoist struggle session.”

Among other things that happened in the aftermath of what essentially was a woke left takeover of the newsroom was another forced resignation. Veteran Times health and science reporter Donald McNeil Jr. was pushed out in February 2021 after 150 staffers were triggered over him saying the “n-word” contextually after a student asked him about its usage during a 2019 NYT-sponsored student trip to Peru.

A couple of months later, the Times put out an ad actively seeking a director of opinion strategy, where one of the key responsibilities would be “connecting and ensuring alignment between efforts in Opinion and around the wider newsroom and company.” While not a surprise considering the paper had already been hiring people from “outlets that practiced advocacy journalism,” it was still an eye-opening moment.

In the fall of 2021, we also learned that the paper, according to former Times tech reporter Nellie Bowles, held a damaging Kenosha riots article until after the 2020 presidential election.

Articles related to so-called transgender rights were a different matter, however, as the paper let a few surprisingly fair and balanced pieces slip through on both the news and opinion sides, all of which led to tantrums from the woke chorus. There was also the Times editorial board and their acknowledgment of the problematic nature of cancel culture, further evidence that not all hope was lost.

Here we are today, and the war between the few sane people left at the Times versus Woke Inc. is spilling over in a very public way, with the Wall Street Journal reporting on the “rebellion” currently taking place over the paper’s coverage of transgender and so-called social justice issues, as well as the Israel-Hamas war:

My latest: A leak probe inside the New York Times shows cracks in the culture of one of America’s leading newsrooms https://t.co/IS4iRRJPJQ

— Alexandra Bruell (@alexbruell) April 12, 2024

From the story:

Over the past several weeks, Charlotte Behrendt, a top Times editor in charge of probing workplace issues in the newsroom, has summoned close to 20 employees for interviews to determine whether staffers leaked confidential information related to Gaza war coverage to another media outlet.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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