Shame will haunt New York Times leadership

Except for an occasional opinion piece, The New York Times has gone out of its way to avoid using the word “genocide” when referring to Gaza — even as human rights organizations, U.N. bodies, parliaments, and scholars increasingly do so.

The New York Times is the paper of record. U.S. policy and politicians, from mayors to presidents, respond directly to its pages. Even as the journalism industry contracts and misinformation remains on the rise, what is published there still matters.

That is why it is jarring that the paper has not moved to represent reality in its language and, more broadly, its coverage. An internal memo from The New York Times reported by The Intercept in 2024 told journalists to avoid the words “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” — preventing them from naming what respected human rights organizations had already documented. In several cases, from Myanmar to Darfur, writers at the paper of record have used the word reasonably and freely.

It is now the end of 2025. The scale of destruction, death, and displacement in Gaza should be harder to ignore with each passing day. In no way is this behavior — normalizing what is occurring — reasonable, nor does it have light implications.

The work of The New York Times, considering its platform, is a heavy responsibility. The words published in the paper help define an understanding of the world used by other media organizations and policymakers. The result of the paper’s current choice is not neutrality, but the reinforcement of state violence.

Members of Israel’s far-right government have made it clear what is occurring. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister of the current government, said in May, “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” and in April, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, actively supported blocking humanitarian aid in Gaza to a Palestinian population facing starvation. To see this reality, openly discussed by prominent government leaders, and not give readers specificity as to what is happening, is heinous.

Not only does New York Times leadership insist that their writers project a reality that does not exist, but in doing so, they also obscure the scale of death and injury facing our colleagues. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 200 media workers have been killed during the conflict, making Gaza the deadliest place for journalists in modern history.

Writers Against the War on Gaza has explicitly called for a boycott of the Times precisely for that reason: because of its language choices and the paper’s insistence on parroting the Israeli military’s claims without the same scrutiny that would be rightfully applied to any other state military.

In October, more than 500 public figures and writers declared they would not publish with the Times’ opinion section, including Chelsea Manning, Sally Rooney, Rupi Kaur, Elia Suleiman, Mariam Barghouti, Greta Thunberg, Kiese Laymon, Mohammed El-Kurd, Hannah Einbinder, Plestia Alaqad, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Jia Tolentino. In their letter, they write:

“We owe it to the journalists and writers of Palestine to refuse complicity with the Times, and to demand that the paper account for its failures, such that it can never again manufacture consent for mass slaughter, torture, and displacement.”

Our job as storytellers, as journalists, is to speak truth to power — not to bend to it.

The problem is not only one of language, but structural. How the Times covers individual stories, whose deaths it chooses to prioritize, and whose voices it centers, are worth scrutinizing.

If the masthead can sleep soundly at night thinking they’ve done a good job, journalism — and the world — is worse off. They are not the perpetrators, but cowardice carries the water.

It is my sincere hope that they can move beyond their past choices, acknowledge their actions, and make the right choice at a late hour. Until then, turning away from moral clarity to intentionally ignore suffering and death is cowardice, not journalism. Those who advocate that we do so have no reason to be called our colleagues.

Instead, shame — in the newsroom, in public, and in the historical record.