https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/eeoc-sues-new-york-times-dei-related-race-and-sex-discrimination

EEOC Sues The New York Times for DEI-Related Race and Sex Discrimination

Federal lawsuit alleges news publisher failed to promote a white male employee because of his race and sex

WASHINGTON — The New York Times Company, a global news publisher based in New York, N.Y., violated federal law when it passed over a white male employee for a promotion because of his race and/or sex, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced today.

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, The New York Times chose not to promote a well-qualified white male employee because of his race and/or sex. The New York Times has a well-documented commitment to enacting race and sex conscious decision making in the workforce through its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. In The New York Times’s 2021 “Call to Action” and throughout numerous other publications, the company stated goals and action plans to increase non-white and female representation in its leadership positions.

Acting in accordance with such goals, the company left a longtime New York Times editor, a white man with extensive experience in real estate journalism, out of its final panel interviews for a vacant Deputy Real Estate Editor position in early 2025. Every candidate who advanced through to the final interview process was not a white male. The company ultimately hired an outside candidate for the role — a non-white female with little to no experience in real estate journalism, despite such experience being a requirement for the real estate editor position. Further, the hiring manager greenlit this external candidate for inclusion in the final interview panel without her first going through the standard interview processes for the position. Moreover, The New York Times selected this candidate for the position despite the company’s own final interview panel rating her less favorably than two other final candidates.

“No one is above the law — including “elite” institutions. There is no such thing as “reverse discrimination”; all race or sex discrimination is equally unlawful, according to long-established civil rights principles. The EEOC is prepared to root out discrimination anywhere it may rear its head. No matter the size or power of the employer, the EEOC under my leadership will not pull punches in ensuring evenhanded, colorblind enforcement of Title VII to protect America’s workers, including white males,” said EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas. “Federal law is clear: making hiring or promotion decisions motivated in whole or in part by race or sex violates federal law. There is no diversity exception to this rule.”

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or sex. The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. The New York Times Company, Case No. 1:26-cv-03704) in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process.

Acting EEOC General Counsel Catherine L. Eschbach said, “Employers who engage in unlawful discrimination in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion or other similar motivations should understand that they face significant litigation risk. The Commission will continue to enforce Title VII’s protections to ensure equal opportunity for all. Title VII safeguards every worker’s right to compete for promotions based on their individual merit free from unlawful consideration of race or sex. The agency is proud to file a case that demonstrates the United States of America’s commitment to ensuring victims of unlawful DEI-related race and sex discrimination see their day in court.”

For more information on race discrimination, sex-based discrimination, and DEI-related discrimination, please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/racecolor-discrimination, https://www.eeoc.gov/sex-based-discrimination and https://www.eeoc.gov/wysk/what-you-should-know-about-dei-related-discrimination-work.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. For public sector employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort. More information about the EEOC is available at www.eeoc.gov.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5864304&forum_id=2...id#49869833)

This used to be a forum full of white male lawyers

Now it’s just all unemployed browns

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5864304&forum_id=2...id#49870397)

*asks for all emails and text messages with 'white male!'*

*watching all that money rolling in*

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5864304&forum_id=2...id#49870874)

The company ultimately hired an outside candidate for the role — a non-white female with little to no experience in real estate journalism, despite such experience being a requirement for the real estate editor position. Further, the hiring manager greenlit this external candidate for inclusion in the final interview panel without her first going through the standard interview processes for the position. Moreover, The New York Times selected this candidate for the position despite the company’s own final interview panel rating her less favorably than two other final candidates.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5864304&forum_id=2...id#49870702)

If you want to understand what’s happening in American journalism hiring, skip the mission statements. Look at the pictures. Try finding a white male in a recent intern class photo. It’s like a game of Where’s Waldo — except in most of these cohorts, Waldo isn’t hiding. He’s just not there.

This has been visible for years. In 2016, a Huffington Post executive editor tweeted a photo of an all-female editors meeting as a celebration of diversity. The backlash wasn’t about the absence of men — it was that the women were too white. The missing men weren’t the bug. They were the feature. A decade later, the pattern has only intensified — and it starts at the gate.

To understand why that matters, you need to understand what these programs are. These aren’t volunteer gigs at the campus paper anyone can do. These are the most prestigious and competitive entry points in American journalism — many of them paid, highly selective, and functionally essential for anyone who wants a career at a major outlet. Think of them as the journalism equivalent of a summer associate position at a BigLaw firm or a top medical residency placement. If you want to make it in this industry, this step is all but required.

Here’s what those entry points look like right now.

The Los Angeles Times Fellowship Class of 2026 has 13 fellows. Based on the published photo, none appear to be white males. The program doesn’t hide its origins — it’s the direct descendant of what was originally called the Minority Editorial Training Program, launched to “build a pipeline and provide opportunities for journalists of color.” They’ve since renamed it. The outcomes haven’t changed. The LA Times’s 2025 summer intern class had 26 interns. Perhaps one was a white male.

At NPR, the fall 2025–26 intern class of 18 appears to contain one white male. At Politico, seven interns were selected from nearly 700 applicants for fall 2025. All seven were women. Not a single male of any race. The spring 2026 class had nine — one white male.

The New York Times Fellowship — the paper’s own early-career pipeline, the one that feeds directly into the newsroom now being sued by the EEOC — has 31 fellows in its current class. Only eight are male. At most four are white men.

This pattern extends well beyond national flagships. The Charlotte Observer’s 2025 summer class: one white male out of 10. The Seattle Times 2026 summer cohort: one out of 11. And at the Dow Jones News Fund, the central pipeline program that places interns at the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and dozens of other outlets, the class of 81 is — per the Fund’s own announcement — 63% women and 65% students of color. Their stated mission: producing journalists who “better reflect the demographics of the communities they cover.”

Add it up across these programs. Roughly 206 entry-level positions. White males hold somewhere around 13 to 21 of them, depending on how generously you count the ambiguous cases. That’s somewhere between 6 and 10% — for a group that represents approximately 22% of current college enrollment.

These weren’t cherry-picked. They were the first programs that came up in a quick search of publicly available journalism intern and fellowship announcements. If anything, a more exhaustive survey would likely make the picture worse.

https://www.facultyleaks.com/p/new-york-times-eeoc-discrimination

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5864304&forum_id=2...id#49872764)

Will add that the collapse of meaningful media is surely partly because of this. No one respects mainstream media these days or sees it as an authentic source of news or truth. And the creative industry is even in a worse place. No great book has been published nor great movie or great tv show or play written in the last 15 years. It's not because of the unofficial ban on white male artistic creators, but because even the women or non whites are only allowed to present a specific outlook or tone. But I do think this selective gatekeepers of culture is going to collapse at some point, and probably faster than we exect.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5864304&forum_id=2...id#49872836)

"The backlash wasn't X -- it was Y"

Here's why that matters:

the "media" should be ended

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5864304&forum_id=2...id#49872848)