https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/11/04/nyt-jazmine-hughes-resigns/
The newspaper said award-winning journalist Jazmine Hughes resigned after violating newsroom policy by signing a public statement protesting Israeli actions.
Your response is actually much more accurate and grammatically correct than the headline.
I misread it before replying initially.
No idea what you wrote initially but thank you. Concise was the goal but accurate and grammatically correct are pretty nice too.
The headline makes it sound like the writer quit because the NYT backed a letter accusing Israel of genocide.
It's a bad headline.
It is a little confusing isn't it? I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but for my part I'm glad I read the article before commenting.
You're definitely on the right side of things when you silence people calling out genocides.
Right. If you think people calling out genocide are wrong, show evidence that contradicts that contradicts that conclusion.
which should be really easy given there will be all the people free and not rounded up on camps with limited expression
Silverstein said Hughes also violated the policy earlier in the year, when she signed an open letter protesting the Times’s coverage of transgender issues. “She and I discussed that her desire to stake out this kind of public position and join in public protests isn’t compatible with being a journalist at The Times, and we both came to the conclusion that she should resign,” he wrote in the email.
It seems having a spine isn't compatible with being a journalist at the Times.
Well, "anywhere where they expect their journalists to present a neutral point of view or the appearance of it" would be more appropriate than saying it's something that only applies to The Times... Journalists know they're risking their career by doing something like what happened here. 8t might lead them to become columnists instead, as happened with a local TV journalist that decided to write a letter criticizing a controversial bill and to submit it for publishing in a journal, she lost her job and started writing books and opinion pieces instead.
You believe the right wing op ed writers at the times could ever get fired for their opinions? Bari Weiss was making mid 6 figures posting trash on the NYT before she accused her employer of discrimination to jump start coverage of her new substack.
Everyone is biased, it's how the brain operates. Some biases try to reflect reality while others try to manipulate people to believe propaganda. The Times is perfectly fine employing propagandists.
Here in chile the pro Palestine posture is razonably transversal and condemnation to Israel is normal to see.
Yeah, it's interesting how the rest of the world gets a pass. It's almost as if they have to forcibly, manipulate the pro-zionism mindset in the country whose tax payers fund this genocide in its entirety. Hopefully this country can rid itself of that mental disorder and Israel can start taking the responsibility it should have in the beginning when it begged the world for their own safe space where people already lived.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the rest of the world gets a pass". What are you trying to express? Thanks!
With reasons well grounded in Chilean history, as I’m sure you may know. I’ve had a very eye opening time with this book, The Palestine Laboratory, free right now from the publisher. The first chapter is a pretty intense recounting of the ways that the Israeli government and military industry were materially supportive to Pinochet’s regime.
In the Adelaide CBD (Australia) last Sunday there was a 1,000+ people protest in support of innocent Palestinians, and a 5-6 people protest in support of Israel.
Most all protests I see in the US are pro Palestine. Though there are some pro Israel protests.
It’s mainly the media and politicians that are pro Israel, not the protesters.
The little blurb in the middle of this article about genocide hyping up their "Style!" section as if genocide is just a fun and light pop culture topic is unreal
It's wild that we live in such polarized times that every single comment in this thread is talking about how this is wrong because of some variant of "she's being fired for calling it like it is."
That's not what happened. She was fired (forced to resign, same difference) because she went on record with a political viewpoint and made value judgements. YOU DONT GET TO DO THAT AS A JOURNALIST. It doesn't matter if she's right (she is, in my opinion, before someone accused me of supporting apartheid and misses the point). What matters is she has taken away any appearance of being unbiased, both for her and by association for the paper. It's crazy damaging and the Times should have fired her instead of letting her resign. This is like journalistic ethics 101. My parents were both journalists and wouldn't even talk to me about who they voted for - and they weren't even in hard news.
I know these days there are so many biased news agencies and lots of opinions masquerading as news, but for hard news agencies this kind of thing does not, and should not fly. The woman was dumb and I hope she was ready for a career writing op-eds and being a partisan talking head, because she'll never write hard news at a reputable source again.
This is stupid, she's a human first, and journalist second. If aliens were committing genocide on humans would you still have the same opinion?
We should be allowed to have and express opinions. How many reporters use the words terrorist? Freedom fighter? You can't police people's bias, nor should you.
You literally can police people's bias if they want to be a good journalist. That's why the NYT has a clear policy on this stuff, that she violated twice! Some people can't control their biases or don't want to, and that's fine. They don't get to be journalists at organizations that have to maintain strict impartiality.
Also, if you think the newsroom doesn't have deeply debated guidelines and rules on how and when you use the label terrorist vs freedom fighter, or how to avoid using either term, you're kidding yourself. This is why editors exist.
