The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth. The uproar reflects the pressures of managing coverage of a sensitive topic at a time when media criticism is flourishing everywhere.
“As thinkers, we are disappointed to see the New York Times follow the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation,” reads one of those open letters, from multiple Times contributors and five employees. The polemic slams the Times for spilling much ink on trans youth even though it has published “no rapt reporting on the thousands of parents who simply love and support their children, or on the hardworking professionals at the New York Times enduring a workplace made hostile by bias.” (GLAAD and other organizations wrote another letter expressing similar objections.)
In response, New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn and Opinions chief Kathleen Kingsbury defended the coverage and deplored staffers’ involvement in the protest: “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 and other public forums,” their letter reads.
The NewsGuild of New York, which represents Times journalists, tells the Erik Wemple Blog that Times employees have been called into “investigatory meetings” related to their participation as signatories. An informed source says that disciplinary actions are underway.
The tough talk from management prompted a rebuke from Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild, which is in the midst of contentious collective bargaining negotiations with the Times. The coherence of the don’t-attack-your-colleagues rule is questionable, noted DeCarava, since the paper in 2020 published a critique by op-ed columnist Bret Stephens of the Times’s own 1619 Project.
What’s more, the employees’ activity is protected by law, argued DeCarava: “As you know, employees have a right under federal law to engage in protected concerted activity to address workplace conditions. It is a violation of federal law for The New York Times to threaten, restrain or coerce employees from engaging in such activity. Employees are protected in collectively raising concerns that conditions of their employment constitute a hostile working environment. This was the concern explicitly raised in the letter at issue here.”
Hold on a second: Was the union chief arguing that Times content itself — the gist of its stories; the reportorial choices in investigative pieces, for example — constituted “workplace conditions” that employees have a right to address? That was the takeaway of approximately 100 Times journalists who signed yet another letter — this one bashing DeCarava’s logic. “Factual, accurate journalism that is written, edited, and published in accordance with Times standards does not create a hostile workplace,” reads their letter. “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.’”
Bill Baker, unit chair of the Times guild, said the employee letter attacking the guild was an interpretive “error” and that DeCarava’s message had “nothing to do with journalism and editorial content.” And Jenny Vrentas, a Times sports reporter, says she read the DeCarava letter “differently” than some of her colleagues had. In a guild town hall meeting on Tuesday, DeCarava defended her response to Times management, saying repeatedly that those who saw a threat to editorial independence had “misread” her words, according to several attendees. A guild spokesperson told the Erik Wemple Blog that DeCarava’s letter “made no assertion that editorial content was a workplace condition.”
Yet it’s hard to misread a comment from guild rep Claire Hirschberg, who recently told Times employees in the guild’s Slack channel: “I just want to be 100% clear as your guild rep that you are protected in participating in concerted collective activity and speaking out about your working conditions, including speaking out about things like NYT’s coverage of trans people. your union will protect and enforce your rights!” Asked whether that statement was a mistake or an expression of union policy, the guild spokesperson responded that it was “not a comment on editorial content or editorial policy.”
Close watchers of the Times might see some similarities between this high-profile controversy, with its internal dissension and guild involvement, and the June 2020 episode that preceded the dismissal of James Bennet as Times editorial page editor. Then, the Times erupted over an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on the appropriate response to violence amid the George Floyd protests. Many Times staffers tweeted that the piece put Black Times staffers in danger. According to then-Times media columnist Ben Smith, the guild later “advised staff members that that formulation was legally protected speech because it focused on workplace safety”; it also issued a blistering statement about the Cotton op-ed. Times leadership didn’t condemn the internal criticism, though early the next year it promulgated communications guidelines for employees on “how to talk to, ask questions of and respond to each other in ways that support a positive and productive work environment.”
Newsrooms can be tough workplaces to manage. There are more than 1,700 journalists at the Times, and they read and follow their colleagues’ work closely. Though a general prohibition on criticizing the work of colleagues is destined to fail, newspaper leaders are correct to respond firmly to an advocacy petition. Journalists, after all, are paid to cover such efforts, not join them.
