Apparently, when a New York Times reporter is promoted to the opinion pages, they’re free to speak on panel discussions at activist events? Philadelphia Magazine [1] reports that on Saturday, Times deputy op-ed editor Sewell Chan will speak at the Equality Forum, billed as the largest global “LGBT summit.”
The “National Military Panel discusses the challenges LGBT military personnel face after the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ with Sewell Chan, deputy editor at The New York Times,” they reported.
This is nothing new for Chan. Last December, he served as moderator for an LGBT-in-the-military event at the New York Public Library [2] to promote a new book titled “Our Time: Breaking the Silence of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’” (It was televised on C-SPAN [3].)
Chan began by promoting the event, and the book: “This is amazing, I’ve got to be there. I read through this book in one sitting...It’s an incredible resource I hope you’ll all read if you haven’t already.”
Chan joined the Washington Post out of Harvard in 2000 and joined the Times (in his hometown of New York) in 2004. He was named Deputy Op-ed Editor [4] in February of 2011.