The top editor of Columbia Journalism Review was fired on Thursday after he objected to a “significant ethical problem” in a reporter’s coverage of the detention of a Palestinian graduate of Columbia University.
Sewell Chan, the former executive editor of CJR, wrote in a series of social-media posts on Friday that Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which publishes CJR, fired the longtime journalist after “three pointed conversations.”
“One was with a fellow who is passionately devoted to the cause of the Gaza protests at Columbia and had covered the recent detention of a Palestinian graduate for an online publication he had just written about, positively, for CJR,” Chan wrote. “I told him there was a significant ethical problem with writing for an outlet he had just covered.”
The other two incidents related to a CJR report on a sexual harassment investigation that remains unpublished and a dispute over the writing output and office presence of another employee, per Chan’s account.
Chan did not name the reporter with whom he allegedly had the ethical problem, but his account appears to describe Meghnad Bose, a fellow at CJR who wrote a glowing profile on Feb. 7 of Drop Site News for its coverage “documenting Israel’s crimes” and its decision to interview Hamas officials while seeking minimal comment from the Israeli military.
On March 23, Bose wrote a profile for Drop Site News of Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian national of Palestinian descent who recently graduated from Columbia and who was one of the leaders of the anti-Israel protest movement at the school.
The Trump administration arrested Khalil in March and has initiated deportation proceedings against him over his alleged support for Hamas. (JNS sought comment from Bose about Chan’s dismissal.)
Bose also penned a March 9 story for Drop Site News, about a month after his CJR piece about the publication. In the article, he accused the Trump administration of “a sweeping attack on the First Amendment.”
On March 21, Bose wrote on social media that “Columbia capitulates to Trump administration’s demands for changing how the university functions,” sharing a Drop Site News handle.
Chan, who was previously editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune and who also worked for The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post, wrote that his oversight of the work of his reporters was intended to provide “rigorous, fair, careful editorial oversight” at a publication that is “supposed to monitor the media.”
“The norms at Columbia are apparently very different,” he wrote.
“This sounds like a prime example of why Columbia is so deeply off-track and why actual ‘journalism’ has almost completely been abandoned,” wrote Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
