"You don't need to wear a mask when you go for a walk or a jog," writes David Leonhardt in Saturday's New York Times. Leonhardt is kind of a big foot—he won the 2011 Pulitzer prize for commentary, and he is a former Washington bureau chief of the Times. His advice is headlined "Three Steps for Safe Living." He also cites the authority of Donald G. "First Person in the Lead News Article" McNeil Jr., another Times reporter: "Donald, who's famously careful, bikes without a mask." Leonhardt testifies that he himself skips masks sometimes: "I do take occasional unmasked, distant walks with one or two friends. They help keep me sane as we head into a long, very hard winter."
This advice conflicts with what I have been reading elsewhere in the paper. The same Saturday paper that carried Leonhardt's "you don't need to wear a mask when you go for a walk or a jog" advice also carries a news article about the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Reports the Times: "Exercise should be done outdoors, with a mask and social distancing, the agency said." A November 24 Times article reported, "Among public health experts, there is near-unanimous endorsement of universal mask mandates to shield people from the virus and slow the pandemic."
In the state of Massachusetts, for example, Governor Baker imposed a mask order November 6, requiring face coverings in public places including "public streets and ways."
Leonhardt isn't the only Times columnist to flout the CDC guidelines. Farhad Manjoo wrote a column that said, "The C.D.C. says the safest way to spend Thanksgiving is to stay home. ...shouldn't I just go with that advice?... my wife and I decided that we would travel for Thanksgiving."
It makes for a sharp contrast with how the Times has treated President Trump. In a column headlined "What Is It With Trump and Face Masks?" Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "there's something very wrong with any definition of freedom that includes the right to gratuitously expose other people to the risk of disease and death — which is what refusing to wear a mask in a pandemic amounts to." A Times staff editorial in September said, "Mr. Trump's lack of leadership almost certainly made the nation's suffering greater, its death toll higher and its economic costs more severe in the long term. ... he repeatedly belittled and dismissed mask mandates and other social distancing edicts." A November 14 Times staff editorial said, "If Americans want to get the current surge under control through this long, dark winter, they need to skip indoor gatherings, including for the holidays. They need to avoid nonessential travel. They must wear face masks in all public places. .. It's also clear what state and local leaders need to do: Promote social distancing and mask-wearing, and consider mandating masks in communities where case counts are soaring."
Got that? A Times editorial said Americans "must wear face masks in all public places," and a Times news article reports CDC guidance that "Exercise should be done outdoors, with a mask and social distancing." Yet under the headline "steps for safe living," Leonhardt advises readers "You don't need to wear a mask when you go for a walk or a jog," and reports that he does "take occasional unmasked, distant walks with one or two friends." He doesn't specify whether these walks take place in public parks or on sidewalks or trails that may feature encounters with other pedestrians or hikers who haven't consented to the unmasked presence of Leonhardt and his one or two friends. It's not so much Leonhardt's behavior or McNeil's or Manjoo's that I object to; it's the fact that they are doing it while the newspaper's editorial writers and other news columns and the government are advising the rest of us to do something else. It's a journalistic parallel to California governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco mayor London Breed showing up at the French Laundry restaurant in Napa while their governments are recommending that people stay home.