In an act of collective conscience that strikes at the heart of the paper’s authority, more than 150 writers, artists, and activists have pledged to boycott the Times’ opinion section, accusing the publication of acting as a “bullhorn” for the Israeli military and “manufacturing consent for mass slaughter” in Gaza. This is a fundamental challenge to the newspaper’s role as a chronicler of history, demanding it account for the stories it tells and the ones it obscures in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.
The list of signatories reads like a who’s who of progressive thought and literary acclaim. It includes Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, climate activist Greta Thunberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, and novelist Sally Rooney.
They are joined by over 300 scholars and journalists like Marc Lamont Hill, Noura Erakat, Vijay Prashad, and Rashid Khalidi, as well as voices like former Army intelligence analyst turned whistleblower Chelsea Manning and sports journalist Dave Zirin.
Their collective grievance is not with a single article but with what they describe as a decades-long pattern. The letter states the Times has “obfuscated, justified, and outright denied the occupier’s war crimes,” creating a hegemonic narrative that launders official statements into accepted fact. For these writers, contributing a first-person essay to the opinion section would be an act of complicity, lending their individual credibility to an institution they believe has failed its basic ethical duty. By withholding their labor, they aim to mount a challenge that cannot be ignored, forcing a public reckoning within one of America’s most powerful media institutions.
The boycott is not merely a statement of principle; it is a detailed indictment accompanied by three concrete demands. The first calls for the paper to conduct a formal review of anti-Palestinian bias and establish new editorial standards for its Palestine coverage. This includes updated sourcing practices and a revised style guide, a foundational tool that dictates the language journalists use.
The choice of words in this conflict is never neutral; it carries the weight of history and political allegiance. The signatories also demand a ban on employing any journalist who has served in the Israeli military, a measure aimed at confronting perceived structural conflicts of interest. The second demand focuses on a specific, high-profile piece of reporting: the December 28, 2023, article “Screams Without Words,” which detailed allegations of systematic sexual violence during the October 7 attacks. The letter calls for its retraction, pointing out that the story relied heavily on the testimony of a single, unnamed Israeli paramedic. It notes that family members of the alleged victims had given interviews that seemed to contradict the account, yet these were not included.
The controversy deepened when it was revealed that one of the article’s authors, Anat Schwartz, an Israeli filmmaker with no prior news reporting experience, had liked a social media post calling for Gaza to be turned into a “slaughterhouse.” For the boycott’s supporters, this story exemplifies a failure of basic journalistic rigor, where sensational claims were prioritized over verified evidence, especially when reporting on a subject as grave as sexual violence.
The third demand moves from the paper’s internal mechanics to its external political influence: it urges the Times editorial board to call for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. This positions the newspaper not just as an observer but as a potential actor with a moral responsibility to oppose the provision of weapons used, in the signatories’ view, in a “genocidal war.”
“Language makes genocide justifiable. A reason why we are still being bombed after 243 days is because of The New York Times and most Western media,” the Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat wrote, months before Israel assassinated him.
The writers argue their demands are far from radical, pointing to the paper’s own history of change. They recall that during the AIDS crisis, the Times updated its style guide to use the term “gay” instead of “homosexual,” and years later, it apologized for its flawed reporting in the lead-up to the Iraq War, which relied heavily on uncritical repetition of Bush administration claims about weapons of mass destruction.
This historical precedent is crucial. It suggests that the Times, for all its power, is not infallible and that its institutional biases can and have been corrected under pressure. The current protest forces a difficult conversation about the role of a “paper of record” in a conflict where independent verification is severely constrained.
With Israel banning foreign journalists from entering Gaza, news organizations have been forced to rely on a patchwork of Palestinian journalists working under unimaginable duress, Israeli military briefings, and official statements. This environment creates a fertile ground for misinformation and makes the Times’ commitment to rigorous, balanced reporting not just an ideal, but a lifeline for public understanding.
The boycotters contend that in this critical moment, the paper has chosen to amplify power rather than question it, leaving its readers in the dark about the historical roots of the crisis and the full, devastating human cost of the war. The empty space where these contributors’ bylines would have been is now a silent, powerful testament to that perceived failure. It’s time to listen closely to the marginalized voices instead of dismissing them as “anti-Semitic.”
