*By Amanda Weston* The New Yorker faced backlash Tuesday after editor David Remnick's controversial decision to boot President Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon from the lineup of the magazine's annual festival next month. But did Remnick make the right decision? Wall Street Journal digital media reporter Benjamin Mullin said it really depends on who you ask. "From the perspective of many on \[The New Yorker's\] staff, he did not make a mistake; changing his mind was the right decision to make," Mullin said Tuesday in an interview on Cheddar. "On the other hand, if you're somebody who reads The New Yorker, who thinks that Steve Bannon's politics are not out of bounds, then you think David Remnick made a huge mistake by dis-inviting Steve Bannon." For Mullin, it's more complicated than a simple right-wrong distinction. "It's not for me to judge whether or not he made the right decision," he said. "But I will say that he probably made the decision that will secure the festival's commercial future." After news that Remnick planned to interview Bannon on stage at the festival in October, many A-list celebrities threatened to pull out of appearances in protest. Actor Jim Carrey [tweeted](https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/1036734398702309376), "Bannon? And me? On the same program? Could never happen." Comedy producer-director Judd Apatow [said](https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1036732535957422080) he wouldn't participate in an event that "normalizes hate." The Bannon [interview was canceled](https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorker-cuts-steve-bannon-from-festival-program-after-outcry-1536020899) just hours after the online scuffle. Mullin said the magazine told him no sponsors had officially pulled out. Remnick later commented on the reversal via the New Yorker's official Twitter page [in a statement](https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1036746441715277825). "There is a better way to do this," he wrote. "Our writers have interviewed Steve Bannon for The New Yorker before, and if the opportunity presents itself, I'll interview him in a more traditionally journalistic setting as we first discussed, and not on stage." Bannon slammed Remnick and the decision in a [statement](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/arts/bannon-new-yorker-festival-remnick.html) to The New York Times. “The reason for my acceptance was simple: I would be facing one of the most fearless journalists of his generation," Bannon said. "In what I would call a defining moment, David Remnick showed he was gutless when confronted by the howling online mob.” Mullin said it "may be unseemly" for a publication to eject someone who may have a different point of view than other speakers. "I think it speaks to the difficulty of running a general interest publication nowadays in an era when politics is so sharply divided along partisan lines," Mullin said. On whether Bannon could be reinvited, Mullin said the odds are very slim. "I think there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening," he said. For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-new-yorker-disinvites-bannon-to-festival).
