The New York Times has responded to Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s Dec. 4 letter to Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger and the top executives at the Associated Press, CNN and Reuters, accusing the news outlets of possibly violating federal and state law and providing “material support to terrorists.”
In her letter, which was signed by 13 other Republican state attorneys general, Bird recycled conspiracy theories and misinformation that have been circulating for weeks in right-wing political and social media circles to allege the news companies are supporting terrorism by employing freelancers who are essentially agents of Hamas as part of their teams covering the Israel-Hamas War.
“In your work, as in ours, facts matter,” Charlie Stadtlander, director of communications for the New York Times, wrote in a letter posted online on Wednesday. “So it was particularly disappointing to see the most senior legal officials in fourteen states write a letter making inflammatory allegations based on false assumptions and debunked social media posts.”
Stadtlander said he “want[s] to assume that your letter was written in good faith to address an issue of real concern to you and your counterparts in other states,” before directly addressing several of the false accusations Bird leveled at the Times, and then moving on to a more general conclusion.
“There is much more in your letter that is flatly wrong — there is no ‘long record of paying terrorists,’ there are no ‘transactions with terrorists’ — but rather than engage further in a battle of letters, we simply ask that, especially in these divisive times, you and other high-ranking public servants refrain from trafficking in disinformation and insinuation,” Stadtlander said.
Stadtlander is perhaps unaware that Bird began her political career working for an Iowa politician well-known for trafficking in disinformation and insinuation — Steve King. Bird spent seven years in King’s congressional office, becoming his chief of staff. In her official bio on the Iowa Attorney General’s site, Bird mentions in passing that she worked in “the U.S. House of Representatives,” but never mentions King.
Since becoming attorney general in January, Bird has routinely joined with other Republican attorneys general to send threatening letters to a variety of companies, none of them headquartered in Iowa, pressuring them to adopt policies favored by conservative Republicans or face the possibility of Iowa prosecuting them or supporting others taking legal action. None of the threats appear to have a sound legal basis, and Bird has never taken any subsequent action to make the threats a reality.
Even if the letters aren’t impressive as legal documents sent by Iowa’s top law enforcement official as part of her official duties, they do give Bird a chance for self-promotion at a national level.But the letters Bird sent on Dec. 4 have the potential to do more than get the AGs some publicity at Fox News and similar outlets, as Stadtlander pointed out.
“Such baseless allegations have real consequences. They endanger the lives of our journalists and the safety of American news organizations,” Stadtlander said. “They dishonor the heroic work that journalists in Gaza and elsewhere are doing against terrible odds to report what is happening on the ground. And they feed the false narratives that authoritarian regimes weaponize to demonize the press and justify laws that suppress press freedom.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 63 journalists and media workers have been killed since the Israel-Hamas War began on Oct. 7. Another 11 have been injured, three have been reported missing, 19 have been arrested and there have been multiple “assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.”
Because of the war, November was “the deadliest month for journalists” since the committee began collecting data in 1992.
