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On Thursday, the New York Times published an article about Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayoral candidate, that relied on documents stolen in a hack of Columbia University’s computer systems. Since then, the piece has sparked an uproar over sourcing, newsworthiness, and race.
The article reported that in 2009, as part of a college application to Columbia, Mamdani had checked boxes indicating that he was both “Asian” and “Black or African American.” Mamdani, who is of Indian descent, was born in Uganda and lived in South Africa before moving to the United States when he was seven years old. He told the Times that he selected those boxes because the available options did not reflect the complexity of his background. (Mamdani was not admitted to the school.) The story, which was written by two reporters from the Metro desk and a freelancer who normally covers health, was overseen by a newsroom in transition: the longtime Metro editor, Nestor Ramos, is in the process of taking over the National desk.
The focus on Mamdani’s racial heritage and self-identification soon sparked an intense debate online. Many commenters suggested that the story failed to rise to the level of a scoop and instead treated a mundane matter of personal identification as a scandal. (“I don’t have a problem with how he self-identifies,” Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate for mayor running against Mamdani, told Fox News on Friday.)
Among journalists, the story also raised significant ethical concerns. As initially published, the article indicated that the hacked materials had been provided, under the condition of anonymity, by an intermediary known on Substack and X as Crémieux, who was described only as “an academic and an opponent of affirmative action.” But there’s more to that source: as The Guardian reported in March, Crémieux is the social media alias of Jordan Lasker, a promoter of white supremacist views. The Times updated its article to note that Crémieux “writes often about IQ and race.”
“It seems a little disingenuous to play this game of ‘We know something you don’t know,’” Jane Kirtley, a media ethics professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said, referring to how the paper originally characterized Crémieux. “Why would you promise him anonymity and then play hide-the-ball with the readers?” Kirtley added, “My question is: Why would you have even made that promise to this individual in the first instance? I don’t see the need.”
Some Times contributors took issue with the way the article was presented. Jamelle Bouie, a Times opinion columnist, posted on Bluesky, “i think you should tell readers if your source is a nazi.” He later deleted that and other posts criticizing the article, saying that they “violated Times social media standards.” Bouie did not respond to an email requesting comment, and the exact violation was not immediately clear. According to Times guidelines, journalists on staff “must not express partisan opinions” and must “be especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively.” (I have a pending assignment with the Times Magazine.)
So far, the Times has, publicly at least, struck a defiant tone. In response to a question about whether the news of the article merited granting Crémieux anonymity, Patrick Healy, the assistant managing editor for standards and trust at the Times, told CJR, “Your question suggests that the ethical issue is based on whether the story was important and newsworthy enough to justify using this material. I would ask, important and newsworthy enough to whom? What is the basis on which these media critics decide whether a story about any particular politician is important? Mr. Mamdani confirmed it and spoke openly and thoughtfully about his experience on a subject that voters had not previously heard from him on.” He added, “What matters most here is whether the information was true and factual—it was, confirmed by Mr. Mamdani; that it was independently confirmed; and that it is relevant to the public.” In a series of posts on X on Friday, Healy did acknowledge that the response from readers seeking more information about Crémieux was “fair feedback.”
Kelly McBride, the chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, said she was “troubled” that the Times did not provide more information about Crémieux up front. “I can see why they felt compelled to report it,” she said. “But the information about the hack is pretty far down in the story, and I think it’s deeply relevant.”
Using stolen or hacked materials as the basis for reporting has been the subject of significant debate in media circles. Last summer, the Times was among a handful of outlets that declined to publish Trump campaign documents concerning JD Vance that were thought to have been stolen by Iranian-backed hackers. The Times acknowledged the existence of the documents, and reported that they included internal accounts of “remarks casting aspersions on Mr. Trump,” but did not release them. A Politico spokesman told CNN at the time that “questions surrounding the origins of the documents” were of more news interest than the documents themselves—and that informed its decision not to publish them.
The Times is not unaccustomed to weathering intense criticism of its coverage—and is taking a firm line to pushback. The newsroom—as Joe Kahn, the executive editor of the Times, has put it—is “a space where you’re being exposed to lots of journalism, some of which you are not going to like.” And, as he’s said, “we need to create a culture where people feel incentivized to take on those stories even when they will sometimes engender a lot of scrutiny, some backlash.” Late on Friday, the Times seemed to recognize the ferocity of the public outcry, closing comments on the Mamdani story and posting a survey about the college admissions process, which asked, ”Are You Frustrated by Census and Racial Categories?”
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