New York Times Drops Its Public Editor Weeks After Palestinian Terrorist’s Op-Ed

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Weeks after The New York Times’s public editor, Liz Spayd, criticized the newspaper over a highly contentious op-ed written by imprisoned Palestinian arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, her position has been eliminated.

Spayd’s job as public editor, also known as a reader representative or ombudsman, was to hold the organization’s management accountable for news judgments and get answers from its top executives. The position was created in 2003 following a plagiarism scandal at the newspaper.

The Times announced May 31 it is cutting Spayd’s position, citing that social media now serves as a “watchdog” for the newspaper. She was hired last July for a two-year term.

“Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, wrote in a memo to employees.

Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences and 40 additional years for killing five people, wrote an April 16 op-ed in which the newspaper omitted his crimes and terrorist organization membership. He used The Times as a platform to accuse Israel of conducting “mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners.”

The op-ed was roundly slammed across the political spectrum in Israel. Two days after the article was posted, Spayd criticized the newspaper’s op-ed department for its failure to list the crimes committed by Barghouti, writing that “failing to do so risks the credibility of the author and the Op-Ed pages.” The Times ran an editor’s note clarifying that it had “explained the writer’s prison sentence but neglected to provide sufficient context by stating the offense of which he was convicted.”

Many journalists expressed dismay with the The Times’s decision to cut the public editor position.

“The public editor is more important than ever as trust in the press remains low. It’s not about engagement, it’s about credibility,” tweeted Andrew Seaman, ethics chair for the Society of Professional Journalists.

(JNS.org)

{Matzav}


6 COMMENTS

  1. The world is like a charge card.

    You can pick the one you use.

    After about 3 years of reading the NYT daily, I bravely took a step where few young minds ever go if they are not ready to work hard. I picked up the WSJ. Never do I look back and that dormant NYT “Charge card” is not doing anything any more. Thus any said story has no relevance to my life.

    But still, what a shocker. A major USA newspaper never to mention Israel well.

    Trust in Hashem. This world is a set up for the good. The only way to pay back the best is to do the best. NYT is just a good paper for the small mind yet to discover that more money is the best.

    Such it is.

    Read on.

  2. the truly amazing thing is… The Israeli’s. Like, aren’t they supposedly the smartest people? The most brilliant minds?

    Yet, they allow such a terrorist to write an article. No normal country would have allowed an animal like that to write.

    I guess thay are so desperate to wanna be accepted by the world that they lost their minds.

    NEBACH!!!

    • The Israelis have no say so about what the NY Times publishes. The U.S. Government doesn’t have a say so either.

      People have a say so by not buying or reading this “wonderful”publication or using them when they commit libel.

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