March 1, 2024 - 2:06pm
Over the past decade, the New York Times’ newsroom has been subject to ongoing, and sometimes overlapping, staff revolts. It seems that you can almost time these rebellions, which usually take the form of walkouts and coordinated social media campaigns, to major news events, like the BLM demonstrations and the paper’s supposedly anti-trans coverage.
Of course, the war in Gaza could never have escaped the woke crucible that the Times’ newsroom has become. And so, exactly on cue, news broke last week that Times management is conducting an investigation into leaks concerning staff rebellion over an episode of the paper’s podcast, The Daily, focused on Hamas’ systematic use of rape and sexual assault on October 7.
The story initially broke late January in The Intercept claiming that the Times pulled the podcast episode after what it described as “a furious internal debate about the strength of the paper’s original reporting on the subject.” The Intercept, however, is no neutral party in the debate.
Two days after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, the news outlet accused Israel of “ordering mass war crimes in Gaza,” weeks before an Israeli soldier had set foot in the Gaza Strip. One of the authors of the January story about the Times, Ryan Grim, frequently makes outrageous charges against Israel on X — including that the IDF is “starving people to death” and reposting an Owen Jones post accusing Israel of “genocidal mania” — often without citing any evidence.
(On the particular issue of the New York Times row, Grim reposted a meme on X comparing the New York Times management to a Nazi for conducting an investigation into the leak.)
The story took another turn this week when Vanity Fair reported that the Times was conducting an internal investigation into the January leaks about the podcast to The Intercept. According to the report, Times “management in recent weeks has pulled at least two dozen staffers, including Daily producers, into meetings in an attempt to understand how internal details about the podcast’s editorial process got out.”
For a paper trying to right itself after years of walkouts, rebellions and social media protests, this cannot be a welcome development. During the Trump era, the paper virtually invited this kind of newsroom activism, proudly declaring — both on and off the page — that it was abandoning traditional notions like objectivity, associated by woke staffers with white supremacy, in favour of “moral clarity.”
In a pivotal oped, a prominent journalist argued that the news industry had a duty “to abandon the appearance of objectivity as the aspirational journalistic standards.” That oped won wide praise, including from Dean Baquet, then executive editor of the Times.
With the appointment of a new executive editor in 2022, the Baquet era came to an end. The new Times chief, Joe Kahn, is no doubt thinking about how to keep his unruly newsroom under control, especially as noisy stories about the New York Times are now frequently covered by the paper. This is especially true after the Times suffered a labour walkout in late 2022, its first such mass action in four decades.
While Kahn and Times management, namely publisher A.G. Sulzberger, have an overriding interest in keeping the workforce focused on producing news, the task may not be so simple. Since the Trump era, journalistic activism at the paper has become at least as important a priority for many staffers as producing news. For an older generation of journalists (such as the one to which Joe Kahn belongs) this is baffling. But for younger journalists building a presence on social media and hewing close to a strongly left wing ideological agenda, it would seem impossible not to take this kind of action.
Indeed, last November a New York Times Magazine staff writer named Jazmine Hughes signed a letter in support of the Palestinian cause and harshly criticising Israel, violating the Times’ stated policies on such forms of public protest. Hughes resigned shortly after, with Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein saying in a Times article that the policy is an “an important part of our commitment to independence.”
This latest flap will be the strongest litmus test yet of the New York Times’ ability to navigate its newsroom through stormy political waters. Just as importantly, it will be a signal as to what kind of leadership style Kahn will take and whether the Times will re-embrace traditional journalistic values like objectivity or wade further into the intractable swamp of newsroom activism.
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SubscribePerhaps it would be best for everyone if these “journalists” decided to stage a permanent walkout.
Imagine that – a strike from these loons that never ended.
Can’t blame a guy for dreaming…
The NYT has become an activist organization disguised as a once-prominent newspaper. Like the Ivy Leagues, it relies on a status that no longer exists.
Since the Trump era, journalistic activism at the paper has become at least as important a priority for many staffers as producing news. —> Which is irony on steroids considering that Trump’s business base of operations has always been…….New York. It’s not like the Times never interviewed him before he ran for office.
It’ll take a long time for people to realise that the Emperor has no clothes. Worse than the Ivy Leagues and the NYT, is the United Kingdom, as a country – a complete shell of it’s former self living on it’s former prestige.
What a weird and unnecessary comment. Total non sequitur
Yep, just nonsense. Can’t be bothered going into detail why (it’s Friday evening!)
Cut Basil some slack. He probably read that in the New York Times .Don’t mention the war Basil .
And they wonder why trust in media is almost non existent. Just another nail in the coffin of the regime media.
The apolitical is political.
And two plus two equals five. Doubleplusgood, comrade.
Ah, the “Silence is Violence” but actual violence is sweet resistance crowd.
