Political activists have started to take over newsrooms, forcing out people who hold “offensive” opinions. Where is all the intolerance coming from? At the New York Times, head opinion editor James Bennett resigned for committing the sin of running an op-ed by a Republican senator, which said the military should help control riots. Bennett resigned after his colleagues took to Twitter and eerily all posted this exact same wording: "Running this puts Black @NYTimes staffers in danger."
"That language spoke to a potential legal concern,” says Robby Soave, author of "Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump".
"Various workplace harassment protections that are well-intended,” says Soave, lead activists to say, "if you have a responsibility to have a racially hospitable climate in the workplace, then how can you allow someone to say something that offends me?'"
Stossel points out: "But [Cotton's op-ed] didn't put their lives in danger."
"No it didn't," he responds. "It's absurd, and they're only claiming it because that's their way -- that's their tactic for seizing power in the workplace."
Soave also says he knows where they learned this tactic, on college campuses. He covered the incident in 2016 where dozens of Yale students surrounded a professor and shouted at him, calling for him to be fired. What had he done? He defended his wife for sending out an email to students saying she had no business censoring Halloween costumes -- even ones that represented people from other cultures.
"The message that you sent proclaiming that cultural appropriation on Halloween is totally permissible is, is hurtful!” shouted one student.
Others broke into tears. One refused to shake the professor's hand, shouting, "I want your job to be taken from you!"
It was. He had to resign as the head of a Yale residential house. His wife did, too, and she also quit teaching.
Now those former students have graduated, and many are using the same tactics in the workforce, especially in the news media.