Implying the NYT or any major media outlet has anything approaching impartiality
You're literally advocating for what is essentially approved propaganda. That you think there is an objectively correct bias terrifies me, and if you had sense, it would terrify you too.
There is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias, and you truly believe it's not okay to speak out against genocide?
I hope the history books of the future describe the atrocities of the present, because clearly we can't rely on the news.
I think the point was more that an institution like the times doesn't want to appear to be doing anything other than providing plain facts that don't lead people into thinking one way or the other about a given thing so that their reporting can be trusted as not being propaganda.
It's the difference between saying "stupid asshat Donald Trump, who's obviously a criminal, was found guilty of the fraud we all knew he did." And "A judge convicted Donald Trump of fraud." That's not propaganda, that's just stating plain facts that don't try to leave any impression on the reader which is important for trust.
Thank you! It's crazy to me that people can't understand appearance of bias and why a paper would want to avoid it. Do people not work in industries with professional ethics? There are whole courses taught in this stuff when getting a degree in journalism, it's debated in newsrooms and by editors, even in op-eds writing commentary about the news. Did people just fall asleep during the Trump years as people were figuring out how to handle that?
You know what terrifies me? Someone saying, unironically, "there is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias." Russian disinfo and the Trump campaign appear to have won - we live in a post truth society where not only do facts not matter - they don't exist. Why bother reporting only on them?
"You know what terrifies me? Someone saying, unironically, “there is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias.” Russian disinfo and the Trump campaign appear to have won"
So much damage has been done because of those people. We live in a time where it seems like the majority of the population just expects all media to be propaganda which basically "allows" you to stick with your chosen propagandist. :(
You’re literally advocating for what is essentially approved propaganda. That you think there is an objectively correct bias terrifies me, and if you had sense, it would terrify you too.
No, there is no "correct bias". No bias is the goal. In fact, the goal is to be beyond even an appearance of bias. That's the only way you can be trustworthy. That's why the Times doesn't let their writers sign open letters. That's why they can't join lobbying orgs and don't give money to political candidates. These are just sacrifices you make if you want to be a hard news journalist. Same as having to watch what you say if you're a spokesperson or CEO, same with having to stay fit if you're a firefighter, same with a ton of jobs that have requirements that you may find unreasonable but are widely accepted because they're good for the job and the industry.
There is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias, and you truly believe it’s not okay to speak out against genocide?
You wanna talk about terrifying. This sentence is terrifying. No such thing as objective truth?! You've bought into the fake news, alternative facts propaganda being pushed for the last decade.
-Trump said x.
-Israel did Y.
-The president released a statement saying Z.
-A rocket exploded at a hospital in Gaza, it is unclear at the moment who fired it
-Here is an investigative report featuring video highlights, statements, and photos piecing together what likely happened in that rocket explosion
These are objective, unbiased facts. It obviously gets stickier when you start talking about what facts to report. Then you start talking about reporting on commentary on facts by people and orgs with clear biases themselves. Usually (or at least historically) journalists could cover their bases by finding both sides of an argument , and letting those players describe and clarify the facts themselves.
This is where the whole modern argument comes in over modern journalists giving too much weight to countervailing theories or crackpots in the interest of appearing unbiased. You may have heard it described as "both sides" reporting. For a long time, this was by far the best way to report facts, appear unbiased, and make sure everyone was heard and reported on. But recently there have been HUGE debates within journalism over how to report on say, climate change, when the vast vast majority of scientists say that it's happening, and it's man-made, and offer more and more conclusive studies supporting that. You can still find a few crackpots, but at what point are you choosing facts ("this crazy org said this about the new study") that themselves create a bias? Since climate change has been seen as a political issue for years, journalists have been worried about appearing unbiased, because a sniff of impropriety can drive people away from mainstream media and to the newer, very biased, lacking in ethics orgs. They started shifting away from this, and now people are both leaving unbiased news and those unbiased sources remaining are STILL getting hammered by media critics and commentators on the "both sides" narrative issues.
The point, though, is that people deeply care about and deeply debate this stuff on the margins. How do we best remain and appear unbiased? How do we best inform and explain current events? And then they debate this stuff at the margins because there are different opinions on it. But no one is saying news journalists should be able to sign petitions and open letters. It is so far outside of acceptable that I bet you could poll newsrooms at the Times, Post, Tribune and not get a single journalist who thinks going on public record about current events should be A-ok.
I hope the history books of the future describe the atrocities of the present, because clearly we can’t rely on the news.
If you're not aware of these very basic ethical and functional debates in journalism, that are covered and discussed ad nauseum in papers of every slant and those in the middle, my guess is you're just not consuming much news. It's impossible to miss this stuff. So I can't imagine you're going to pick up history books if you're missing this stuff as it's happening.