And in a puff of logic, man provided back is white and got run over on the next zebra crossing
Circling the plug hole.
The irony is that The New York Times has had a long history of Jewish ownership, starting with the purchase of the newspaper in 1896 by German-Jewish immigrant Adolph Ochs. Mr. Ochs was not an observant Jew, and the religion never permeated the news coverage or editorials offer up by the paper when he was at its helm.
Ochs left controlling interest of The NYT to his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, in 1935. Sulzberger was a proud Jew, but he was adamant that paper didn’t appear “Jewish” to its growing, diversified readership. He went so far as to take anti-Zionist editorial positions during his tenure “and insisted that the New York Times not criticize Nazi atrocities against Jews too much in the 1930s and during the Holocaust “.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger took over as publisher of The New York Times in 1963, another Jew at its helm. His son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the current publisher, who practices the Christian religion of his mother, is openly anti-Israel, and some would say antisemitic, despite his historical family connection to Judaism.
Personally, as an American-Jew who grew up reading The New York Times, I can no longer stomach its quasi-journalism, especially with regard to its prevailing anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, anti-Zionist, antisemitic stances. The 21st Century version of The New York Times sickens me.
This article is just a rant.
As for evidence of Israel starving Palestinians to death: where has the author been? Under a rock, hissing presumably. Never mind the press reports, just go on social media – plenty of photos of starved Palestinians there for her to enjoy.
Since you’re obviously from the “show us the rapes” side of the aisle, skeptical of Jewish claims, how do you know the “starved Palestinians” you see on your Hamas fever swamp social media channels weren’t purposefully starved in Hamas tunnels for precisely the Pallywood production that you’re consuming on your social media right now? Or do you subscribe to the “evil oppressors vs saintly oppressed” children’s view of the world, so you know that’s not possible?
Their big problem is that non-Jewish Woke staffers are demanding that Israel be subjected to genocide with the call “From the river to the sea.” In New York many of the Times staff, however, are Jewish and see this as antisemitism. The Woke Jews marched with people who now cry for their genocide. Jews who got out of bed Woke Democrats are now going to bed Republicans as they find themselves hated by their former friends.
In regards to your last sentence, may I presume you mean figuratively?
I was wondering about that . There must be loads of Jews who work for the New York Times .Mainly woke Democrats , but what percentage are Hamas fans ?
The young staffers are demanding that the Times lie about issues and feed the readers propaganda. They demand that false facts be presented as truth. They deny the facts about Hunter’s laptop and say evil about the Jews. Isaiah 5:20 KJ21 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that count darkness as light, and light as darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
The New York Times? Those are the guys who provide the Wordle, right?
Their daily Sudoku page is also well worth a look.
Yes, based on a UK afternoon quiz program called Lingo!
Activist journalists? The adage “garbage in, garbage out” comes to mind.
Might I suggest that the New York Times add a tobacco-like warning to their masthead:
THIS PUBLICATION IS KNOWN TO CONTAIN FANTASIES WRITTEN BY JUST-OUT-OF-COLLEGE SELF-STYLED ‘ACTIVIST’ CHILDREN WHO HAPPEN TO BE THE SAME AGE AS YOUR KNOW-IT-ALL KID AND WHO THINK THEY ARE MORALLY OBLIGATED TO CREATE SUCH FAKE NARRATIVES TO PROGRAM YOU HOW TO RIGHT-THINK. AS SUCH, THIS PUBLICATION IS KNOWN TO BE VERY DANGEROUS TO YOUR INTELLECTUAL HEALTH AND WILL LIKELY CAUSE YOUR NEURONS TO SPONTANEOUSLY IMPLODE. CONSUME IN MODERATION.
Excellent.
Ryan Grim and the Intercept’s reporting on Gaza has been excellent, same with Biden’s dirty dealings in Pakistan.
What next? The BBC?
The New York Times is tearing the New York Times apart. If a reader needs to be an expert on the subject of an article to determine whether it presents a manipulative pack of lies it’s definitely time to seek other sources.
The New York Times (i.e. the New York Slimes) is yesterday’s news and yesterday’s newspaper. The Gray Lady ain’t what she used to be, many long years ago, and I ain’t gonna weep when she goes away into that good night.
“journalistic activism at the paper has become at least as important a priority for many staffers as producing news.” They’re not supposed to produce the news – they’re supposed to report it.
So they abandoned objectivity — i.e. search for truth, facts — in favour of “moral clarity.” Defined by whom? It may be called advocacy, but it’s no longer journalism, at least not in the sense of reaching the largest number of people, which is why journalism in general — though, somehow, not the NYT — is losing readers by the millions. People want to know what’s happening, not what someone else thinks should be happening.
The New York Slimes is yesterday’s news. Sewer trash. Out of date. Stodgy, forgettable, forgotten. Why are we even talking about it?