Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times, and the Changing Role of Journalists |
In the spring of 1978, I found myself in the middle of a newsroom occupation.
I was a reporter at the Massachusetts Daily Collegian at UMass Amherst, covering student government and local politics. A sit-in led by the paper’s women’s editor evolved into a full occupation of the newsroom. The doors were eventually chained shut. The dispute drew national attention, attracting support from prominent feminist figures including Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Robin Morgan, and Simone de Beauvoir.
Many years later, what I remember most is not the protest itself. The women involved were raising serious concerns that would eventually find their way into the mainstream of American journalism and public life. Nor do I remember the event primarily as a conflict between activists and journalists.
What stayed with me was something else: despite the emotional intensity of the dispute, the prevailing journalistic instinct was to proceed carefully. We tried to distinguish reporting from advocacy. We understood that the closer we were to a story emotionally, the more discipline we owed our readers.
That experience came flooding back while watching the New York Times respond to the controversy surrounding Nicholas Kristof’s recent opinion essay on allegations of sexual abuse against Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities.
The original controversy was significant enough. Critics questioned sourcing, corroboration, and evidentiary standards surrounding some of the essay’s most serious claims. Jewish organizations, media critics, and even some longtime supporters of........