The New York Times Unites vs. Twitter

[Auburn85 432]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/new-york-times-meeting-transcript.html

 

 

Quote

 

“What I’m saying is that our readers and some of our staff cheer us when we take on Donald Trump, but they jeer at us when we take on Joe Biden,” New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet told his staff in a town hall on Monday.

In the 75 minutes of the meeting—which Slate obtained a recording of, and of which a lightly condensed and edited transcript appears below—Baquet and the paper’s other leadership tried to resolve a tumultuous week for the paper, one marked by a reader revolt against a front-page headline and a separate Twitter meltdown by Jonathan Weisman, a top editor in the Washington bureau. On Tuesday, the Times announced it was demoting Weisman from deputy editor because of his “serious lapses in judgment.”

Baquet, in his remarks, seemed to fault the complaining readers, and the world, for their failure to understand the Times and its duties in the era of Trump. “They sometimes want us to pretend that he was not elected president, but he was elected president,” Baquet said. “And our job is to figure out why, and how, and to hold the administration to account. If you’re independent, that’s what you do.”

Yet the problem for the Times is not whether it can navigate social-media controversies or satisfy an appetite for #resistance-based outrage, both of which it can tell itself are not a newspaper’s job to do. It’s whether it has the tools to make sense of the world. On this point, Baquet was not reassuring or convincing.

 

Staffers repeatedly asked Baquet about the paper’s reluctance to use the word racist, in part because his explanations seemed inconsistent. Calling it a “bizarre litmus test,” Baquet argued it was “more powerful” to avoid directly using the label. “The best way to capture a remark, like the kinds of remarks the president makes, is to use them, to lay it out in perspective,” he said. “That is much more powerful than the use of a word.”

When asked a few minutes later about the paper’s historic use of racist to describe segregationist demonstrators in Arkansas in 1957, however, he said, “I don’t think anybody would avoid using the racist in a scene like that.” By the first account, racist wasn’t powerful enough language to describe Trump; by the second, Trump wasn’t bad enough to call racist.

 

The remarks showed Baquet and the other speakers conceding some technical and procedural failings but rejecting, or avoiding, deeper criticisms of the paper’s performance. A staffer, submitting a question anonymously, suggested that the headline that had caused all the trouble—“TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM”—“amplifies without critique the desired narrative of the most powerful figure in the country.”

Baquet and other editors addressed the headline as an operational problem, the result of a “system breakdown,” where a front-page layout had left too little space for nuance. “We set it up for a bad headline,” Baquet said, “and the people who were in a position to judge it quickly and change it, like me, did not look at it until too late.”

The closest Baquet came to identifying a moment when the paper had misjudged current events was when he described it as being “a little tiny bit flat-footed” after the Mueller investigation ended. “Our readers who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, ‘Holy s***, Bob Mueller is not going to do it,’” Baquet said. “And Donald Trump got a little emboldened politically, I think. Because, you know, for obvious reasons. And I think that the story changed. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about started to emerge like six or seven weeks ago.”

 

By this account, the question of how to address presidential racism was a newly emerged one, something the paper would need to pivot into. “How do we cover America, that’s become so divided by Donald Trump?” he said. “How do we grapple with all the stuff you all are talking about? How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven’t done in a large way in a long time?”

This difficult transition from one big story to the next was not a failure, but an unfortunate turn of events, which caused readers to unfairly take out their frustration on the messenger. The Times, like everyone, has to live through a period of heightened hostility. “There were tweets that people at the New York Times retweeted or liked last week that were really painful for this newsroom and for me personally,” Baquet said.

And Twitter is not reality, as publisher A.G. Sulzberger told the staff earlier in the session. “You know, someone did a study of Twitter shares that showed that 70 percent of all stories shared on Twitter were never opened,” Sulzberger said. “And to me, that’s just a reminder that so much of the world is judging before they’re actually engaging.”

The meeting transcript has been edited for grammar and continuity. And if you’re a current or former New York Times employee, please feel free to get in touch.

 

more at the link

[japantiger 4,051]

A complete unrepentant rag. 

