New York Times whistleblower: Why I left ‘dream job’

Guta’s grandmother survived the Shoah and later worked as a copy editor at Pravda. Guta had a choice her grandmother did not: to leave a job when she no longer believed in its mission.”

Find the entire 167-point lawsuit here. Read last week's Jewish Star report here.

The whistleblower behind a shareholder lawsuit accusing the New York Times of anti-Israel bias is speaking out in an exclusive interview with the Free Press, offering a firsthand account of the newsroom disputes behind the legal battle.

Identified by her middle name, Guta, the former Times video desk employee, 48, said that what she once considered a dream job became one in which she was increasingly isolated from colleagues as she challenged what she saw as the newspaper’s biased coverage of Israel and its inconsistent enforcement of newsroom standards.

“I was just so excited,” Guta told the Free Press, recalling her first day at the newspaper in 2016. “It was my dream job.”

Guta said she initially believed the problems she flagged were mistakes that could be corrected if she raised them with the right people.

“But that’s not at all what happened,” she told the Free Press. “Eventually, I concluded that it must be intentional. It couldn’t just be coincidence or a few bad apples or just incompetence.”

She said she raised concerns with colleagues and supervisors at least 15 times between 2019 and March 2026, when she left the Times, having stopped hoping that she could change the institution from within.

The Times has rejected the lawsuit’s claims, calling them meritless and accusing Guta of misrepresenting how its journalism and internal complaint procedures work.

The Free Press said it reviewed Guta’s records of Slack conversations, internal editing histories, project databases and recordings of newsroom meetings. Her account is part of a shareholder lawsuit alleging that the Times failed to meet its obligations to readers and employees.

‘A loud Jew that nobody wants to hear’

Guta’s concerns intensified after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. She questioned, among other things, a video summary describing hostages in Gaza as “believed to be” captive. According to the Free Press, the wording was removed after she challenged it in an internal Slack channel.

She also said she flagged a video citing journalist casualty figures without specifying how many of those killed had been identified as combatants.

In November 2023, Guta met with Mike Abrams, the Times’ deputy editor of Trust, and presented a 26-slide deck containing screenshots of internal exchanges. The Free Press said it reviewed the presentation.

One exchange showed a colleague accusing Israel of spreading, then retracting, claims that Hamas had beheaded babies. Another involved staffers weighing conflicting accounts of whether Hamas was preventing civilians from evacuating Gaza.

“I want some acknowledgment that there is something wrong,” Guta wrote in the presentation. “I want someone other than me to be paying attention to this.”

At a newsroom meeting the following month, Executive Editor Joe Kahn acknowledged that some people believed the paper’s coverage reflected institutional bias or incompetence, according to a recording reviewed by the Free Press. Asked why the Times was perceived as “so anti-Israel,” Kahn said the newspaper would never satisfy everyone on such a divisive subject.

Guta disputed the notion that criticism from both sides meant the paper was getting its coverage right.

She also alleged that her efforts to raise concerns damaged her standing with colleagues. At an August 2024 meeting with her supervisor, Solana Pyne, and a human resources representative, Guta was told, according to the lawsuit, that colleagues were reluctant to work with her because of her point of view.

“I often feel just like a loud Jew that nobody wants to hear,” she said, according to her affidavit.

Guta said she was subsequently excluded from most team meetings.

Claims of double standard

Guta also questioned whether the Times consistently enforced its rules on political advocacy by journalists.

The newspaper had warned staff against signing petitions, joining protests or engaging in advocacy connected to events they covered. Guta alleged that complaints about other employees’ public activism related to Israel did not receive the same attention as restrictions imposed on her.

In March 2024, she filed an internal complaint about freelance journalist Matthew Cassel, arguing that his public activism violated the newspaper’s standards. The complaint was closed two days later, according to the Free Press. Cassel continued working for the Times through December 2025.

Guta separately raised concerns about graphics editor Bora Erden, who she said had publicly fundraised for Gaza and signed open letters describing Israel as a “settler colony” and an “apartheid state.”

A Times standards editor told Guta that publicly fundraising for one side of a conflict an employee was assigned to cover would not be acceptable, according to her account. Guta said she filed a complaint but received no follow-up that she was aware of.

By contrast, when Guta asked in January 2024 whether she could privately attend an event marking 100 days since the Oct. 7 hostage-taking, she was advised against attending. The lawsuit describes this as the only instance in five years in which she saw the newspaper’s conduct rules enforced.

The Times disputes Guta’s characterization. A spokesman told the Free Press that her complaints were handled respectfully, even when they were not found to have merit, and that employees’ personal views do not dictate the newspaper’s coverage.

Why she walked away

Guta’s concerns predated the Gaza war. In 2019, the Times’ international edition published a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog wearing a Star of David collar, leading a blind President Donald Trump, who wore a kippah. The newspaper later acknowledged that the cartoon contained antisemitic tropes.

Publisher A.G. Sulzberger subsequently told employees that the Times was updating its unconscious-bias training to address antisemitism. Guta said she raised the issue repeatedly but, to her knowledge, the promised training was never implemented.

She also described trying to establish a Jewish employee resource group and a Slack channel where Jewish colleagues could discuss concerns. Some employees were reluctant to join a channel explicitly identifying Jewish staff, she said, because they feared being placed on a list.

During a September 2024 meeting about the employee group, Sulzberger acknowledged that members of the Jewish community could feel held to a different standard, according to a recording reviewed by the Free Press. He also described receiving antisemitic hate mail and death threats.

The Times spokesman said the lawsuit seeks to level false allegations and chill journalism protected by the First Amendment.

Guta said her family history helped shape her decision to speak out. Her grandmother survived the Holocaust and later became a refusenik in the Soviet Union, where she worked as a copy editor at Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper.

That history, she said, reinforced her belief that she had a choice her grandmother did not: to leave a job when she no longer believed in its mission.

“The prestige of working at the Times lost any value it once held,” she told the Free Press. “I saw behind the curtain and the illusion broke for me.”

Her account is not a legal finding of systemic bias, and the Times disputes her allegations. But the interview gives the public a closer look at the internal conflict behind a lawsuit challenging the newspaper’s editorial judgment and credibility.