A Note From Sunjeev Bery, Executive Director of Freedom Forward:
The New York Times has now received over 45,000 emails from people worldwide who oppose the newspaper’s pro-Israel bias. Thanks to Freedom Forward supporters like you, we have flooded 25+ editors and journalists with thousands of messages expressing our anger that the newspaper is hiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza from its readers.
This is the first step in our campaign to end the New York Times’ pro-Israel bias. But it is only the first step.
When the Quaker peace group American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) submitted an ad to the New York Times criticizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the New York Times should have said yes and published the ad.
But instead, the Times made up a bogus excuse and said no.
It is just the latest example of how the New York Times repeatedly excludes mention of genocide when it comes to describing what Israel is doing in Gaza. Blocking the AFSC ad wasn’t the first example, and it won’t be the last.
The New York Times has an ideological agenda, and that agenda is to avoid accurately describing what Israel is doing as genocide.
That’s why it’s time for you and I to begin preparing the second step of this campaign:
The New York Times is a business, and like many businesses, it is a corporation. That means that the Times has a board of directors. That board of directors offers one path for us to hold the New York Times accountable.
Like many other corporate boards, the Times’ board members have other responsibilities and concerns beyond their board roles. These individuals have their own careers, reputations, and companies to worry about. But by being silent on the New York Times and its shameful record regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza, these board members are complicit too.
Take a look at who some of the board members of the New York Times Company are. These are screenshots from the New York Times company website:
Amanpal S. Bhutani, CEO of GoDaddy
Manuel Bronstein, Chief Product Officer of Roblox Corporation
Beth Brooke, former senior executive for Ernst & Young, board member of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee
Arthur Golden, best-selling author, Memoirs of a Geisha
Brian P. McAndrews, former CEO of Pandora Media
John W. Rogers, Jr., founder and co-CEO of Ariel Investments
Anuradha B. Subramanian, Chief Financial Officer of Bumble
Rebecca Van Dyck, former executive with Meta; Board Member for Civic News Company and Bay FC National Women’s Soccer League team; Fellow, Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute
These board members are affiliated with prominent companies that are susceptible to public engagement and pressure. The last thing that the New York Times’ executive management team wants is for the board members they recruit to face criticism for the New York Times’ failings.
I’m getting ready to build the next step in this campaign. Together, we can publicly ask each of these board members to address the New York Times’ silence regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And if these board members choose to remain silent, we will focus our campaign on them as well.
The board members of the New York Times have many affiliations and relationships across the corporate, nonprofit, and even academic worlds. And that means that they are going to want to avoid being criticized for being silent while the New York Times continues to obscure the reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In the days ahead, I am going to recruit a large number of people to join us as we call on these board members to address the New York Times’ genocide denial. We will start with letters and requests to meet. Depending on how those conversations go — or if the board members avoid us all together — we will then escalate to greater levels of public engagement, pressure, and even controversy.
Building that “constructive controversy” is exactly what we need to do in order to focus public attention on the New York Times’ silence regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The New York Times isn’t expecting this. They are used to getting angry letters to the editor, letters that they choose whether to publish or discard. They aren’t used to their board members being called on to hold the New York Times accountable for its deep failings.
Will you help support the development and launch of this campaign?
Please consider making a contribution to Freedom Forward to fund the next step in our campaign to end the New York Times’ pro-Israel bigotry.
Click here to help fund the next phase of our campaign.
Together, we are going to break the pro-Israel bias of the New York Times. This is the first step towards holding Western media outlets accountable for hiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza from the broader public.
With gratitude,
Sunjeev Bery, Freedom Forward
Sources:
1. The New York Times Company Board of Directors, accessed February 26, 2025, https://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/
2. “New York Times rejects Quaker ad for calling Israel’s actions
‘genocide,’” news release, American Friends Service Committee, January
8, 2025, https://afsc.org/newsroom/new-york-times-rejects-quaker-ad-calling-israels-actions-genocide