Has the New York Times finally had enough of left-wing employees steering the editorial ship? The Times‘s latest statement taking staff to task for partnering with a progressive activist group indicates the tide may be turning against newsroom revolts, which have lately become commonplace at corporate media outlets.
Last Wednesday, New York Times staffers and contributors sent a letter to the paper’s standards editor complaining about the Times‘s coverage of transgender issues. One day prior, a similar letter circulated by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, accused the paper of “irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people.”
“It is appalling that the Times would dedicate so many resources and pages to platforming the voices of extremist anti-LGBTQ activists who have built their careers on denigrating and dehumanizing LGBTQ people, especially transgender people,” GLAAD said, citing articles in which medical professionals acknowledged the risks of gender transitions for teenagers and the recent hiring of David French (who has championed drag queen story hours as a free speech issue) as an opinion columnist.
GLAAD and the signatories demanded the Times “stop printing biased anti-trans stories”, hold a meeting with transgender community members and leaders, and hire more transgender staff.
The Times “contributors” admitted to coordinating the timing of their letter with GLAAD. The New York Times promptly pushed back.
Charlie Stadtlander, director of external communications, defended the paper’s coverage, explaining that the Times‘s “journalistic mission” is different from GLAAD’s “advocacy mission”.
“As a news organization, we pursue independent reporting on transgender issues,” Stadtlander asserted.
Then, executive editor Joseph Kahn and opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury said in an email to staff that they would not tolerate employees siding with advocacy groups to try to sway the paper’s coverage of important issues nor publicly attacking colleagues who publish work that they personally disagree with.
“It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to the Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name,” the letter read. “We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media or other platforms.”
Kahn and Kingsbury further said that they were “proud” of the reporting done by Times staff on important issues. Then, the paper doubled down. The very next day, they published an article by Pamela Paul defending Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling from accusations that she is a “transphobe”. Rowling, Paul noted, has expressed support and respect for transgender people, but believes that biological men should not have access to women-only spaces for safety and privacy reasons.
“This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views,” Paul wrote. “There is no evidence that she is putting trans people ‘in danger,’ as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.”
This opinion piece sparked both backlash and support from readers of the Times, a fact that was recognized in a round-up of letters to the editor (coincidentally, the majority of the letters admonishing Paul for defending Rowling came from men, while all of the supportive letters were from women).
This riled up the GLAAD-aligned activists even more, and the protests against Times newsroom leaders carried into this week. Susan DeCarava, the president of the NewsGuild of New York, a union for Times employees, sided with the letter signatories and suggested the paper was creating a hostile work environment with its coverage of transgender issues. However, not only did Times leadership refuse to cave, but during a town hall meeting, the vast majority of Times employees present dogpiled the Guild and its minions.
According to Jesse Singal, there was “an overwhelming show of force for traditional journalism” at the meeting.
These employees confirmed their opposition to the colleagues who protested the paper’s coverage of transgender issues by publishing their own letter in support of journalistic inquiry. The high-profile signatories of the new letter included Jeremy Peters, Peter Baker, Michael Grynbaum, Adam Goldman and more.
“Factual, accurate journalism that is written, edited, and published in accordance with Times standards does not create a hostile workplace,” the letter said. “Every day, partisan actors seek to influence, attack, or discredit our work. We accept that. But what we don’t accept is what the Guild appears to be endorsing: a workplace in which any opinion or disagreement about Times coverage can be recast as a matter of ‘workplace conditions.’… We are journalists, not activists. That line should be clear.”
The Times followed through with its implicit threat that it would “not tolerate” employees siding with an activist group. According to Erik Wemple at the Washington Post, members of the Times union who signed the letter have been pulled into “investigatory meetings” and the paper intends to start disciplinary proceedings.
The Times, of course, is correct to produce reportage that addresses difficult questions surrounding transgenderism: is it safe for minors to undergo gender transitions? Are there other ways to treat gender dysphoria? Should women have the right to spaces that are free from biological men? Should parents who refuse to transition their children lose custody? Can teachers keep gender transitions from parents?
More importantly, though, is what this saga says about the media’s dwindling tolerance of activists pretending to be journalists. As I write in my forthcoming book The Snowflakes’ Revolt, major media outlets have for years hired young, openly progressive staff that have used mob tactics to push coverage further left than ever. For the most part, newsroom leaders have acquiesced to the demands of woke staff that use the platform afforded to them to engage in advocacy for their personal political causes.
Compare this latest Times saga to the treatment of an op-ed in which Republican senator Tom Cotton called for quelling riots in the summer of 2020 by sending in the National Guard. Staff similarly admonished their employer on social media, claiming Cotton’s op-ed put the lives of black staffers in danger, and demanded accountability for the editors responsible for the piece. Multiple editors were indeed forced out of the paper and the Times apologized for the content and tone of the piece.
Could it be possible that the Times learned its lesson from this fiasco and has finally decided to stop caving to a vocal minority of far-left employees who who fundamentally reject journalistic values like objectivity, non-partisanship, intellectual diversity, and freedom of speech? Time will tell for certain, but this is a good start.
