The New York Times decided to eliminate the newspaper’s public editor position because the outlet believes it has “outgrown” the need of internal oversight, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. informed employees in a company memo Wednesday.
Liz Spayd, the publication’s sixth and final public editor, is set to depart Friday from The Times when her position expires, the Huffington Post first reported Wednesday. With Spayd’s departure and the elimination of the role entirely, The Times will lose the accountability the independent, internal watchdog was meant to provide.
“It means the Times is caving in to lefty critics who have bashed Spayd for some time. She actually recognized the Times has serious issues with its own biases.”
“The responsibility of the public editor ― to serve as the reader’s representative ― has outgrown that one office,” Sulzberger wrote in his memo.
Noting that “there is nothing more important to our mission, or our business, than strengthening our connection with our readers,” Sulzberger insisted that “a relationship that fundamental cannot be outsourced to a single intermediary.”
The position at the Times has been filled since 2003, during the height of The Times’ Jayson Blair plagiarism and fabrication scandal. The public editor was tasked with holding the publication accountable and serving as an advocate for the readers to the Times’ upper-level management.
Other publications have employed a public editor, or “ombudsman,” to perform duties similar to Spayd’s. Most notably, The Washington Post maintained its own public editor position until 2013, due the increased levels of commentary and criticism from “all quarters, instantly, in this internet age,” editor Marty Baron said at the time The Post eliminated the position.
Media watchdogs slammed the Times’ decision as evidence the newspaper has further caved to its left-wing bias.
“Yes, the Times has fallen on financial hard times, but the ending of the public editor position means more than that,” Dan Gainor, the vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, told LifeZette in an email. “It means The Times is caving in to lefty critics who have bashed Spayd for some time. She actually recognized the Times has serious issues with its own biases.”
Spayd has filled the public editor position at The Times since 2016, and her brief tenure was marked by several “controversies.”
In April, Spayd wrote a column that Deadpan dubbed to be “exceptionally stupid,” when she criticized The Times’ sports section for burying game scores and stats in favor of promoting feature stories. The NYT Sports Twitter account publicly criticized Spayd by retweeting a tweet from Deadspin Editor-in-Chief Tim Marchman calling the story “f***ing stupid.”
But Spayd ruffled the most elite media feathers with a round condemnation of the Times’ coverage of the 2016 election.
After President Donald Trump pulled off an Election Day upset that stunned most elites in the mainstream media elites, Spayd wrote a November 19 piece called “One Thing Voters Agree On: Better Campaign Coverage Was Needed.” In her column, Spayd offered a scathing rebuke to The Times and other old guard outlets for their biased coverage, which heavily favored Clinton and often misrepresented Trump.
“Since the election, I have been on the phone with many Times readers around the country … to discuss their concerns about the Times’ coverage of the presidential election,” Spayd wrote, adding that “the number of complaints coming into the public editor’s office is five times the normal level.”
Pointing to Trump supporters that contacted her office, Spayd wrote that “they voted for Donald Trump and don’t consider themselves homophobic, racist, or anti-Muslim.”
“But now, they say, thanks to The Times and its fixation on Trump’s most extreme supporters, most people think they are,” Spayd wrote. “They complain that the Times’ attempt to tap the sentiments of Trump supporters was lacking. And they complain about the liberal tint The Times applies to its coverage, without awareness that it does.”
“What struck me is how many liberal voters I spoke with felt so, too. They were Clinton backers, but they want a news source that fairly covers people across the spectrum,” Spayd added. “I found myself wishing someone from the newsroom was on the line with me, especially to hear how many of the more liberal voters wanted more balanced coverage. Not an echo chamber of liberal intellectualism, but an honest reflection of reality.”
The Times’ public editor also noted that the executive editor, Dean Baquet, and Sulzberger had written a post-election letter to their readers promising self-reflection and the desire to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences.”
Spayd’s column earned swift condemnation from left-wing media outlets.
Slate writer Will Oremus wrote an April 14 article called, “Dear Public Editor: What Are You Doing?” with the subtitle, “How Liz Spayd is squandering the most important watchdog job in journalism.”
Oremus, at least, seemed to admit that the public editor position was key to the paper’s integrity and accountability.
Ben Collins wrote a Daily Beast article titled, “The New York Times Public Editor’s Alt-Right Blindspot” in March.
In Sept. 2016, Ian Millhiser wrote on ThinkProgress that Spayd’s position “ostensibly makes her the readers’ representative within the paper’s newsroom” with the job of challenging “her colleagues. To examine their mistakes and, by shining a light on them, help improve the paper’s reporting.”
[lz_related_box id=”803284″]
Millhiser found Spayd wanting because she dared to champion “false balance” in journalism by suggesting “that climate deniers deserve equal time to rebut the overwhelming scientific consensus that man-made climate change is real. Or that creationists should be given equal space to debate biologists.”
Gainor, of the media watchdog MRC, noted left-wing media have long targeted Spayd’s advocacy for balanced reporting.
“The Left has been targeting her for months,” Gainor said of Spayd. “Slate said she ‘has repeatedly failed.’ The Atlantic dubbed her ‘controversial,’ and The Daily Beast said she ‘messes up.’ Add that all up, and it means she skewered the paper’s liberal bubble and now she has paid for it.”
But now The Times has eliminated both Spayd’s position and the entire role the position served in providing accountability for the paper.
Spayd’s predecessor, Margaret Sullivan, issued a series of tweets Wednesday in response to the Times’ move.
“I can’t say I’m surprised to see NYT ending public editor position, especially in a time of newsroom cost-cutting and position-trimming,” Sullivan tweeted. “A lot of news organizations have eliminated the ombudsman position, including my current employer, @washingtonpost, a few years ago.”
She added, “The one thing an ombud or public editor can almost always do is hold feet to the fire, and get a real answer out of management. … The role, by definition, is a burr under the saddle for the powers that be … I did feel, while doing it for almost four years, that I served an important purpose for the readership — and for the Times itself.”
[lz_third_party includes=”https://twitter.com/Sulliview/status/869933537008517120″]
[lz_third_party includes=”https://twitter.com/Sulliview/status/869934071614496768″]
[lz_third_party includes=”https://twitter.com/Sulliview/status/869934539581403136″]
Join the Discussion
Comments are currently closed.