The New York Times’s readers’ editor has criticised the newspaper’s coverage of the California balcony collapse, in which five Irish students were killed, as “insensitive”.
Margaret Sullivan, in responding to a storm of protest within the United States and from Ireland about an online article on the tragedy, said the complaints were “valid”.
The article appeared to blame the victims for the accident while accusing them of being part of a student exchange visa programme noted for party-going and bad behaviour.
The claim, which appeared in the second paragraph of the article, said the programme was “not just a source of aspiration, but a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments in places like San Francisco and Santa Barbara”.
Hundreds of complainants, who included the former Irish president, Mary McAleese, pointed out that the collapse was caused by structural defects in the building, and not the victims.
McAleese wrote: “The New York Times should be hanging its head in shame at how outrageously and without the remotest evidence it has rushed to judgment on those deaths.
“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”.
Sullivan also reported on a letter sent to her by a former member of the J-1 visa programme, Brendan O’Sullivan of North Carolina. He told her that “the only thing missing” from the story was “a picture of a pint and a kid with red hair falling down drunk”.
Sullivan said she talked to the NY Times’s national editor, Alison Mitchell, who told her that “she regrets that readers believe the Times set out to blame the victims, which was never the intention”.
If she had the chance to edit it now, she said, she would have removed some key passages from the story, such as the one above.
Sullivan quoted Mitchell as saying: “In hindsight, I wouldn’t have had that second paragraph. The Times will be looking into the structural problems of the building”.
Sullivan also cited an email sent to her by one of the reporters, Adam Nagourney, who covered the tragedy:
By the time I came on the story, it had already been on our site for five hours or so and we wanted to do something to move it forward. The idea for a second-day story was to focus on the J-1 visa programme, and the number of Irish students who, through the programme, came here in the summer...
There are obviously positive aspects to the programme, which has been a great resource for thousands of young Irish students, as well as negative ones.
Looking back, I had the balance wrong; I put too much emphasis on the negative aspects, and they were too high in my story...
Do I think that the programme – as well as the problems associated with it – are fair game for a news story? Yes. But there was a more sensitive way to tell the story. I absolutely was not looking to in any way appear to be blaming the victims...”
Sullivan concluded in her report that “the thrust of the story was insensitive, and the reaction to it understandable”. She continued:
“An examination of the building’s structure, rather than the behavior of young people in the J-1 programme, would have been a more appropriate focus for a second-day story.
I know that editors and reporters at the Times have heard, and understand, the valid complaints that have been raised...
I know, too, from talking to a number of Times journalists, that many feel deep sympathy for all who are affected, especially the families of the young people who lost their lives”.
The NY Times ran two letters to the editor online on Wednesday in response to the backlash. And Eileen Murphy, the paper’s spokeswoman, made a statement in which she said the paper agreed that some of the language in the piece could be interpreted as insensitive, “particularly in such close proximity to this tragedy”.
She added: “It was never our intention to blame the victims and we apologise if the piece left that impression”.
McAleese, whose letter to the NY Times was published in the Irish Times, wrote: “Tens of thousands of Irish J-1 students have spent happy summers there over the years since.
“By far the vast majority have been a credit to Ireland and only the very tiniest minority have not”.
