‘NYT’s public editor slams anti-Irish bigotry in news story on Berkeley balcony deaths

Yesterday the New York Times ran a story on the balcony collapse in Berkeley that killed five Irish students that suggested they were drunk– and so therefore somehow brought the accident on themselves? Thirteen students had crowded on to the balcony during a “loud party,” the article said. And here was the crucial second paragraph:

But the work-visa program that allowed for the exchanges [of thousands of Irish students] has in recent years become not just a source of aspiration, but also a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments…

Readers soon complained about the piece’s stereotype of the Irish. “The only thing missing [is] a picture of a pint and a kid with red hair falling down drunk,” one wrote. And former president of Ireland Mary McAleese sent an eloquent letter to the Times:

By far the vast majority [of exchange students] have been a credit to Ireland and only the very tiniest minority have not.

Yet within hours of the most appalling tragedy in the history of the J-1 visa programme, when the one salient fact to speak for itself is the ludicrous collapse of a fourth floor balcony in a relatively new building, New York Times journalists reached for the lazy tabloid stereotype and heaped deliberate injustice on top of the most awful grief.

The New York Times editors became defensive. “In hindsight, I wouldn’t have had that second paragraph,” national editor Allison Mitchell told the NYT public editor. But the second paragraph was the reason for the story.

Margaret Sullivan, the public editor, yesterday sided with the readers:

My role is to consider reader complaints, report on them internally, and sometimes comment on them publicly, as I’m doing here. In that role (and as a mother), I can say not only that I believe many of the complaints were valid, but also that I’m very sorry for the pain the story caused.

We liked that qualifier, “as a mother.” I.e., you don’t have to be a professional; you can just be a human being to be very sorry for the damage of bigotry.

We need to extend our moral geography to include not just people of Irish descent– who we are more likely to know– but people in far off parts of the world. And we look forward to the day when such sensitivity is shown to Palestinians, and especially the 1.8 million people of Gaza, who are imprisoned on the notion that they should all be punished for the acts of the “tiniest minority.” Of course most Americans don’t know Palestinians. They think they’re terrorists. But the modern digital world allows us to cross those boundaries.

And so, “as a mother” we too are deeply concerned– about the four Gaza boys whose slaughter on the beach last summer was lately covered up by the Israeli government, and whose families have been written out of almost all international coverage of that report.

I recently spent time with the Bakr family. Here they pray at the graves of their sons who were killed by Israel. pic.twitter.com/FJmx5O2QR1

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) June 11, 2015

Thanks to Susie Kneedler.