NY Times staffers slam ‘witch hunt’ as paper probes source of Israel-Gaza coverage leak
New York Times staffers are claiming they are being subjected to a “witch hunt” by senior editors who are investigating the source of leaks about a podcast episode that was pulled because of newsroom arguments over a report about alleged mass rapes by Hamas.
Charlotte Behrendt, the Times’ director of policy and internal investigations, is overseeing an effort by management to suss out details about how deliberations involving its “Daily” podcast leaked out, according to Vanity Fair.
The Times is keen on learning the source of leaks that underpinned a story by the left-leaning news site the Intercept, which reported in late January that an episode of the podcast was spiked due to disagreements over a story that alleged Hamas gunmen systematically raped Israelis during their murderous Oct. 7 rampage.
Times staffers told Vanity Fair they were miffed that management was investigating the leak.
“It’s not something we do,” one Gray Lady staffer told Vanity Fair. “That kind of witch hunt is really concerning.”
According to the Intercept, the Times canceled an airing of the podcast “amid a furious internal debate about the strength of the paper’s original reporting on the subject.”
Times staffers are reportedly divided over a Dec. 28 dispatch by Israel-based freelancers who conducted an investigation for the Gray Lady on claims that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women.
The accuracy of the story was called into question after discrepancies emerged and one of the people quoted as having witnessed rape offered contradictory statements.
One of the families interviewed by the Times later denounced the newspaper and accused the reporters of manipulating them into claiming that one of the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre, Gal Abdush, was raped when there was no evidence to support the claim.
One of the authors of the Dec. 28 story, Anat Schwartz, was recently investigated by the Times after X users posted screenshots of social media messages that she liked, including one which called for Israel to turn the Gaza Strip into a “slaughterhouse.”
The Intercept reported that a January episode of the “Daily” was put on ice because the producers and editors faced a dilemma — “run a version that hews closely to the previously published story and risk republishing serious mistakes, or publish a heavily toned-down version, raising questions about whether the paper still stands by the original report.”
A Times spokesperson told the Intercept that “there is only one ‘version’ of any piece of audio journalism: the one that publishes.”
“No Daily episode was killed due to fact-checking failures,” a Times spokesperson told the Intercept.
“We aren’t going to comment on internal matters,” a Times spokesperson told The Post when asked to comment on the Vanity Fair report.
“I can tell you that the work of our newsroom requires trust and collaboration, and we expect all of our colleagues to adhere to these values.”
Hamas gunmen slaughtered around 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers in a cross-border raid at dawn Oct. 7.
In the months since, an estimated 30,000 Palestinians have died as a result of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has rejected allegations that its gunmen committed sexual assault.
