NY Times Investigating Wirecutter Editor for Harassing Michigan Gun Rights Group With Profane Voicemails
Mario Tama/Getty Images
The New York Times said Friday it was investigating an editor for its product review website over abusive voicemails and other messages directed at a gun rights group in Michigan.
“We are currently reviewing this matter, which involves an employee of Wirecutter, our product recommendation site,” Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement, emphasizing the employee, Erin Marquis, “does not work in the The New York Times newsroom.”
The matter arose after the National Association for Gun Rights posted audio on YouTube of voicemails directed at the Great Lakes Gun Rights group, one of its affiliates, after a November shooting in a suburban Detroit high school left four dead. In the messages, a woman repeatedly claimed an affiliation with The Times as she berated the group.
“Hi, I’m a journalist with The New York Times,” she said in one message. “I’m just calling to wonder, I have two questions. How do you sleep at night? Aren’t you just, like, a little bit worried that there might be a hell, and when you meet God he might send you there? The only people politicizing this seems to be you, because you’re the only people I got a f*cking press release from. Again, I am from The New York Times, and I am letting everyone in The New York Times know what kind of f*cking a**holes you are. Congrats on being a laughingstock.”
She added in a second voicemail, “You f*cking ghouls, I hope that there is a God in heaven, so he judges you when you die.”
Marquis struck a similar note in a series of messages published on a since-deleted Twitter account, writing in one of the missives, “Just got a press release from the Great Lakes Gun Rights organization about protecting gun rights from democrats in Michigan and I am literally shaking with rage. I hope there is a God and they [meet] that God someday.”
National Association for Gun Rights President Dudley Brown took the opportunity to take aim at The Times. “We’re not surprised that an angry, liberal, anti-gun New York Times reporter would show their true colors and wish we’d burn in hell,” Brown said in a statement. “We’re just glad she was actually foolish enough to leave two voicemails for us to laugh at, and then publish.”
Listen above via YouTube.
