A deeper look into the controversy of The New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’
Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” earlier this year. (Credit: mpi43/MediaPunch /IPX)
The New York Times’ “1619 Project” about slavery in the United States came out more than a year ago. But it’s now back in the news with a Times opinion columnist criticizing the piece and a call for its Pulitzer Prize to be removed.
I’m still not sure why this is suddenly a topic again right now. But it is.
The Washington Post’s Sarah Ellison is the latest to take a deep dive into “The 1619 Project” with her latest piece: “How the 1619 Project Took Over 2020.” Ellison looks at the backlash the project took from scholars, politicians and even the Opinion section of the Times. The controversy centers on some of the claims made in “The 1619 Project,” such as what role slavery had to do with the colonists’ decision to declare independence from Britain.
Ellison quotes a wide array of sources, including the project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Sean Wilentz, the Princeton historian who sparked the pushback against some of the project’s assertions.
“I threw the thing across the room, I was so astounded,” Wilentz said upon reading it, “because I ran across a paragraph on the American Revolution, and it was just factually wrong.”
Wilentz, along with several other academics, then went public with their criticisms and sent a letter to the Times. Jake Silverstein — editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine, which published the project — told Ellison, “We perceived it right away to be an attack on the project,”
Thus began a controversy that continues to this day and has dozens of people weighing in, including President Donald Trump.
Hannah-Jones was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, but just last week a conservative group called the National Association of Scholars called for her Pulitzer to be revoked.
The Pulitzer Prize Board put out a statement on Tuesday and has no intention of taking back Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer.
The Board wrote, “That essay was selected as one of three finalists by a jury judging entries in the Commentary category. In deciding among the three, the Pulitzer Board considered the Times revision of the piece, the editors’ notes relating to it, and criticisms raised by historians and others.”
Meanwhile, the Times is standing by “1619.” In a note to staff on Tuesday, Times executive editor Dean Baquet wrote the project is among the most important pieces of journalism the Times has published in his time as executive editor. He reminded colleagues that he does not oversee the Opinion section, which ran a column by Bret Stephens, who criticized the project by calling it “failed.”
Baquet added, “This column, however, raised questions about the journalistic ethics and standards of 1619 and the work of Nikole Hannah-Jones, who inspired and drove the project. That criticism I firmly reject. The project fell fully within our standards as a news organization. In fact, 1619 — and especially the work of Nikole — fills me with pride. Our readers, and I believe our country, have benefited immensely from the principled, rigorous and groundbreaking journalism of Nikole and the full team of writers and editors who brought us this transformative work.”
Hannah-Jones, however, told Ellison that she does regret the section on the American Revolution.
“I should have been more careful with how I wrote that,” Hannah-Jones said, “because I don’t think that any other fact would have given people the fodder that this has, and I am tortured by it. I’m absolutely tortured by it.”
Pushing Trump’s conspiracies
A Pennsylvania official mail-in ballot for the 2020 general election. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
President Trump keeps pushing this idea of widespread voter fraud with mail-in voting even though there has been no proof that such widespread fraud exists. But, reportedly, Fox News is doing what it can to help the president find that fraud.
The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove, Diana Falzone and Justin Baragona write, “In recent weeks, Fox News’ Brain Room — the channel’s longtime research resource for its dwindling population of fact-based journalists, which suffered disproportionately in the latest round of layoffs — launched a behind-the-scenes operation that current and former staffers say is designed to reinforce and amplify Trump’s erroneous accusations.”
The Daily Beast reports that Fox News vice president and managing editor Tom Lowell sent a memo on Sept. 30 that said, “Starting this Monday, October 5th, the Brainroom Research Team will launch the Election Integrity Project. Included will be a one-stop document broken up by state that showcases different stories where election integrity is potentially compromised.”
Could one look at such a project and suggest it actually is a worthwhile attempt to uncover voter irregularities? On its surface, yes. But a Fox News veteran who was not named but reportedly has knowledge of the Election Integrity Project told The Daily Beast, “What it feels like is an attempt to push more baseless conspiracy theories and scare the viewers into thinking the election is being ‘stolen.’ It isn’t. It’s alarming that the Brain Room is a part of this, like it’s an attempt to give it an air of legitimacy. I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this before. … It feels like an attempt to use the Brain Room to try to lend credibility to something that isn’t credible. It feels like a stunt to support Trump’s baseless allegations that the Democrats are trying to ‘steal’ the election. If it is a collection or database of alleged voter fraud examples, I
could see it being used to support Trump’s efforts to contest the election results, if Biden wins.”
And check out this damning quote from a Fox News staffer who said that voter fraud “is absolutely not an issue and is a figment of Donald Trump’s imagination that Fox is helping to promote. Trump takes his constituents as Fox takes its viewers — naive and uninformed — so they’re both getting away with it. This is extremely deleterious to the voting population. By finding outlier stories — low-percentage cases of something going wrong with a ballot — they are buttressing Donald Trump’s conspiracy theory of voter fraud. This should come as no surprise, however, because Fox is taking advantage of the fact that its audience only gets its facts from Fox — and the people running Fox know that.”
Fox News didn’t comment to The Daily Beast.
But this is noteworthy. A study by Pew Research looked at TV viewing habits and belief in voter fraud. Of those who say voter fraud is a “major problem,” 52% list Fox News as their main source of news. Compare that to CBS (20%), ABC (17%), CNN (16%), NBC (14%), MSNBC (14%), NPR (3%) and The New York Times (3%)
Meanwhile, that same survey showed only 3% who consider Fox News their main news source see voter fraud as “not a problem” at all. No other group is anywhere close to that number. The next closest are CBS viewers at 25%.
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