Former New York Times reporter Donald McNeil blamed the Gray Lady on Monday for aggravating the N-word debacle that torpedoed his career – while issuing a full-fledged defense of himself online.
In a 20,000-plus-word, four-part report on Medium, the journalist, who has been with the newspaper for 45 years, opened up about the scandal that exploded over the comments he made during a 2019 student trip to Peru.
‘I never dreamed that one of the two Peru trips I undertook was just a blunder in my life, something I did largely as a favor to a friend who needed experts to make the trips to sell, would slow down my Times career, ”McNeil wrote in the first of a four-part article on Medium.
In late January, the Daily Beast reported allegations that McNeil, who recently led the newspaper’s COVID-19 coverage, dropped the N-word and other offensive remarks during the trip.
McNeil, who publicly detained mother on the matter after his resignation letter last month, complained to the Times about his reaction to the looming Daily Beast story.
After the animal contacted McNeil on January 28 for comment on their report, he said the Times is going into a complete freakout message control mode – by appealing to him to immediately apologize and the protracted explanations which he initially wished to disregard sent to the Beast.
“If the Times had not panicked and I was allowed to send a version of it, the Beast might have rewritten his story or even dug a little further,” McNeil said. “Almost without a doubt, the reaction within the Times itself would have been different.”
Four days later, Times editor-in-chief McNeil, Dean Baquet, and deputy editor-in-chief Carolyn Ryan, “turned his back” on resigning to resign – which led to them saying no and being legal. .
“You lost the newsroom,” Baquet, a longtime McNeil colleague, told him during the phone call. ‘Many of your colleagues have been hurt. Many of them do not work with you. Thank you for writing the apology. But we want you to consider adding to your departure. ‘
McNeil’s resignation – along with the resignation of Andy Mills, co – host of the troubled “Caliphate” podcast, was announced on February 5 in a statement saying it was the right next step. ”
McNeil, who succeeded in using the N-word in his resignation letter, said assumptions by some that he was a racist were “quite staggering and painful.”
Am I a racist? “I do not think so – after working for more than 25 years in 60 countries, I think I’m pretty good at judging people as individuals, ” he said in the post, which he said had been judged in advance by two lawyers.
He added, “What particularly surprised me was that anyone would look at my work and conclude that I would have chosen my partner if I were a racist, and could or would survive that long” – and pointed to a series of awards he has won for his coverage across countries such as Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria and Haiti.
McNeil said he paid $ 300 a day to accompany private school students in Peru – and to deliver three speeches on ‘global health’, as well as ‘make me available to the students as much as possible’ – as part of the newspaper ‘Student’ Journey ”program.
The veteran newsman suggested that his conversations with the young people may have been misinterpreted due to a generation gap.
‘My girlfriend thinks I have a well-functioning aspect of my personality. I feel empathetic about suffering, but I also read a lot of people wrong, ‘he wrote.
‘So – was I five decades older than the students in Peru and was I not in touch with their sensitivity? Absolutely. Do I have prospects to present that they did not come to preschool? I think so. “
McNeil, 67, whose work was submitted to the pandemic for the Pulitzer Prize, also questioned the timing of the allegations.
‘I have been asked many times: who was the Daily Beast’s source? And why is it leaked now, just when you want a Pulitzer? says the journalist.
‘The answer is: I have no idea. The story contains a quote from an internal email from Times, so I have to accept that it leaked from within. But you never know. And why? I do not know.”
McNeil said he used the N-word in response to a conversation he had with a student about ‘whether I think a classmate of hers should have been suspended because of a video she made as a 12-year-old in which she ”The slur.
He said the other allegedly offensive remarks were misinterpreted.
McNeil promised to discuss the matter only on March 1 – when his resignation became official.
Concluding his long piece, he deplores the scandal surrounding his reputation as a scientific reporter on global health issues.
“I misjudged my audience in Peru that year. “I thought I was generally advocating for openness and tolerance – but it clearly does not happen that way,” he wrote. “And my sadness makes me an imperfect educator for sensitive teens.”
‘And now I want to leave it behind. I was hoping to be remembered as a great scientific reporter whose work saved lives. Not for this. ”