In an argument on Facebook, New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet called University of Southern California journalism professor Marc Cooper an “asshole” for criticizing the paper’s decision to spike Charlie Hebdo’s Muhammad cartoons.
“[H]ow many people have to be shot in cold blood before your paper rules that you can show us what provoked the killers?” Cooper wrote.
That’s when Baquet struck back with the “asshole” epithet, and added that Cooper’s remark was “thoughtless and arrogant.”
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
“Dear Marc, appreciate the self righteous second guessing without even considering there might be another point of view. Hope your students are more open minded. Asshole,” wrote Baquet.
Baquet went on to call Cooper “pompous” and slammed his criticism of the Times as a “righteous cheap shot.”
Baquet later defended his Facebook comments in a statement to Politico’s Dylan Byers.
“Lots of people have disagreed with my decision,” he told Politico. “Some of them are in The Times. I get that. Mr. Cooper’s comment was nasty and arrogant. So I told him what I thought.”
Cooper told the Washington Free Beacon that Baquet’s comments to him were “disappointing” and “surprising.”
“If he had answered in a civil manner, it would be quite a positive development, because you’d say ‘Oh gosh, here’s an editor at the Times who actually cares what readers think,” said Cooper. “Clearly that’s not what happened, clearly this post of mine got under his skin, and he acted like a child and discredited himself. He threw a temper tantrum and really didn’t make many compelling arguments.”
Still, Cooper added, “it didn’t ruin my day that Dean Baquet called me an asshole.”
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