The New York Times Hires Editor Who Reportedly Covered Up His Pal’s Child Porn Scandal

LEFT: Noah Shachtman (Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency SIPA USA via AP) RIGHT: The New York Times building (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Noah Shachtman, the former editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone and The Daily Beast, has been hired by The New York Times as a contributing writer to its opinion section despite his well-documented effort to cover up a pal’s child porn scandal.

In October 2022, Rolling Stone was the first to report that ABC News national security producer James Gordon Meek’s home had been raided by the FBI that April. But its story about the matter bore little resemblance to reality.

That wasn’t the fault of reporter Tatiana Siegel, who had learned and wished to note that the raid was in connection with a federal investigation into images depicting child sex abuse. Shachtman, then serving as the top editor at the publication, reportedly instructed Siegel not to turn in a story with the words “child pornography” in it; and then took advantage of Siegel leaving work to tend to her dying mother by going back on an agreement to note that the FBI raid pertained to “possible criminal behavior outside the scope of Meek’s work” in her article, according to an NPR investigation.

Instead, as The Daily Beast put it at the time, “Rolling Stone’s big scoop last week, headlined ‘FBI Raids Star ABC News Producer’s Home,’ read like a Tom Clancy thriller and raised serious concerns that the feds raided a journalist over his work.”

“As published, the Rolling Stone article’s first two paragraphs lionized Meek’s record and swashbuckling style. ‘Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus,’ it stated,” noted NPR. “In the hours leading up to publication, Shachtman changed Siegel’s draft to remove all suggestions that the investigation was not related to Meek’s reporting. He left in the finding that federal agents had allegedly found ‘classified information’ on Meek’s devices.”

Shachtman, whose direct involvement in editing Siegel’s stories was “rare,” also demanded that the featured image for the Meek story not be a photograph of its subject.

“In a note posted on a newsroom-wide Slack channel,” reported NPR. “Shachtman asked photo staffers to come up with a generic photograph rather than a picture of Meek. ‘let’s not use a picture of the guy in question, james gordon meek,’ Shachtman requested, eschewing capital letters, in a post stamped ‘NEEDS PHOTO.’ ‘something FBI-y, please.'”

The outlet also shed light on Shachtman and Meek’s relationship:

Prior to Meek’s arrest, Shachtman considered Meek a peer with whom he was friendly, according to associates.

Shachtman has told colleagues that the two men travel in the same professional circles.

Shachtman boasts his own distinguished record as a national security journalist. Earlier in his career, he founded and led the national security blog Danger Room for Wired magazine. In 2010, the writer Spencer Ackerman referred in a post on the blog to “our friend James Gordon Meek.” Shachtman later worked for Foreign Policy magazine before becoming the No. 2 editor and then editor-in-chief at the Daily Beast.

Shortly before Shachtman joined Rolling Stone, Meek suggested on Twitter that Shachtman should pay attention to an obscure band from Niger — the location of the botched military mission that Meek helped investigate for ABC. Shachtman replied by linking to an earlier review.

Meek soon emailed Shachtman to gauge interest in covering his Hulu documentary series. The new Rolling Stone editor passed the note along to colleagues; the magazine posted a glowing review some weeks later, in November 2021.

A 2023 Department of Justice indictment laid out the charges against Meek:

Several of Meek’s devices allegedly contained images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and multiple chat conversations with users engaged in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children. In two of those conversations, a username allegedly associated with Meek received and distributed child sexual abuse materials through an internet-based messaging platform.

Among the most heinous allegations against Meek was that he shared a minute-plus long video of a female infant being raped online. He pled guilty to transportation and possession of child sexual abuse material in July 2023, and was sentenced to six years in prison that September.

The New York Times has not responded to a request for comment. Shachtman declined to comment on NPR’s 2023 story about his misconduct.

At the Times, Shachtman is expected to write columns and investigative stories. He will also remain a contributing editor at Wired. On Tuesday, the Times published a column from Shachtman with the headline, “The Trump Administration Just Gave Live Nation the Gift of a Lifetime.”

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