The New York Times is investigating itself

In recent weeks Charlotte Behrendt, the Times’ top editor responsible for investigating labor issues in the newsroom, called 20 employees for interviews to determine whether the newspaper’s employees had leaked confidential information to another media outlet about how coverage of the war in Gaza.

It is the latest internal crisis at the Times, with management at loggerheads with groups of journalists over union negotiations and coverage of sensitive issues such as transgender community and the social justice.

Reporting on the war in Gaza was a particular point of friction, especially with an in-depth article finding that Hamas had used sexual violence in the October 7 attacks on Israel. Some workers questioned the evidence on which the article was based and claimed that the plight of Gazans was not given equal prominence. Times chiefs in March said they supported the report.

The intensity and breadth of the investigation show that Times leadership, after years of clashing with its staff over a variety of issues, is sending a message: Enough is enough.

The internal investigation was to find out who was responsible for leaking information about a planned podcast episode for the article in question. But the intensity and scope of the investigation show that the leadership of the “Times”, after years of conflicts with its staff over various issues related to journalistic integrity, is sending a message: Enough.

“The idea that someone comes into this process in the middle and finds something that they think might be interesting or damaging to the article they’re preparing and then share it with people outside seemed to me and my colleagues to be a breach of trust and in cooperation” said editorial director Joe Kahn.

Kahn said normal confrontations in any newsroom are welcome. He commented, however, that the backlash to the Hamas sexual violence story, written in late December by veteran correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman and two outside contributors, crossed the line when a confidential Times work product was allegedly circulated outside the room. pension.

Intense passions

Coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has become a particularly thorny issue at the Times, with some journalists arguing that the Times’ articles are biased in Israel’s favor and others reacting strongly. This has led to accusations of bias and unethical behavior between reporters and editors, forcing management to act as a referee in the disputes.

“Just like our readers right now, this issue really raises very strong passions, while there’s not much willingness to really explore the perspective of the people on the other side of this conflict.” Kahn said.

Last fall, Times staffers covering the war disagreed vehemently in a WhatsApp group chat about the newspaper’s report on Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which Israel claimed was functioning as a Hamas command and control center.

As Israel stormed the hospital, its doctors denied Israel’s claims that it coordinated the removal of premature babies. When a Times reporter in the WhatsApp chat questioned whether the information coming from the doctors could be taken as credible, another shot back: “Are you identifying every Shifa doctor with Hamas?”

Despite the cultural upheaval, the Times’ business performance continues to improve. The company signed up 300,000 subscribers in the last quarter. Times publisher AG Sulzberger, 43, says readers’ trust is at stake, however. Some journalists adopt “a different model of journalism, driven by personal perspective and inspired by personal beliefs” Sulzberger wrote.

Sulzberger has given the go-ahead for the formation of a “trust team” that will focus on efforts to strengthen reader trust in its reporting.

Despite these moves, NewsGuard, an organization that evaluates the credibility of news sitesdropped the Times’ score from a maximum of 100 to 87.5 in February.

Seed of activism

Today’s trend at the Times dates back to 2020, when a seed of activism among workers took root after the killing of George Floyd. In June of that year, the staff rioted after the publication of an opinion piece by Republican Senator Tom Cotton, titled “Send in the Army,” in which he suggested that the U.S. military be involved in quelling the riots.

In 2019, Donald G. McNeil Jr., star of science and health reporting, was called into an internal investigation accused of using racial slurs during a trip for high school students to Peru that was sponsored by the Times. . Two years later, in a Medium post addressing the events, McNeil stated that he had repeatedly used the word “nigger” while talking to a student about a classmate’s use of the term. Then-publisher Dean Baquet told staff that while McNeil “exhibited extremely poor judgment”, he was given a second chance because “it didn’t give me the impression that he intended to express hatred or malice.” After a protest by 150 employees, McNeil eventually left the Times.

The workers had managed to influence things at the Times. At the same time, some editors and reporters grew increasingly concerned that some Times reporters were letting their personal opinions dictate which stories they would cover—or not cover.

Setting boundaries

Management concerns about the independence issue were heightened in February last year, when a number of outside contributors and Times staff members signed an open letter to the Times’ standards officer, outlining their grievances about coverage of transgender issues. The letter, signed by more than 1,000 Times contributors, criticized the characterization of transgender people in the article, “The Battle for Gender Easing Therapy,” and the perspective of the article, “When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don’t Know ».

On the same day, Glaad, a non-profit organization defending the rights of LGBTI people, sent a similar protest letter on the same issue. New York Times Magazine editor Jazmine Hughes, who signed the transgender letter and was warned not to do it again, has left after months after co-signing another protest letter from activist group Writers Against the War on Gaza.

Political project

In terms of its coverage of US politics, the Times has tried to soften the impression that it has a liberal orientation. After Donald Trump won the presidential election, reporters from the national affairs division were sent to places where Trump proved popular, such as Pittsburgh, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and eastern Iowa. The Times also held open discussions with residents in some of these areas.

The idea was to take an in-depth look at public opinion across the country on issues like immigration and trade, explains Trip Gabriel, a national affairs reporter at the time.