Thread by @donmoyn

With David Brooks new column, the NY Times has featured five pieces, plus multiple reader's letters about Dorian Abbot being disinvited from giving a talk.
A professor who got fired at the behest of local politicians for political speech: zero hits thefire.org/lawsuit-fired-…

Put another way, NY Times readers have heard more about one professor being disinvited (and then reinvited) from a talk at MIT than the story about U Florida blocking multiple professors from testifying in lawsuits against the state government.

Why is the NY Times more focused on the Abbot case, rather than the U Florida censorship case, a story it broke? The simple answer is the opinion page, which has continued to push the case as an example of university failures, but can't find the same outrage for the Florida case.

So, even in the ostensibly liberal space of the NY Times: *some attacks on free speech are covered as news, some are not
*attacks on what are seen on conservative speech are more likely to migrate to the opinion page, where writers present them in calamitous terms

The problem is not new. Here is a review of NYT campus speech coverage in 16/17.
The coverage pushes readers to conclude that speech is primarily under attack from the left. As the mismatch of coverage on Abbot/Florida/Burnett cases show, it actually reflects an editorial choice.

Of course, its not just the NY Times: former NY Times editors who have been pushing the one-sided "woke mob" narrative are now setting themselves up to empty the pockets of rich donors who they have persuaded that the university is thoroughly corrupt.

Here is another piece on the imbalance in coverage of campus speech issues at the Times from @ParkerMolloy. Lets just be honest this isn't really about academic freedom of free speech principles generally, but about protecting and elevating certain views.
mediamatters.org/new-york-times…