The New York Times has ended an internal investigation into whether staffers leaked information about controversial Gaza coverage without reaching a conclusion.
“We have not reached a final conclusion about how this major breach occurred,” NY Times Editor-in-Chief Joe Kahn told staff on Slack on Monday. Wall Street Journal.
The investigation had been underway for just under two months — sparked by a report in January. Left-wing news site “The Intercept” Times staffers were reportedly debating whether to post “The Daily” podcast, which has not yet aired.
The episode was ultimately precipitated by disagreements over an article alleging that Hamas militants systematically raped Israelis during a brutal assault on October 7, according to The Intercept.
Charlotte Behrendt, the Times’ director of policy and internal investigations, quickly began overseeing management’s efforts to uncover how the deliberations surrounding the podcast “The Daily” were leaked. According to Vanity Fair magazine.
Mr. Behrendt’s investigation, which involved interviews with nearly 20 people over several weeks, was described by employees as a “witch hunt” and was at times so controversial that the company targeted groups of employees. The union filed a complaint alleging that Arab and Middle Eastern.
Times leaders said the allegations were false, the paper said.
“We have identified gaps in how we handle proprietary journalistic materials and have taken steps to address these issues,” Khan added in a Slack message, according to the newspaper.
Representatives for the Times did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Mr. Khan, a longtime Times editor, said in a recent interview with the Journal that he welcomes internal discussions and discussions about the newsroom’s reporting.
But the alleged leaks crossed a line and reflected “a breakdown in the trust and cooperation necessary for the editorial process.”
Times staff over a Dec. 28 dispatch by an Israel-based freelancer who reportedly conducted research for the Gray Lady on allegations that Hamas terrorists raped an Israeli woman. Opinions were divided between them.
The accuracy of the story was called into question after discrepancies arose and contradictory statements were made by one of the people who allegedly witnessed the rape.
Later, a family member interviewed by Times staff accused the paper of manipulating reporters into claiming that Gul Abdoush, one of the victims of the October 7 massacre, had been raped. He criticized the paper despite having no evidence to support the allegations.
The Intercept said the January episode of “The Daily” was frozen because producers and editors “wanted to run a version that was faithful to a previously published story and risked republishing significant mistakes.” The report said that this was because they were faced with the dilemma of “publishing an article with a certain or significantly toned-down version.” This version raises questions about whether the paper still supports the original report. ”
“There’s only one ‘version’ of audio journalism: the one we publish,” a Times spokesperson told The Intercept.
Hamas militants massacred some 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers in a cross-border raid at dawn on that fateful October day, although Hamas claims the militants committed sexual assaults. is denied.
Early in the conflict, the Times came under fire for collaborating with an organization. A Palestinian freelancer covering the Israel-Hamas war praised Adolf Hitler in multiple resurfaced Facebook posts.
Film director Soliman Higgi praised the Nazi leader in a Facebook post in 2018, sharing a photo of himself and expressing himself, according to a translation from Arabic, “like Hitler during the Holocaust.” “He was in a state of shock,” he captioned the photo. According to pro-Israel media monitoring site HonestReporting.
That same year, Hidge was hired by the Times as a freelance journalist and worked on numerous “visual investigations” published by the Times until 2021. One incident in an Israeli airstrike 44 people died.
Hidge’s 2018 post, which includes a 2012 Facebook post featuring a Photoshopped image of Hitler apparently taking a selfie and the words “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic. ) were discovered last year after a pro-Israel news organization called out the Times. Hiring anti-Semitic journalists as freelancers.
At the time, Hudge no longer appeared to be working for the Times, and had since deleted his controversial pro-Hitler posts.
But the Times rehired the anti-Semitic freelancer in late October after the Hamas ambush.
