The controversy over an op-ed published in the New York Times this month by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has finally dragged the world of opinion publishing into our national discussions about equal representation. It’s about time.
Newspaper opinion pages play an outsized role in shaping the perspectives of policymakers and influencers across most spheres of power. Many talented writers and outstanding thinkers never succeed in penetrating the opinion section, and the process often excludes voices that lack a place of privilege in society.
Of course, the exclusivity is part of what gives these journalistic institutions their allure. Entire careers have been made from writings that appeared in the hallowed pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or other traditional newspapers. But this arcane process also leaves out critical perspectives that deserve to be heard while echoing the views of a privileged few whose voices are already heavily amplified.
In June 2019, Mutale Nkonde, a fellow at Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, submitted an op-ed to the Times co-written with Mary Ann Franks calling attention to the proliferation of deep fakes they had uncovered in their work and specifically how deep fakes were targeting women of color.
They were also calling attention to the Deep Fakes Accountability Act they had helped write with the president of the Cyber Law Initiative and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).
After a brief expression of interest from an editor at the Times, the piece was declined without explanation. A few months later the story became major news.
Nkonde feels that her team wasn’t taken seriously. She told me that she has mostly given up, having concluded that she just can’t get a fair shot. It’s too bad because, in the end, the world misses hearing a powerful and important perspective.
Major papers work hard to protect their reputation for journalistic integrity, which makes the opinion page a particularly tricky world.
Certainly, editors must consider a range of factors including the timeliness, quality of writing and relevance to the news. And yet, by making the opinion pages the bastion of privilege and access, papers do themselves and their readers a disservice.
How may perspectives on critical issues have been lost over the years to the unconsciously biased eye of an op-ed editor? Was a writer ignored because the language didn’t perfect a certain style or the writer didn’t take a course on how to write the perfect op-ed? We’ll never know because not one of the major papers make public any information about the opinion submissions they get.
Something must change. No major paper publishes data on the numbers of women or people of color who are featured in opinion pages.
The transparency around newspaper staff and leadership, while far from acceptable, has pushed many institutions to try harder. Much more must be done on that front, and now it’s time to also ensure transparency and diversity in the opinion pages.
Only a few simple steps are needed to ensure influential newspapers are doing their utmost to ensure diversity of authorship and perspective in the opinion pages.
First, they can transparently publish guidelines on op-ed writing standards and put out regular public calls for new writers. Second, they can include a simple demographic questionnaire with each submission, enable the tracking of submissions relative to what is published. Finally, they could set quotas for women and writers of color for the op-ed page.
These steps would ensure that editors expand their vision to work with promising opinion writers whose work might not fit the typical mold but, with some coaching from a great editor, could meet exacting standards while bringing much needed diversity or perspective to the readers who crave it.
Does that mean editors must lower the bar in order to hit set numbers? Not at all. It means they read with an open mind and, in the process, widen the aperture to see work they might otherwise overlook.
