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This week, the New York Times experienced an uprising in its ranks and among its readers. The paper was denounced by its own staff and liberal pundits called for the entire editorial staff to be canned. Why? Because The New York Times actually reported news that was deemed harmful to the Democrats, specifically Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. The newspaper took the additional step of publishing a cringing explanation of why it reported the news that Mamdani lied on his Columbia application in claiming to be black.For liberals, it was an utter nightmare. For a party still defined by identity politics, Mamdani’s false claim over his race left many uncertain about how to react.The left has always maintained a high degree of tolerance for false claims by its own leaders, from Sen. Elizabeth Warren claiming to be a native American to Sen. Richard Blumenthal claiming to have served in the Vietnam War.The problem is when a news eco-chamber for many readers is shattered by an errant outbreak of journalism. Many Times readers live within a hermetically sealed news silo, relying on MSNBC for cable, The New York Times for print, and BlueSky for social media. You can literally go all day without being exposed to an opposing view or fact. Then suddenly this happens.
The result is often anger. It is the same response many in higher education have to “triggering” views being expressed on campus by conservative or libertarian speakers.
The fact is that the Mamdani story was obvious news—and confirmed by the candidate himself. Mamdani identified as both Asian and African American on his 2009 Columbia University application, according to the New York Times.
Some accused him of being a fraud while others suggested he was trying to abuse affirmative action.
The Times reported, adding:
Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.)
Other candidates, like Mayor Eric Adams, went after Mamdani, and the matter has now become an issue in the mayoral election.
The Times readers were outraged to the point that the paper published a lengthy statement from the Times’ assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust, Patrick Healy, attempting to explain why it decided to publish facts that undermined a Democratic candidate. Healy sheepishly explained that “When we hear anything of news value, we try to confirm it through direct sources. Mr. Mamdani confirmed this information in an interview with The Times.”
It did not help. Much like the infamous Cotton scandal, where editors were fired for allowing a Republican senator to print an opposing view on riots, writers and pundits demanded firings or attacked the journalists.
One such response came from Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who attacked the journalists themselves. Not surprisingly, the attack appropriately came on BlueSky, a social media site designed to be a safe place for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views.
Bouie slammed Times reporter, Benjamin Ryan, as stupid, claiming, “Everything I have seen about him screams a guy with little to no actual brain activity.”
After that outrageous attack, Bouie deleted the post, explaining, “I deleted several posts about a Times story because they violated Times social media standards.”
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