The Intercept's editor at large Jeremy Scahill elaborates on reporting guidance at the New York Times that appears to restrict language like "genocide" and "...
Okay so I always have a question when these types of things come out, usually about the New York Times specifically because this happens a lot
Who wrote the memo? What’s their name? Will they be fired?
NYT seems to have this happen a lot, where they get “memos” from some shadowy entity that dictates their decisions. It feels like Cabin in the Woods and NYT is secretely serving some demonic force that feeds on bad journalism
The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies. First distributed to Times journalists in November, the guidance — which collected and expanded on past style directives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — has been regularly updated over the ensuing months.
Will they be fired?
Funny you ask.
Months earlier, The Intercept exposed NYT’s extremely flawed reporting in their Screams Without Words piece which was…really bad.
CW: Sexual Assault and Rape Mention
NYT accused Hamas of systematically raping Israeli teenagers and adults. Systematically being the operative word - no one disputes that rape/sexual assault took place. But there is no proof that Hamas, as an organization, has any prior history of such tactics or in this case, instructed its members to do so. But that’s what NYT said happened. In addition, it manufactured instances of rape that didn’t even happen and could not be verified by even other people at NYT and used the name of a Pulitzer prize winning journalist to get the article recognition when the actual “reporting” was done by a food blogger.
So, The Intercept received leaks from people within NYT who were clearly disgruntled/dissatisfied/disagreed with what was going on and published it and, in response, NYT launched an investigation into who leaked it! Rather than investigating how such a bad piece was published, they investigated how it got exposed instead - and the probe was done in an extremely racist way with people who were Muslim or from MENA targeted almost exclusively.
Okay so I always have a question when these types of things come out, usually about the New York Times specifically because this happens a lot
Who wrote the memo? What’s their name? Will they be fired?
NYT seems to have this happen a lot, where they get “memos” from some shadowy entity that dictates their decisions. It feels like Cabin in the Woods and NYT is secretely serving some demonic force that feeds on bad journalism
Here’s The Intercept article
The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies. First distributed to Times journalists in November, the guidance — which collected and expanded on past style directives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict — has been regularly updated over the ensuing months.
Funny you ask. Months earlier, The Intercept exposed NYT’s extremely flawed reporting in their Screams Without Words piece which was…really bad.
CW: Sexual Assault and Rape Mention
NYT accused Hamas of systematically raping Israeli teenagers and adults. Systematically being the operative word - no one disputes that rape/sexual assault took place. But there is no proof that Hamas, as an organization, has any prior history of such tactics or in this case, instructed its members to do so. But that’s what NYT said happened. In addition, it manufactured instances of rape that didn’t even happen and could not be verified by even other people at NYT and used the name of a Pulitzer prize winning journalist to get the article recognition when the actual “reporting” was done by a food blogger.
So, The Intercept received leaks from people within NYT who were clearly disgruntled/dissatisfied/disagreed with what was going on and published it and, in response, NYT launched an investigation into who leaked it! Rather than investigating how such a bad piece was published, they investigated how it got exposed instead - and the probe was done in an extremely racist way with people who were Muslim or from MENA targeted almost exclusively.