Journalism professors call on New York Times to review Oct. 7 report
A major investigative report into sexual violence in the Hamas attack on Israel has drawn criticism inside and outside the newspaper.
More than 50 tenured journalism professors from top universities have signed a letter calling on the New York Times to address questions about a major investigative report that described a “pattern of gender-based violence” in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The letter follows months of criticism and concerns raised by outside critics as well as some Times staffers about the credibility of its sourcing and the editorial process for the story. The letter, signed by professors at colleges including New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Emory and the University of Texas, asks the Times to “immediately commission a group of journalism experts to conduct a thorough and full independent review of the reporting, editing and publishing processes for this story and release a report of the findings.” It was sent Monday morning to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, executive editor Joe Kahn and international editor Philip Pan. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Times said that the paper has “reviewed the work that was done on this piece of journalism and [we] are satisfied that it met our editorial standards.” The letter, obtained by The Washington Post, acknowledged the impossibility of “writing perfectly accurate drafts of history in real time” but emphasized that news organizations must be willing to interrogate their own work. It notes that the Times and many other publications have reassessed stories in the manner the professors suggest. In 2004, the Times reviewed its coverage of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; in a note to readers, editors later acknowledged they identified “problematic” stories that had been based on the accounts of Iraqi sources “whose credibility has come under increasing public debate.”
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