The NYT bows: "In an embarrassing about-face, The New York Times said Thursday that an opinion piece it ran by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton... did not meet its standards."

"Cotton’s op-ed, titled 'Send in the Troops' and first posted online late Wednesday, caused a revolt among Times journalists, with some saying it endangered black employees. Some staff members called in sick Thursday in protest. The Times said in a statement that a 'rushed editorial process' led to publication of a piece that did not meet its standards.... Earlier Thursday, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and editorial page editor James Bennet defended its publication, saying they believed it was important to discuss controversial ideas in a public forum rather than keep them quiet. But, the Times reported that later, Bennet revealed that he had not read Cotton’s piece prior to its publication. 'As a result, we’re planning to examine both short term and long term changes' to its opinion pages including expanding its fact-checking operation and reducing the number of op-eds, which are opinion pieces written by outside contributors that it publishes, the Times said [in] its statement.... Also Thursday, the Philadelphia Inquirer apologized for a 'horribly wrong' decision to use the headline 'Buildings Matter, Too' on an article. Some 30 members of its 210-member editorial staff had called in sick Thursday following the mistake, which black staff members angrily condemned...."

AP reports.

Cotton reacted, saying the NYT is "surrendering to the mindless woke mob."

A particular problem with Cotton's piece was that it spoke of "left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes," but the NYT has not yet reported that the violent element was antifa. Its news story on June 1 had said "conservative commentators are asserting with little evidence that antifa, the far-left anti-fascism activist movement coordinates the riots and looting."

Whether Cotton was right or wrong about the facts, there is a problem with factual assertions in op-eds. I've written op-eds for the NYT, and it was with a very short deadline and I was trusted to get the facts in order. I don't know how much the Times intends to change its process, but I assume it wants and needs to have some distance between itself and the writers it brings in from the outside to give a hot take on a breaking controversial story.

ADDED: Why isn't there more reporting in the NYT about who's responsible for the violence and disorder accompanying the protests? A rational inference is that they are not pursuing it or they are suppressing what they have because it impugns the left. Please rebut that presumption if it's wrong, NYT.