NY Times Doesn’t Want You to See Shooter's Face

Times management directs staff to “dial back” Luigi Mangione headshots

Luigi Mangione (avert your eyes)

Internal New York Times messages about its coverage of alleged gunman Luigi Mangione have been leaked to me and the contents are revealing. On Tuesday, management said “the news value and public service of showing his face is diminishing,” instructing staff to “dial back” its use of such photos. It also directed that Luigi’s “manifesto” not be published in the paper.

The directive was heeded. If you visit Times’ front-page story today on the shooter, it features Mangione’s back as he was being marched to his arraignment in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Another Times story today on Mangione’s notebook features a photo of a generic police-tape barricade.

This is media paternalism at its worst, the idea that seeing the shooter’s face too much, or reading his 262-word statement, will necessarily inspire copy-cat assassinations and should therefore be withheld from the public.

My publication of Mangione’s manifesto yesterday came after multiple journalists at companies like The New York Times and NBC told me that their outlets were in possession of the manifesto but would not be publishing it. These outlets were perfectly happy to quote selectively from the document, as CNN did, insisting that the contents merely showed how unwell the shooter was — flagrant editorializing. That’s the problem with selective disclosure: it shapes the narrative in subtle ways that can be misleading. National security officialdom, from cops or the CIA, are masters at this.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed | Photo credit: CIA

Take, for example, what is perhaps the most storied photograph in CIA lore, the above picture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The photo depicts him as disheveled and disoriented, having been taken the morning he was rousted out of his bed in the middle of the night in Pakistan in 2003. Overweight and donning a ratty undershirt, the deer-in-the-headlights picture delighted CIA public affairs, who decided to circulate it widely to undermine an image of al Qaeda omnipotence, thereby proving that the spy agency could dispense justice.

Now the New York Times is putting its own thumb on the information scale, having appointed itself an enforcer of public safety. "The news value and public service of showing his face is declining," Times photo editor Clinton Cargill wrote yesterday morning. “I think we will still not pub the whole thing, editor Andrea Kannapell added, “so as not to provide bullhorn."

The Times justification, according to the chat, is that photographs and words might have the effect of "amplifying the crime and inspiring others," as reporter Andy Newman said. Besides the New York Times' inflated view of its ability to de-amplify a crime that practically everyone is already talking about, the internal chat sheds light on the other arguably bigger reason the media shies away from disclosure: its fear of antagonizing the sources it relies upon for scoops. "My source asked last nite that we not publish the whole thing," reporter Andy Newman wrote in the Times chat.

By donning the “public safety” hat, the major media is in effect deputizing itself as a branch of the national security state. Beat reporters always find themselves in a bind, not wanting to imperil their access to the law enforcement and intelligence sources that furnish them with inside material. The government then plays favorites by leaking to news media reporters who act as compliant deputies, those who parrot whatever the government line is. The end result is a manifesto that half a dozen major media outlets have but not a single one is willing to publish.

“A source of mine today at NYPD said that they’re seeing it less as a manifesto and more as a ‘claim of responsibility,’’ said New York City police reporter Maria Cramer. If the actual contents of the document were published in the Times, people could decide for themselves instead of having their news predigested for them by the NYPD.

— Edited by William M. Arkin