The New York Times has been involved in many controversies since its founding in 1851. It is one of the largest newspapers in the United States and the world, and is considered to have worldwide influence and readership. Thousands of writers have contributed to New York Times materials. Notably, it has been accused of antisemitism, bias, and playing a notable role in influencing the Iraq War due to its misleading coverage of Saddam Hussein.
Pre-21st century Russian Revolution, 1917–1920 In 1920, Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz investigated the coverage of the Russian Revolution by The New York Times from 1917 to 1920. Their findings, published as "A Test of the News", in a supplement of The New Republic, concluded that The New York Times reporting was biased and inaccurate, adding that the newspaper's news stories were not based on facts but "were determined by the hopes of the men who made up the news organizations." Lippmann and Merz alleged that the newspaper referred to events that had not taken place and atrocities that had not occurred, and that it reported at least 91 times that the Bolshevik regime was on the verge of collapse. "The news about Russia is an example of what people wanted to see, not what happened," Lippmann and Merz wrote. "The main censor and the main propagandist was the hope and fear in the minds of reporters and editors."Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, 1920, A Test of the News
Coverage of the Holodomor The New York Times was criticized for the work of reporter Walter Duranty, who served as its Moscow bureau chief from 1922 through 1936. Duranty wrote a series of stories in 1931 on the Soviet Union and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work at that time; however, he has been criticized for denying widespread famine, particularly the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s.Conquest, R. Reflections on a Ravaged Century. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 2000."The Foreign Office and the famine: British documents on Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932–1933". Studies in East European nationalisms.
In 2003, after the Pulitzer Board began a renewed inquiry, the Times hired Mark von Hagen, professor of Russian history at Columbia University, to review Duranty's work. Von Hagen found Duranty's reports to be unbalanced and uncritical, and that they far too often gave voice to Stalinist propaganda. In comments to the press, he stated, "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away.""N.Y. Times Urged to Rescind 1932 Pulitzer". USA Today. Retrieved February 2, 2008.
Coverage of the Holocaust The Times has been criticized for its coverage of the Holocaust. According to the 2005 book Buried by the Times by Laurel Leff, it buried in the back pages of the paper stories about the genocide of European Jews, and avoided mentions of Jewish victims of persecutions, deportations, and death camps. Between 1939 and 1945, the Times published more than 23,000 front-page stories—half of which were about World War II—and only 26 were about the Holocaust. In the documentary Reporting on The Times: How the paper of record ignored the Holocaust, past editors of the newspaper stated that there was a conscious decision to bury the paper's Holocaust coverage.
Various motivations have been attributed to the decision to bury and minimize the Holocaust, all of which are linked to the Times publisher at the time, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who was Jewish. Some claim that Sulzberger feared the Times would be "viewed as a special pleader for the Jews'"Downplaying the Holocaust -- Sulzberger & NY Times: Anna Blech at TEDxHunterCCS TEDx Talks, 2013—at a time when anti-Semitism was relatively common in the United States—if the Holocaust was given more prominent coverage. Others point to Sulzberger's anti-Zionist views as a stronger motive. A Reform Jew and an enthusiastic supporter of the American Council for Judaism, both of which heavily emphasize anti-Zionism, Sulzberger believed European Jews were partially responsible for their own demise in the Holocaust. Not even a personal visit to a concentration camp was enough to shake this conviction. In a 1946 speech, less than one year after his visit to a concentration camp, Sulzberger stated, "'[i]t is my judgment that thousands dead might now be alive' if 'the Zionists' had put 'less emphasis on statehood.'" In another speech that same year, Sulzberger downplayed the plight of displaced Jews, stating "they were 'but a minor percentage of the total of displaced persons' and therefore should not be receiving so much attention."
In September 1996, the Times released a statement admitting to "underplaying the Holocaust while it was taking place" and that "[c]lippings from the paper show that the criticism is valid."
1979 sex discrimination settlement In November 1979, a federal court gave approval to a settlement between The New York Times and a group of female Times employees who sued alleging sex discrimination. The settlement agreement was effective for a four-year period beginning in January 1979; under the agreement, the company amended existing equal opportunity targets and paid $350,000 in compensation and attorneys' fees to the plaintiffs, but was not required to "pay new or retroactive salary increases, make immediate promotions, revoke past employment practices or substantially change its present affirmative-action programs."The Times Settles Sex‐Bias Suit Filed by Female Workers in U.S. Court, New York Times (Nov. 21, 1978). James C. Goodale, the executive vice president of the New York Times Company, said that the settlement "completely vindicates The Times of any charge or hint of unfair employment practices."
