New York Times deputy managing editor Clifford Levy took to Twitter to explain why the paper published profanity said by new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
“After top editors, including Dean Baquet, discussed whether it was proper… We concluded that it was newsworthy that a top Trump aide used such language,” Levy wrote. “And we didn’t want our readers to have to search elsewhere to find out what Scaramucci said.”
The result was expletives landing in the Times because Scaramucci’s news-making phone call with a reporter from The New Yorker was so relevant that the paper decided to publish his comments in full.
“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c–k,” Scaramucci said about Trump’s chief strategist during a heated phone call with reporter Ryan Lizza.
Scaramucci also called Chief of Staff Reince Priebus “a f–king paranoid schizophrenic” during the phone call that featured a variety of profanity.
Levy also tweeted, “You may not believe me, given the Scaramucci brouhaha, but coincidentally, we just published ‘The Case for Cursing,’” with a link to the paper’s guidelines on the issue.
You may not believe me, given the Scaramucci brouhaha, but coincidentally, we just published “The Case for Cursing” https://t.co/8CgD27bOWf pic.twitter.com/SvTiGAFzrx
— Cliff Levy (@cliffordlevy) July 28, 2017