What matters is she has taken away any appearance of being unbiased, both for her and by association for the paper.
Nothing is unbiased, anything written by a human is tinted by their perspective, by what they know and by the lack of what they don't know, by their sense of morality, their ideology, etc... At most, you can approach what looks like the neutral position from your perspective, but true neutrality is fundamentally unreachable. Personally, I prefer a journalist that knows what their bias are and state them clearly to their audience over one that pretend like they have the laterally superhuman ability to forme truly unbiased and neutral opinion.
@drphungky actually, I journalists ARE supposed to disclose their personal biases. It feels much worse to me when media personalities pretend to be objective. They aren't. I think the idea that we should discourage the disclosure if personal opinion is actually really bad for media literacy
Totally hear where you're coming from, and I think in a perfect world, a journalist could recuse themselves of reporting on things where they are hopelessly biased (see Cuomo incident before the later revealed stuff), but I still argue the goal should be to examine and eliminate biases as much possible, and avoid the appearance of minor ones unless they are somehow damning. The introspection necessary to examine your own biases rather than just avoid them helps make you more capable of being more impartial overall, in my opinion.
I think there's real debate on if through such a concerted effort to not give into to one's own biases, you swing too far and start favoring the opposition, but that happens with anyone trying to avoid appearances of impropriety. Not giving your kid the starting pitching slot even if he deserves it because you're the coach, a judge not accepting a free ride to a conference everyone else gets, etc etc.
Ok I get where you're coming from but what if your value judgements are the right ones and everyone who disagrees with you is a bad person?
Then you get a spot writing op-eds so you can dunk on strawmen who don't have the reach or voice to argue with you!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The New York Times announced in a note to staff Friday that a writer for its magazine resigned after violating newsroom policy by signing an open letter that accused Israel of trying to “conduct genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Jazmine Hughes, who joined the paper in 2015 and has won multiple national awards, was one of the most prominent names on a statement published last week by a group called Writers Against the War on Gaza.
“While I respect that she has strong convictions, this was a clear violation of The Times’s policy on public protest,” magazine editor Jake Silverstein wrote in an email to staff Friday evening.
Hughes has won a string of accolades while working as a writer and editor at the Times, including a National Magazine Award in March for profiles on Viola Davis and Whoopi Goldberg.
The Israel-Gaza war has forced many institutions to contend with members who feel strongly about the conflict, which involves a long history of Israeli occupation and deadly military reprisals on Palestinian territory.
David Velasco was ousted as editor in chief at Artforum after the arts publication posted an open letter that supported Palestinian liberation and called for a cease-fire.
The original article contains 591 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
“While I respect that she has strong convictions, this was a clear violation of The Times’s policy on public protest,” magazine editor Jake Silverstein wrote in an email to staff Friday evening. “This policy, which I fully support, is an important part of our commitment to independence.”
Silverstein said Hughes also violated the policy earlier in the year
I get that it's a policy many disagree with but breaking it twice, yeah you'll get fired (or forced to resign I guess)
There are plenty of Jewish people that are loudly protesting the war. I find it’s irresponsible speculation that you’re assuming he came to this decision based upon the fact that he’s Jewish. Be better than that
That comment may have been in poor taste but that ain’t antisemitism friend.
Jews normally have a strong sense of belonging and identity, and while a lot of Jews are opposed to the Israel government it’s not at all out of place for somebody with a clearly Jewish name to be biased towards the Jewish side of a conflict. You could be forgiven for thinking that.
Change the context a little bit - this is now a story about the Falklands war and somebody named “Barry Bugglesworth” is strongly on the British side. Are you surprised?
Now I’m not saying the guy was right. Generalising is inappropriate and generally not a sign of great intelligence, but it’s not antisemitism just because it’s targeted towards a Jewish person.
Antisemitism is a powerful word, let’s not wear it out.
It looks like the comment thread disappeared so this will probably be a private answer. Whatever. No, accusing a Jew of supporting Israel is not a NEGATIVE generalisation unless you think supporting Israel is a universally negative feature. So no, still not antisemitism.
It was stereotyping/profiling based on a name. It's flagrant anti-semitism. If someone's last name is a traditionally Palestinian name should we assume they hate Jewish people too?
The british example is terrible because they do not have a history of being persecuted for being British. Same reason calling someone a cracker isn't the same as the n word.
This is stereotyping/profiling based on a name. It's flagrant anti-semitism. If someone's last name is a traditionally Palestinian name should we assume they hate Jewish people too?
The british example is terrible because they do not have a history of being persecuted for being British. Same reason calling someone a cracker isn't the same as the n word.