Los Alamos investigation In 1999, The New York Times ran a series of stories about the alleged theft of classified documents from Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico.James Risen and Jeff Gerth (March 6, 1999), "BREACH AT LOS ALAMOS: A special report; China Stole Nuclear Secrets For Bombs, U.S. Aides Say" (includes extensive corrections) , The New York TimesJames Risen (March 16, 1999), "Los Alamos Scientist Admits Contacts With Chinese, U.S. Says" , The New York TimesJames Risen (April 11, 1999), " F.B.I. Searches Home of Researcher Fired From Los Alamos" , The New York Times The prime suspect, Taiwan-born U.S. citizen Wen Ho Lee, had his name leaked to The New York Times by U.S. Energy Department officials.James Risen (May 8, 1999), "Lawyer Issues Denial for Los Alamos Scientist Suspected of Spying for Beijing" , The New York TimesJames Risen (Aug. 7, 1999), "Security Issues May Delay Los Alamos Case, U.S. Says" , The New York TimesJames Risen (Sept. 11, 1999), "Los Alamos Punishes 3 for Role in Spy Inquiry" , The New York Times Lee was indicted on 59 counts and jailed in solitary confinement for 278 days until he accepted a plea bargain from the government.Patsy T. Mink, George Miller, Nancy Pelosi (Oct. 12, 2000), 146 Cong. Rec. (Bound) 22416 - INVESTIGATION AND TREATMENT OF WEN HO LEE , U.S. House of Representatives proceedings in Congressional Record The alleged security breach became a catalyst for the creation of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Lee was released after the government failed to prove its case.Wen Ho Lee; Helen Zia (2001), My Country Versus Me: The first-hand account by the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy , Hyperion, pp. 1–5
President Bill Clinton issued a public apology to Dr. Lee over his treatment. The federal judge in charge of the case, James Aubrey Parker, remarked that "top decision makers in the executive branch... have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen."NYTimes (Sept. 14, 2000), "Statement by Judge in Los Alamos Case, With Apology for Abuse of Power" , The New York Times Lee filed a lawsuit under the Privacy Act alleging that officials had leaked false and incriminating information to the press before charges were filed. Lee's lawsuit was settled in 2006, just before the U.S. Supreme Court was to decide whether to hear the case. The issues resembled those in the Plame affair criminal investigation, during which The New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent two-and-a-half months in jail rather than reveal her government source. Alleged biases Corporate-influence concerns In their book Manufacturing Consent (1988), Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky analyze major U.S. media outlets, with an emphasis on The Times. They believe that a bias exists which is neither liberal nor conservative in nature, but aligned towards the interests of corporations, which own most of these media outlets and also provide the majority of their advertising revenue. The authors explain that this bias functions in all sorts of ways:
"by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict — in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society."
Chomsky and Herman also touch on the importance of this perceived bias in The Times:"history is what appears in The New York Times archives; the place where people will go to find out what happened is The New York Times. Therefore it's extremely important if history is going to be shaped in an appropriate way, that certain things appear, certain things not appear, certain questions be asked, other questions be ignored, and that issues be framed in a particular fashion."
In 2018 documentary Fahrenheit 11/9, director Michael Moore accuses The Times of leading liberal establishment newspapers in becoming "more like Republicans" starting in the Clinton presidency. He argues The Times adopted war hawk positions, minimized social movements like the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests, defended the Wall Street bailout, and undermined the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign because its progressive economic policies threatened the liberal establishment.
Fossil fuel advertising An investigation by The Intercept, The Nation, and DeSmog found that The New York Times is one of the leading media outlets that publishes advertising for the fossil fuel industry. Journalists who cover climate change for the Times are concerned that conflicts of interest with the companies and industries that caused climate change and obstructed action will reduce the credibility of their reporting on climate change and cause readers to downplay the climate crisis.
Coverage of Israel and Palestine
A 2003 study in the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics concluded that The New York Times reporting was more favorable to Israelis than to Palestinians. A 2002 study published in the journal Journalism examined Middle East coverage of the Second Intifada over a one-month period in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. The study authors said that the Times was "the most slanted in a pro-Israeli direction" with a bias "reflected... in its use of headlines, photographs, graphics, sourcing practices, and lead paragraphs." A Media, War & Conflict study based on a quantitative analysis of the use of active and passive voice and of the sentiment of the language used during the first and second Palestinian intifadas found that the paper's coverage of the events was disproportionately anti-Palestinian and that such bias worsened from the First Intifada to the Second.
A 2012 Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy study of The Times concluded that the paper's "narrative of Israel stayed largely in the journalistic 'middle' throughout the decades but the 'middle' changed because of many factors, including a growing awareness of the situation of the Palestinians who were themselves just developing a nationalist consciousness." That, it found, led supporters of Israel to see the paper as tilted toward Palestinians.
Gaza war coverage