Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, questions about coverage have divided newsrooms and audiences across the country and world.
On Nov. 9, hundreds of American journalists signed an open letter criticizing the “devastating bombing campaign and media blockade in Gaza,” as well as the deaths of journalists covering the conflict.
That advocacy has come at a cost, at least for employees of the Los Angeles Times, which has decided to prohibit any reporter who signed that letter from covering Gaza or the conflict for three months, Semafor reports.
The letter’s call for journalists to use terms like “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide,” was reportedly a step too far for the Times, which did not respond to a request for comment from Semafor.
After the open letter was published, Executive Editor Kevin Merida sent a company-wide email on the company’s ethics and fairness policy. He stipulated that a “fair-minded reader of the Times news coverage should not be able to discern the private opinions of those who contributed to that coverage, or to infer that the organization is promoting any agenda,” as reported by Semafor.
The L.A. Times declined to comment to KTLA.
After Semafor’s report, Times reporter Suhauna Hussain took to X, formerly Twitter, to criticize the Times’ decision.
Clarifying that it’s about 34 staffers, not just the dozen or so Semafor reported, who were affected by the policy, Hussain noted that “it’s not true or at least not clear signing letter is a violation of LA Times ethics policy.”
“If anything, it reinforces policy by calling for unbiased coverage—no language prohibits signing letters & policy has not previously been used to discipline in this way to my knowledge,” she noted.
Regardless, as long as the Times’ policy remains in place and is enforced as it currently is, the effect remains the same.
“Yes it’s true we’ve been taken off coverage, which in effect removes a great many Muslim journalists and most [if] not all Palestinians at the LA Times from coverage,” she wrote.