The New York Times Doxxing Scandal Risks Its Institutional Credibility

By Jeffrey Blehar

Sunday, August 18, 2024

 

A note about a scandal at the New York Times, before my work turns into a weeklong journal of the Democratic National Convention’s visit to Chicago and you get to experience it through my pried-open eyes like Alex being taught a lesson by the powers that be in A Clockwork Orange. Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal broke a stunning piece of media news when it reported on the actions of Natasha Frost, one of a number of recently acquired (in 2020) journalists the Times has brought on as its market share has expanded in inverse proportion to the rest of the mainstream media’s.

 

The detailed reporting of the Journal is well worth your time, but to summarize: Frost is currently living in Melbourne, Australia, but is not Australian. She describes herself as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Austria, and, beyond that, I know naught else about her background — even whether she is Jewish (I assume so). I don’t know the particulars of her assignment or work at the Times, either — listen, people, I’ve been brick-proofing my home, I have a better excuse than most — but the Journal’s story tells me all I need to know.

 

In the post–October 7 era, Frost was invited to a private WhatsApp support group for Australian Jewish “creatives” — professionals in a community whose politics are overwhelmingly anti-Zionist and often outright antisemitic. That definition was broad enough to encompass a New York Times reporter, apparently. (And she joined as an early member — one imagines somebody had to vouch for her, and that person must feel lower than a whale carcass right now.)

 

For a while, Frost hovered in the background as a member — no word is given about what, if anything, she may have contributed — until she abruptly left the group in mid January of this year. The reason? According to the WSJ, it was “to avoid, among other things, any perception that she would violate the privacy of its members,” because she was interested in writing about a subject many participants had expressed negative feelings about: local Australian woke cause célèbre Antoinette Lattouf.

 

A few days later, she published this rather milquetoast piece about Lattouf, a fiercely anti-Zionist Australian commentator and activist of Lebanese descent who was given a five-day temporary radio gig by state broadcaster ABC. There was then a massive uproar among the Australian Jewish community — this is a woman who has often accused Israel of state-sponsored genocide in Gaza — and her temporary gig was cut short a few days in. Now, Lattouf is suing for racial and political discrimination.

 

That’s the long and short of Frost’s piece, which honestly doesn’t really have too much of a slant beyond what one would expect of the Times and is only notable in highlighting how the editors who assign these pieces are forever on the hunt for examples of racial-discrimination porn to titillate their readers. My other opinion: It does a singularly unpersuasive job of making Lattouf into a sympathetic figure, no matter how much the author obviously tries. Lattouf hangs herself by her own words, at least a few of which Frost was professionally obligated to quote.

 

What is more notable about the piece is that it didn’t mention or reference the WhatsApp group — the “Jewish creatives” one — in any particular way whatsoever. This makes Frost’s exit from it a few days before the article went up curious in the extreme. The conflict is hard to see — unless she feared a conflict of opinion from others in the group about Lattouf as a fired broadcaster, which hardly rates. Disagreements are hardly unprecedented in the Jewish community, and again the piece wasn’t even particularly biased. Why leave the group? What could possibly have been the issue?

 

I think we know now. For it was later revealed that Frost gave the entire 900-page record of the WhatsApp group’s conversations — featuring many participants, all Jews, saying how unhappy they were about Lattouf — to Lattouf herself. It is terrifying to contemplate when this happened, but if my guess is correct, it was before she exited the group — and she lied to its admin about her reasons, rather cravenly. I suspect she didn’t want to stick around for what she knew was coming.

 

Because Lattouf did exactly what you would expect a frothing Australian antisemite to do: She promptly leaked it to pro-Hamas activists, effectively “doxxing” (publicly identifying) all the WhatsApp group’s members. And what happened next will also shock nobody in our morally reduced era: Pro-Hamas activists immediately began chasing store-owners out of town, stalking people with photographs of their children, and harassing schoolteachers at work by phoning them to say they were “complicit in genocide.”

 

Frost wants us to know that she’s sorry! (She was quoted by the WSJ saying “whoops” and adding that she’ll not talk any further about the matter.) You inevitably end up contemplating the personal details of a social betrayal like this: Has Lattouf even bothered to try to offer an excuse to Frost for utterly destroying her community? (It would be wonderful if she simply quoted Otter from Animal House, because that’s just about all she has to offer.) One also inevitably wonders whether Frost even wants an apology in the first place. How in God’s name could Frost have done this?

 

For I am trying to imagine the circumstances under which a New York Times journalist — someone trained to be responsible with confidential sources — could, with such lifelong training, hand over the unedited monthslong private correspondence of her community to someone she had just written a piece about. Given the obviously related subject matter — discussions about Lattouf — I at least find it difficult to imagine doing this without malice aforethought. I will be honest, I don’t know how any responsible journalist could; even someone unprofessionally crossing the line to say “Listen, people I know really are pushing to get you canned” could easily have given Lattouf blind quotes. (Someone who does that is still a viper in my opinion, but at least one with some constraint.) What you don’t do is send 900 unredacted pages of free-flowing private conversations to a known bad actor. That speaks either of bad faith or irresponsibility so staggering as to beggar belief. Either one demands instant firing.

 

And yet Frost remains employed at the New York Times, a scandal beyond reckoning that, in a different era, everyone would be ablaze over. Australia itself is completely losing its gourd over this, just so you know — it is not some minor news story. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese went on the air to publicly denounce it, and an anti-doxxing bill is being introduced into Parliament as soon as this month, according to the Journal. Since Australia lacks our more robust free-speech principles, the incident may well result in heavy-handed censorship, English-style. Congratulations on triggering a potential free-speech clampdown in Australia because of your reporter, New York Times! Finally — you’re a truly global brand.

 

In an ironic capstone guaranteed to sicken all of you, the New York Times has solicitously removed Frost’s contact information from its website. I know why: to spare her from the same sort of harassment she has inflicted, wittingly or otherwise, on the Australian Jewish community. I suppose workplace-safety issues and professional liability require it, if nothing else.

 

And nothing else requires it indeed, for the rank irony of it all stinks so noxiously as to gag the senses. Whether because of malice or incompetence, Frost has harmed an entire community of people in the course of her work as a Times journalist. I might not know what the Gray Lady’s HR process for terminations is like — I seem to recall James Bennet being gone in a flash — but every day she remains on staff calls the Times’ credibility as an institution into serious question. This is a woman who sparked an international outburst of antisemitism while committing one of the grossest violations of journalistic ethics imaginable. What possible excuse could there be? If the New York Times no longer wants to worry about having Frost’s contact info on its Web page, the easiest way to fix that is by firing her.