An Open Letter to The New York Times
Why I’m cancelling my subscription after 10 years as a subscriber
Dear Arthur (AG) Sulzberger,
You may not remember me, but we were in the same class in college, and we have friends in common.
I have been a subscriber to The New York Times for 10 years. I grew up in Los Angeles, but my parents were devoted NYT readers; they have each subscribed to both the NYT and LA Times for as long as I can remember-I’m 36 now-and they still do.
During the 2015–2016 election season, I was concerned about the quality (or lack thereof) of coverage the NYT was giving to the grave risks Donald Trump posed to our democracy. Throughout it all, I continued subscribing.
Then, about six months ago, some friends and I began a deep dive into your “star reporter,” “Trump Whisperer” Maggie Haberman. We grew increasingly concerned about her lack of journalistic objectivity and her familial/financial conflicts of interest with the Trump and Kushner families.
We put our greatest effort into researching and writing our latest article, Maggie Duranty. What we found shook us to the core.
Though we are not professional journalists, the three of us are professionals with expertise in other areas. We spent a year researching Donald Trump’s mafia ties. Much of what we found and wrote about in our first article, Poke The Bear, came from THE ARCHIVES OF THE NEW YORK TIMES. Yet during the election season, your paper never reported on Trump’s mob history. And now, with Dianne Feinstein’s release of the Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS’s Senate Interview Transcript, the whole world will know about Trump’s mob ties. Which you, effectively, hid by not reporting. And which you are STILL HIDING.
Your paper is repeating its gravest mistake from the 20th century. Your “star reporter’s” puff-piece coverage of Trump means you are enabling a would-be dictator. Your lack of reporting on Trump-linked Russian mafia figures Sater and Mogilevich, both mentioned BY NAME in the Simpson testimony is you effectively running interference for transnational organized crime.
I can no longer support your institution. Today will be my last delivery of a Sunday New York Times. I’m cancelling my subscription.
Please, clean your house.
Return your family’s legacy to its rightful place as a paper of record.
Stop enabling apologists who spin puff piece PR stories to the detriment of our democracy.
I implore you, Arthur: Read Justice Black’s Concurrence from New York Times Co. v. United States, written in 1971.
Let it galvanize your integrity.
And please, take this to heart: The U.S. government is no longer the only threat to a free press as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. There is a new threat to a free and fair press whose mandate is to serve the governed not the governors. The new threat is corporate capture of the Fourth Estate. By interests linked to transnational organized crime.
Corporate Capture of the Fourth Estate is INTENTIONAL. Their goal is to obscure their motivations while they destroy our faith in democracy and our institutions. If they can’t buy a media outlet outright, they have another tactic to force their narrative to be the only story told: kompromat.
Russia is a mafia state. When you refuse to cover Trump & Putin’s connections to the Russian mafia, it looks from the outside as if the Gray Lady’s journalistic integrity has been captured by the interests of transnational organized crime.
You can right the ship.
You can return The New York Times to journalistic objectivity.
You have some of the top talent in the world of journalism. Let your best people do their jobs-holding the powerful accountable-the right way, with integrity and objectivity. Report on Trump’s mafia ties. Pull no punches.
Don’t let the PR hacks on your staff who seek access at all costs outshine the brilliant real journalists you employ. Ask your investigative reporters who have the utmost respect for their craft to report these stories.
Report on the reality that the President of the United States is a money launderer for the Russian mafia.
Report on the reality that his campaign colluded with Russian agents of influence to steal the 2016 election.
When you do, I’ll re-up my subscription.
And if you can’t, find a new job.
Maybe Howard Rubenstein is hiring.
Sincerely,
Katherine Louise Neufeld, Brown University Class of 2003
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Just a few examples of the travesty that is your paper’s coverage of the Donald Trump era:
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