[PUB78 1,358]

22 hours ago, japantiger said:

A complete unrepentant rag. 

Yeah, with him saying the NYT is “independent “ is like saying Hitler loved Jews.

[japantiger 4,051]

"Crappy Jew Year" ... "Who called the Jew-police" ... from all the news not fit to wipe your ass with... The New York Times; hating Jews since the 1920's.

 

A New York Times political editor has a years-long history of antisemitic and racist comments on his Twitter page, a Breitbart News investigation has found.

Tom Wright-Piersanti, who has been a Senior Staff Editor at the New York Times for more than five years according to his LinkedIn page and according to his Twitter page oversees the newspaper’s political coverage, has made a series of antisemitic and racist tweets over the years. Many of them are still public on his Twitter page as of the publication of this article, but some have since been deleted.

The revelation of these tweets come in the wake of the executive editor of the Times stating that the newspaper intends to target the president on racial issues over the next couple years, after the newspaper’s efforts on the Russia hoax scandal failed.

 

One tweet that is still public is from the early morning of New Years Day in 2010, when he admits he is antisemitic but announced that his New Years resolution was to be less antisemitic—even though the tweet’s content mocks Jewish people.

“I was going to say ‘Crappy Jew Year,’ but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic,” Wright-Piersanti tweeted on Jan. 1, 2010, at 9:35 a.m. “So…. HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews.”

I was going to say "Crappy Jew Year," but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So… HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews.

— Tom Wright-Piersanti (@tomwp) January 1, 2010

 

Another one from the evening of Dec. 15, 2009, includes a photograph of a vehicle with what looks like a Menorah–culturally and religiously associated with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah–on the roof. Wright-Piersanti commented: “Who called the Jew-police?” Breitbart News has not been able to determine what Wright meant by “the Jew-police,” and the New York Times has not yet responded to requests for comment on this matter.

http://twitpic.com/tp39o – Who called the Jew-police?

— Tom Wright-Piersanti (@tomwp) December 16, 2009

 

That tweet, and the photograph of the Menorah-bearing vehicle, are also still public on the New York Times politics editor’s Twitter feed as of the publication of this story.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/08/22/exclusive-crappy-jew-year-new-york-times-editors-antisemitism-racism-exposed/

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/08/22/exclusive-white-house-press-secretary-stephanie-grisham-disgusted-by-antisemitism-from-new-york-times-editor/

 

 

[homersapien 11,362]

He could have avoided the controversy by modifying the original headline to:

TRUMP IRONICALLY URGES UNITY VS. RACISM

 

[DKW 86 7,419]

How did this douche get hired? The NYT HAD TO KNOW about his tweets before they hired hm in 2014. 
How does a guy with two years at the NYT get to be a SR Political Editor?
How did he keep his job?

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/08/23/new-york-times-demotes-editor-for-tweets-mocking-jews-native-americans/

A New York Times editor has been demoted after 10-year-old tweets mocking Jews and American Indians resurfaced Thursday.

A Times spokesperson told Fox News that the editor, Tom Wright-Piersanti, apologized to leadership for “his recent serious lapses in judgment.”

“I have deleted tweets from a decade ago that are offensive. I am deeply sorry,” Wright-Piersanti wrote on Twitter, according to The Wrap. Wright-Piersanti’s tweets have since become protected.

Jessie Jane Duff

 

✔@JessieJaneDuff

 

 

As the @NYT keeps bashing the President, their own political editor Tom Wright-Piersanti has YEARS of antisemitic and racist comments on his Twitter page.

So bold, he even had a New Years resolution to be less antisemitic as he mocked Jews #NYTAntiSemite https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/08/22/exclusive-crappy-jew-year-new-york-times-editors-antisemitism-racism-exposed/amp/?__twitter_impression=true …

‘Crappy Jew Year’: New York Times Editor Antisemitism, Racism Exposed

A New York Times political editor has a history of online antisemitic and racist comments, a Breitbart News investigation has found.

breitbart.com

 

1,491

8:17 AM - Aug 22, 2019

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“Jonathan Weisman met with [New York Times Executive Editor] Dean Baquet today and apologized for his recent serious lapses in judgment,” the newspaper’s spokesperson said.

