In a Sunday Review column ostensibly about her paper's biased, social-activist coverage of the firing of Reddit chief executive Ellen Pao, New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan let slip an unannounced editorial change by the Times, opening the floodgates even wider for reporters to inject liberal impulses into their news stories: "They want to provide 'value-added' coverage," not the "just the facts" reporting "that one can get anywhere." For the Times, "value-added" means "liberal bias."
Technology reporter Mike Isaac's July 10 first draft on the resignation of Pao, pressured by Reddit contributors who were angry about the dismissal of a user liaison popular among the moderators of the news-and-opinion bulletinn board, was evidently too objective to feed the needs of social justice. As Twitchy recorded, the revised version transformed the piece from fact to opinion, focusing on alleged Silicon Valley sexism and not Pao's actual performance at Reddit, with loaded paragraphs like this dumped in (so loaded that this version itself was dialed back by the time the article reached print):
Ms. Pao’s abrupt downfall in the face of a torrent of sexist and racist attacks, many of them on Reddit itself, is likely to renew charges that bullying, harassment and ugly behavior are out of control on the web -- and that Silicon Valley’s well-publicized lack of interest in hiring anyone who is not male and white is contributing to the problem.
Public Editor Sullivan wrote for the Sunday Review:
Some readers also objected to the sweeping changes in the story about Ms. Pao’s departure from the high-traffic site that sometimes calls itself “the front page of the Internet.” They complained that what was initially a neutral news story, which went online about 5 p.m. on July 10, morphed into an opinion piece a few hours later, with no explanation to readers. That version was what print readers saw on the front page the next morning.
And many readers disagreed with the implication of the story -- that Ms. Pao was fired because of sexism rather than because she was a poor leader. The headline read: “It’s Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0: Fighter of Sexism is Out at Reddit.” (Ms. Pao lost a highly publicized sex discrimination lawsuit against a previous employer in March.)
....
Did a news story become, in effect, an opinion piece? Mike Isaac, a talented and prolific technology reporter for The Times, said that certainly had not been his intention. Rather, he (and David Streitfeld who joined him in writing the final piece) wanted to include as much background and context as possible.
But Sullivan buried her larger point:
I often hear from readers that they would prefer a straight, neutral treatment -- just the facts. But The Times has moved away from that, reflecting editors’ reasonable belief that the basics can be found in many news outlets, every minute of the day. They want to provide “value-added” coverage.
In an era of shuttering newspapers and media outlets shutting down foreign and domestic news bureaus, can one claim with a straight face you can get "just the facts" reporting from just anywhere? The truth is quite the opposite: You can get left-wing half-baked opinions from anywhere, from Daily Kos, Salon -- or the formerly august pages of the Times, as the Reddit edits demonstrated.
Sullivan extracted a few mild mea culpas from Isaac and his editor Tam, but only a single neutral mention of David Streitfeld, who snagged a co-writing credit on the second, extremely biased version.
Ms. Tam said that, in hindsight, “there was probably more we could have included about Ms. Pao and some of her missteps at Reddit.” Mr. Isaac agreed: “I wish I had included other reasons behind Ellen’s ouster.” Those angles have been covered in many other Times stories, both noted.
Certainly, the headline went too far in suggesting that this was simply a story about a victim of sexism.
