The New York Times, which has actively helped Democrats and the White House perpetuate the phony “war on women” campaign against Republicans, reportedly fired its female executive editor because she complained about pay inequality at the so-called “paper of record.”
On Wednesday, the Times announced that Dean Baquet, the managing editor, would replace Jill Abramson, becoming the paper’s first black executive editor. Abramson was promoted to executive editor with much fanfare in 2011.
“Several weeks ago,” according to The New Yorker, “Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs.”
Another associate reportedly said that Abramson also found out that a male who was a former deputy managing editor “made more money than she did.” When Abramson “had a lawyer make polite inquiries about the pay and pension disparities,” it reportedly “set them off” and led management to fire her. On Friday, Sulzberger reportedly told Abramson that it was time to make “a change” and made it official.
A “close associate” of hers told The New Yorker‘s Ken Auletta that Abramson “confronted the top brass” about the pay disparity, and Abramson’s pay gap was reportedly closed after she complained, but, “to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories.”
Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Business Insider that Abramson’s “total compensation as executive editor was not meaningfully less than Bill Keller’s, so that is just incorrect.” And Sulzberger claimed the move was made to improve the “management of the newsroom.”
“Her pension benefit, like all Times employees, is based on her years of service and compensation. The pension benefit was frozen in 2009,” she said.
On Monday, Margaret Sullivan, the Times public editor, cited a Women’s Media Center study that found that the Times had the “biggest gender gap” among the nation’s ten most widely circulated newspapers, “with 69 percent of bylines going to men.”
Abramson also reportedly did not like the wall between business and editorial that was coming down with native advertising, and Baquet, whom Sulzberger reportedly viewed as the future editor, was being courted by Bloomberg News. Abramson, in this respect, was what one would call a “bridge” quarterback on an NFL team waiting for its true franchise signal caller. She also has been described as “brusque,” and there are questions about whether a male editor with the same characteristics would be described similarly or referred to as more of a leader.
NPR’s media reporter David Folkenflik also reported that Abramson had a “relatively high profile” as the Times editor in part because of the “path-breaking nature of her appointment,” which is a profile that Sulzberger reportedly “didn’t love.”
Abramson was also one of the most prominent voices in the mainstream media that called the Obama administration out for its lack of transparency, telling Al Jazeera America in January that Obama’s White House was “the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering:”
I dealt directly with the Bush White House when they had concerns that stories we were about to run put the national security under threat. But, you know, they were not pursuing criminal leak investigations. The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It’s on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with.
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