NY Times journo deletes LinkedIn ‘climate crisis’ post after staffers rip ‘advocacy’: report
A New York Times reporter deleted a LinkedIn post that urged a “truly radical” response to what he called a global “climate crisis” after fellow staffers at the newspaper reportedly complained the post had veered into advocacy and away from objective journalism.
David Gelles, the paper’s climate change correspondent, removed the post from LinkedIn recounting remarks he had made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to Confider, the newsletter published by the Daily Beast .
“After the year that was the hottest in recorded history, with climate change ravaging every corner of the globe, I implored a room full of CEOs, diplomats and NGO leaders to step up their urgency and begin considering truly radical political and economic interventions,” Gelles wrote in the LinkedIn post, which he also shared on his Instagram account.
Gelles added that it was “time to begin imagining what a society truly transformed will look like” and “to start identifying the hurdles that make disruptions to the status quo appear uneconomical, impractical or politically untenable.”
“The hour is late, and it’s incumbent on those with the capital and the clout to start deploying the whole of their resources toward the climate crisis,” Gelles wrote.
According to the Daily Beast, “Some Times staffers who spotted the posts … questioned whether it violated the Times ethics guidelines by crossing the line into advocacy.”
After the publication reached out to Gelles and the paper for comment, Gelles deleted the post, according to the Daily Beast.
A Times spokesperson told The Post that the newspaper stands behind Gelles.
“As he has produced some of The Times’s most vital and wide-ranging journalism on the politics and global impacts of climate change, David’s approach to reporting has always been impartial, unflinching and incisive,” a Times spokesperson said.
“While he brought this same ethos to his role speaking at an event at the World Economic Forum, subsequent social media posts about the event may have been misunderstood to convey something other than impartiality, and as such have since been deleted.”
A faction of Times journalists has been agitating for a more aggressive approach in taking public stances on hot-button issues.
Hundreds of members of NewsGuild of New York, the labor union which represents Times journalists, demanded that a statement be issued calling for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas as well as an end to US government aid to Israel.
Times staffers have also been critical of management and top editors over the tenor of coverage surrounding transgender issues.
The union’s increasingly vocal position has divided the newsroom — prompting some Times staffers to form an “independence caucus” that would stay neutral on divisive topics.
