Three LGBTQ+ Journalists Have Left the NYT Over Its Gaza Coverage

“I resigned from my contributor writing position at the Times mag earlier this week because having a formal institutional affiliation was starting to become a liability to my work,” Keiles wrote in an X thread clarifying their resignation decision. “Sources were increasingly asking me to answer for what they understood to be shoddy [New York Times] coverage of BLM, trans stuff, Israel. Though I love my editors and have always felt supported, I ultimately decided the institution was taking more from me than giving to me.”

During a joint interview with Keiles on the weekday news broadcast Democracy Now!, Hughes described the concept of journalistic objectivity as “a wonderful, beautiful project for a world that does not exist.”

“In mainstream media at large, the recent diversification of newsrooms has been a great boon to both coverage and people’s egos,” she continued. “But what happens when we finally have an influx of people with different identities, different experiences, and different wants in a newsroom? I signed the [WAWOG] letter not as an employee of the New York Times, but as a Black person, as a queer person, as a woman. All of those identities, all of the communities they’re [a part] of, have been awarded their rights by agitation. By protest. And I, as a person at the core of all these identities, wanted to amplify that effort.”

For their part, Keiles shared that they had previously been reprimanded for signing the February open letter criticizing the Times’ coverage of trans issues, despite not being entitled to benefits or union protections as a contingent worker. They told Democracy Now! that he resigned while anticipating a similar reprimand for signing WAWOG’s open letter.

“[Higher-ups at the Times previously told me], ‘You can’t sign this [trans coverage] letter because it singled out the work of other writers specifically within the institution,” Keiles said. “And I said to that, ‘Well, I don’t work here, so I don’t know what you’re talking to me about.’”

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