#The thought police are seizing control of America’s liberal newsrooms

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James Bennet, the Editorial Page editor at The New York Times resigned over the weekend after backlash over an op-ed by US Sen. Tom Cotton.
R.UmarAbbasi

Debate is no longer allowed in America’s liberal newsrooms, and the left has the scalps to prove it.

James Bennet is out as New York Times editorial-page editor; Stan Wischnowski, as top editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Neither man was allowed to stay even after humiliating themselves by admitting their thought crimes and hailing the virtues of the lynch mobs.

Bennet’s sin: His paper published an opinion column by a US senator arguing for deploying the military if riots got out of control.

“This puts Black @nytimes staff in danger,” numerous Times employees tweeted, without explanation, with some (virtually) walking off the job in protest.

Letting Sen. Tom Cotton write what a majority of Americans believe is dangerous? Pure idiocy. Especially when the paper’s run pieces by a host of tyrants, without complaints.

Yet, after briefly defending the principle of free exchange of ideas, Bennet and the paper’s publisher folded. Now Bennet and his No. 2 are gone. Acting in the job is Katie Kingsbury, who told staff that anyone who finds “any piece of Opinion journalism — including headlines or social posts or photos or you name it — that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately.”

Wischnowski is unemployed thanks to a headline. “Buildings Matter, Too” ran above a piece by Pulitzer Prize-winner Inga Saffron, who warned that riot “damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift.”

That was too disrespectful to #BlackLivesMatter — though the piece was perfectly progressive. Now the Inquirer is vowing to empower the “sensitivity police,” too.

Employees of that crucible of democracy, the press, now see voices different from their own as a threat to be crushed — and the bosses don’t dare tell them no. Pray for the republic.