On September 23, The Free Press exclusively reported on the lawsuit filed against The New York Times by shareholders who said the paper failed to meet its most basic obligation: to report the truth, and correct itself in a timely manner when it didn’t. The suit relied on the testimony of an unnamed whistleblower who worked on the New York Times video desk for nearly a decade. In an exclusive interview with The Free Press, the 48-year-old whistleblower—who we’re identifying by her middle name, Guta—gives color to her time at the paper. Her account is based on her records of Slack conversations, the company’s internal editing history, project databases, and hours of meetings, all of which have been reviewed exclusively by The Free Press. —The Editors
On Guta’s first day at The New York Times, she walked into the newsroom and took a selfie. “I was just so excited,” she told me. “It was my dream job.”
That was 2016.
By 2019, that excitement had started to fade. In April of that year, the Times published a cartoon depicting Israel’s prime minister as a guide dog wearing a Star of David collar, led on a leash by the U.S. president, who was donning a kippah. The Times later acknowledged the image “included antisemitic tropes,” and its editorial board called it “appalling.” The following month, publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote to the entire company that the Times was “updating our unconscious bias training to ensure it includes a direct focus on antisemitism.” In Guta’s 10 years at the paper she said the training was never implemented to her knowledge, despite her raising it five or six separate times.
And the bias didn’t stop, she said.
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