In the aftermath of the purely coincidental day when both GLAAD and terminally woke contributors to the New York Times demanded that the paper of record only publish articles and op-eds that adhered to the orthodoxy of transgender activists, the New York Times did something completely unexpected. It grew a pair.
Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy.
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.
This, in turn drew a response from the Susan DeCarava, president of the New York Times union.
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.
Is disagreement, or the hurt feelings and claims of harm stemming from views with which one disagrees, a condition of employment such that objecting to it is a protected activity under Section 7? Hardly. But DeCarava’s attempt to couch demands for ideological purity as protected collective action revealed another, different, concern. Had the staff of the New York Times given up on being journalists in favor of being the vanguard of activism?
Even if they said nothing in the first place, or offered no union response to the executive editor’s warning that the New York Times was a newspaper, not a progressive house organ, they could have quietly persisted in writing articles and op-eds designed to push their ideological agenda at the expense of accuracy, fairness and, can this be said anymore?, objectivity.
What happened next, however, is shocking, at least to those of us who wondered whether there was anyone left at the Times with the guts to do journalism when all around them were losing their heads. And there they were.
Dear Susan,
We are writing to you privately in response to your February 17th letter, which we were surprised to see.
Like you, we support the right to a non-hostile workplace where everyone is respected and supported. We believe The New York Times should never engage in biased or discriminatory practices of any kind. We all strive to be part of a truly diverse news organization where everyone is treated fairly. We welcome robust and respectful critical feedback from colleagues, either in direct conversation or through internal Times channels.
But your letter appears to suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of our responsibilities as journalists. Regretfully, our own union leadership now seems determined to undermine the ethical and professional protections that we depend on to guard the independence and integrity of our journalism.
Factual, accurate journalism that is written, edited, and published in accordance with Times standards does not create a hostile workplace.
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.”
Our duty is to be independent. We pursue the facts wherever they may lead. We are journalists, not activists. That line should be clear.
Debates over fairness and accuracy are perfectly reasonable. We understand and respect that the Guild has an absolute duty to offer representation to members when they are subject to discipline by management. But we do not think it is the role of our union to be engaged in – and taking sides in – public debates over internal editorial decisions.
Our hope is that the coming days will bring more constructive internal dialogue among Times employees and with Guild leadership that can help unify and improve our news organization. And we ask that our union work to advance, not erode, our journalistic independence.
The letter had quite a few signatories, including many of note. It retained that warm and fuzzy apologia language required of those who would never reply “bite me, asshole,” knowing how many tears would be shed and garments rendered by a terse, frank and clear reply. But after the required social justice posturing, a couple of succinct sentences say what they came to say.
Factual, accurate journalism that is written, edited, and published in accordance with Times standards does not create a hostile workplace.
and
Our duty is to be independent. We pursue the facts wherever they may lead. We are journalists, not activists. That line should be clear.
Does this mean the cry of “moral clarity” by the media elite is history, and they will once again strive for objective and accurate reporting, including facts and legitimate arguments that challenge woke virtue? Will James Bennett be offered his job back as editorial page editor? Not likely. But neither the management of the New York Times, nor even its delicately treading journalists, bent over to wash and massage the feet of the unduly passionate. It’s a start on the long walk back to principles, facts and accuracy in the media. When the only reply needed is “bite me, asshole,” you will know they’ve scaled the mountain.
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I had seen a few Internet stories recently, positing that the borders of alternate universes might be shifting, encroaching on our own. This doesn’t really seem like The New York Times from our universe
One step at a time.
It’s under “rightthink” in your newspeak dictionary.
When you feel the need to deride those you disagree with as “terminally woke”you may not be on the right track.
And pretending that the letter *demanded* that the NYT “only publish articles and op-eds that to the orthodoxy of transgender activists” is equally laughable.
I’m trans. I’ve been a long time subscriber to the NYT and other news media. I still have not cancelled any subscriptions over the “trans debate”, though it certainly is disheartening to continuously see your own existence & rights “debated”.
The NYT letter did a good job, imo, at laying out all the ways the Times and others have, historically and currently, negatively impacted wholly marginalized communities by obsessively presenting “the other side” regardless of merit. Pretending this is “good journalism” is becoming stale.
Aside from saccharine feel-good stories about the fire marshals getting a cat out of a tree, journalistic coverage is almost always going to negatively impact someone or some institution. Why should the people you describe as marginalized communities be exempt from this? More to the point: the letter to the Times is correct that these communities have been in some sense harmed by past coverage, but so what?
It’s unlikely that you could possibly understand, but even the assumptions upon which your comment/opinion is based confirm the points you refuse to see.
When you feel the need to deride those you disagree with as “debating your own existence & rights” you may not be on the right track. Or maybe it’s just about cheap rhetorical points.
We can disagree with, say, evangelical creationists, and yet count them as among our friends and family while still applying a critical lens to what they believe, and pushing back if they object and demand acquiescence. Creationist rights are human rights, plus they can be pretty terminally woke too, 1 Thessalonians 5:6.
“Is disagreement, or the hurt feelings and claims of harm stemming from views with which one disagrees, a condition of employment such that objecting to it is a protected activity under Section 7?”
Perhaps not recognized by the courts (yet). But the NLRB is now controlled by ideologues who are hellbent on expanding its remit beyond union/management relations to micromanagement of the workplace generally. Once a complaint is brought, it is initially decided by an NLRB employee (an administrative law judge), and can be appealed to the NLRB itself. For an employer, you are now looking at spending well in excess of $100K just to be told you’ve lost, twice, no matter how, err, novel, the claim is. You can then take an appeal to the DC Circuit (for another $100K in legal fees). There are a lot employers without the cash, or the stomach, for this process. For many, what the NLRB says, goes, and this strikes me as just the kind of claim the NLRB will recognize.
I say this based on what my labor lawyers told me, when the NLRB brought a claim under that exact provision against us because a contractor of ours fired one of their employees. The NLRB also dislikes independent contractors, and is pushing hard to expand the “joint employer” doctrine. In our particular case, being a “joint employer” of every physician on our hospital medical staff would be catastrophic, so we are fighting it. And I fully expect the ALJ and the NLRB to disregard current law and rule that we are joint employers, forcing us to take an appeal to the courts.
Maybe they can look upon Seymour Hersh as a journalist worth printing rather than trying to ignore his investigation into America blowing up the Noord Stream pipelines.
That letter is not enough to make people think real news comes from the legacy media anymore.
There are so many strawman arguments here that it’s honestly hard to follow. A bunch of NYT journalists write a letter calling for better, less biased reporting. The NYT responded somewhat incoherently by acting like the journalists were working with an advocacy group and said that their reporting was perfect and anyone who said otherwise was against the very idea of objective journalism. They also threatened the writers of the letter with disciplinary action for having the audacity to criticize the NYT’s perfect reporting (said disciplinary action is already being reported). The union wrote a letter saying that journalists have the right to criticize the newspaper’s reporting and now the union is being accused of rejecting the idea of objective journalism.
It takes a special kind of narcissism to assume that your perspective is the objective factual Truth and that any disagreement constitutes a lie.
You broke the irony meter.