No free speech at the New York Times: half of NYT employees say they're afraid to speak up

Roughly half of employees at the New York Times said they don't feel like they can speak freely at work, according to an internal survey, the New York Post reports.

Only 51 percent of those survey responded affirmatively to the statement "there is a free exchange of views in this company; people are not afraid to say what they really think."

"Although the majority of us feel well-informed, many indicated that differing viewpoints aren’t sought or valued in our work," read the Times' internal review of the data.

"Relatedly, we saw some negative responses on whether there’s a free exchange of views in the company, and scored below the benchmark on this question," the Times continued.

Some 74 percent of the Times' staff said that leaders and staff embraced differences in ethnicity and race, which is a 10 percent decrease from the 2019 results of the same survey.

"We saw steep declines in answers about leaders and colleagues accepting and embracing differences in race, gender, identity and religion. Responses from Black and Latino colleagues declined at an even greater rate," the Times said.

The New York Times currently suffers from an embattled newsroom, with a recent controversy over the firing of  veteran science reporter Donald McNeil for the non-derogatory use of a slur posing many members of the staff against each other, according to the Post.

Another recent conflict within the Times was when several employees protested the decision to publish an op-ed from Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton that urged the use of federal soldiers to put down the summer's BLM/Antifa riots that destroyed the downtown areas of cities across the nation. Some employees said the op-ed put "Black @nytimes staff in danger," and sharp backlash ensued.