“As a consequence of his actions, he has been demoted and will no longer be overseeing the team that covers Congress or be active on social media,” the spokesperson said. “We don’t typically discuss personnel matters, but we’re doing so in this instance with Jonathan’s knowledge.”

In now-deleted tweets from 2008 and 2010, according to Fox, Wright-Piersanti wrote:

“I was going to say ‘Crappy Jew Year,’ but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So … HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews.”

“Want to see dozens of Indian girls grind all over each other? Go to the Golden Rail Pub in New Brunswick, NJ.”

“Two high-voiced Indian guys keep calling each other ‘dawg’ and they aren’t doing it as a joke. **** THAT s**t.”

“There are four Indian guys with mohawks in this one class, and each one is a douche in his own awful way. I hate mohawk Indians.”

“I don’t hate Mohawk Indians, though. I love those guys. I just hate Indians with mohawks. Different Indians, different mohawks.”

In another tweet, Wright-Piersanti posted an image of a car with a giant, lighted menorah on top of it and wrote, “Who called the Jew-police?”

Wright-Piersanti joined the Times in 2014, but before he was hired, he tweeted about the publication several times, according to the New York Post.

“What the NYTimes does is take your story, spice it up with a dash of *douche zest* and then a million people read it,” he wrote.

Wright-Piersanti later tweeted about a Times reporter who was sent to Montclair, New Jersey, for a story, writing, “Maybe NYT was right to send a douche,” adding a line from a Times article that read: “‘Montclair likes to think of itself as having more of a mix of races and classes than other suburbs.’”

Reps. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., and Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., called on the Times to punish Wright-Piersanti for his past tweets.

“Fire this dangerous bigot,” Brooks wrote on Twitter, along with a quote from Wright-Piersanti.

Mo Brooks

 

✔@RepMoBrooks

 

 

#NewYorkTimes #Jewish #Israel

New York Times senior staff editor Tom Wright-Piersanti posts: "I was going to say 'Crappy Jew Year,' but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So....HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews."

Says LOTS about NYT!

NYT: Fire this dangerous bigot! Mo

 

3,226

4:25 PM - Aug 22, 2019

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Zeldin wrote: “[The New York Times] has a political editor [Tom Wright-Piersanti] who literally describes himself on Twitter as anti-Semitic & has slammed Jews, Native American Indians & others. This isn’t an intern. It’s an editor. Someone should walkover [sic] to his desk, tell him to pack up & escort him out.”

Lee Zeldin

 

✔@RepLeeZeldin

 

 

.@nytimes has a political editor @tomwp who literally describes himself on Twitter as anti-Semitic & has slammed Jews, Native American Indians & others. This isn’t an intern. It’s an editor. Someone should walkover to his desk, tell him to pack up & escort him out.

 

977

3:07 PM - Aug 22, 2019

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The Times came under fire in August 2018 for hiring an editor who also had a history of questionable tweets, such as: “Dumb*ss f**king white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

The Times defended its decision to hire Sarah Jeong after her tweets resurfaced, praising her “exceptional work” and adding: “Her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a frequent subject of online harassment. For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers.”

[DKW 86 7,419]

I stand amazed at the facepalms around here. If you ask a valid, solid foundational question that should be a 2 second answer you get a facepalm? I am convinced that the facepalmers do not understand discourse. They just MINDLESSLY follow the talking points on every issue. They dont or cant understand the issues. So they just MINDLESSLY defer to the talking points. 

Rinse and repeat...

The NYT hired a racist, bigoted, anti-semitic ass and in 2 years made him a senior political editor.  You cannot tell me that: 
1) they did not know about his tweets. There had to be members of the staff that knew him
2) AND the HR Dept had to research all this before they hired him. There are prehire firms that research your social media presence before hire and they have been active long before 2014.
 

A Senior political editor that was assuredly turning the political discourse and reporting of the NYT racist, bigoted, AND MOST DEFINTELY ANTI-SEMITIC AND ANTI-ISRAEL.