The New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan on Friday criticized a stringer for the paper after an interview subject complained he was subject to “a Jewish litmus test.”
She summed up the complaint from David McCleary, a Ph.D candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. McCleary was interviewed about the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS), a grassroots movement that is sharply critical of Israel:
Mr. McCleary, who is Jewish, said that the reporter, Ronnie Cohen, asked him “insulting and demeaning questions,” including whether he “looked Jewish,” after telling him that his name didn’t sound Jewish and asking if he had been bar mitzvahed.
McCleary, a supporter of the movement, also complained that no Jewish proponents of BDS were quoted in the published piece.
Sullivan wrote that the questions from Cohen were “unprofessional and unacceptable.” She added that NYT national editor Alison Mitchell also spoke to Cohen about the questions.
“If she indeed pursued that line of questioning, it was inappropriate,” Mitchell said.
