JERUSALEM (JTA) — Social media posts by The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, will be supervised following some of her missives from Gaza.
The announcement came Wednesday in a Note to Readers column by the newspaper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan.
A Facebook post in which Rudoren described Palestinians as “ho-hum” about the death of loved ones and spoke of their “limited lives,” and another in which she said that she shed her first tears in Gaza over a letter from an Israeli family, "came off as insensitive and the reaction was sharp, not only from media pundits, but also from dismayed readers," Sullivan wrote.
Sullivan added that Rudoren told her that she regrets some of the language she used.
Rudoren now will work on her social media posts with Times Foreign Editor Joseph Kahn, according to Sullivan.
"The idea is to capitalize on the promise of social media’s engagement with readers while not exposing The Times to a reporter’s unfiltered and unedited thoughts," Sullivan wrote. "Given the spotlight that the Jerusalem bureau chief is bound to attract, and Ms. Rudoren’s self-acknowledged missteps, this was a necessary step."
Twitter posts by Rudoren after accepting her position also were criticized for showing bias toward the peace camp.
Sullivan said that Rudoren should be judged in her position for her reporting work in the newspaper and online.
"Having taken on one of journalism’s toughest challenges, Ms. Rudoren deserves every chance to continue to show readers that she is a reporter whose only interest is in telling the story engagingly and truthfully," she wrote.
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