Another NYT Editor Is Being Reprimanded For Past ‘Offensive’ Tweets

New York, United States of America - July 8, 2017. The New York Times building in the west side of Midtown Manhattan.
New York, United States of America - July 8, 2017. The New York Times building in the west side of Midtown Manhattan. (Photo by: Avalon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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Tom Wright-Piersanti, a New York Times politics editor, on Thursday deleted and apologized for past “offensive” tweets he posted about Jewish people about a decade ago, and the newspaper is “reviewing next steps.”

The incident comes just about a week after the Times demoted a different editor based in Washington, D.C. for posting questionable tweets about people of color.

Wright-Piersanti’s tweets were first unearthed by Breitbart, which captured screen-grabs of several of the now-deleted tweets. In 2009 and 2010, Wright-Piersanti posted several offensive tweets aimed at Jewish people and Indians. But the Breitbart piece goes beyond the pale to try to use the decade-old posts as proof of rampant anti-Semitism within the New York Times. The piece includes quotes from the likes of Seb Gorka, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell and Donald Trump Jr. adviser Arthur Schwartz.

The piece even quotes an unidentified former White House official calling the tweets an examples of “how liberal media continues to condone, promote, and celebrate racism.”

In one of the tweets, Wright-Piersanti posted a picture of a vehicle with a Menorah on the roof and said: “Who called the Jew police?” In another, he claimed his New Year’s resolution was to be “less anti-Semitic.”

“I was going to say ‘Crappy Jew Year,’ but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So… HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews,” he wrote in a since-deleted tweet from 2010. Breitbart pointed out several others that disparaged “mohawk Indians,” which appear to still be publicly available.

Wright-Piersanti posted an apology on Twitter after Breitbart’s story was published on Thursday.

A New York Times spokesperson told TPM that the newspaper was “aware” of the tweets: “We are aware of these tweets, which are a clear violation of our standards. We are reviewing next steps.”

Earlier this month, the Times demoted Washington editor Jonathan Weisman after he recently posted several problematic tweets suggesting that nonwhite members of Congress weren’t actually from the Midwest or the South because their districts included major cities.

Several prominent conservatives seized on Wright-Piersanti’s tweets to accuse the Times of anti-Semitism, including Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

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  1. Obviously this means Hillary needs put in jail and Obama needs stripped of his post-Presidential benefits and Secret Service protection.

  2. O/T but more of this Damn deer get more protection then children
    Vermont limits the number of rounds in semiautomatic weapons during hunting season “to give the deer a chance,” Senator Patrick Leahy says while discussing gun reform legislation. “I’d like to give children who are in a school a chance; people who are going to a concert, give them a chance.”

    “The idea that this last mass shooting, he fired 41 rounds in 30 seconds, that’s the kind of weapon you have on a battlefield. There’s no place for that in the United States.” https://cnn.it/2HyMCQf

  3. There is a lot of great talent out there, many good people needing jobs. Something is terribly wrong with the NYT that they have so many awful people.

  4. How in the actual fuck does this guy get hired?

  5. So on one hand we have the leader of the Republican Party and sitting president making racist tweets.

    On the other hand a newspaper editor’s ten year old tweets, even though he is not part of any one party but instead because he works at a newspaper, this is evidence that… the Democrats are racist?

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