Ex-BBC chief Mark Thompson, now the CEO and president of the New York Times Company, has been accused of presiding over an “environment rife with discrimination based on age, race and gender” by some of his staff.
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Papers filed in a New York court claim Thompson transplanted “misogynistic and ageist attitudes” from the BBC to the Times when he began working there in 2012.
Thompson is named as a defendant in a civil law suit along with his colleague, Meredith Levien.
Two black women in their 60s who work in the Times’s advertising department have brought the action.
They are Ernestine Grant, 62, and Marjorie Walker, 61.
They claim Thompson’s “tumultuous tenure” at the BBC was “riddled with controversy, given the numerous humiliations and indignities he presided over”.
This triggered concerns from staff at the Times and “external commentators” about his appointment.
The two plaintiffs cite the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, which Thompson was accused of “seemingly [being] involved in attempting to conceal” when he worked at the BBC, as one example of such concerns.
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The court papers state: “The New York Times, widely touted as the ‘paper of record’, has been engaging in deplorable discrimination that has remained largely off the record. Unbeknownst to the world at large, not only does the Times have an ideal customer (young, white, wealthy), but also an ideal staffer (young, white, unencumbered with a family) to draw that purported ideal customer.”
The court documents also allege that Ms Levien, Thompson’s first major appointment at the newspaper, made it clear that she wanted to work with “fresh faces”. By that, she meant “younger employees without families, and who were white”, the plaintiffs say.
“Ms Levien’s speech to various [New York Times] personnel also was shockingly rife with racially charged innuendos, such as references to the need for employees to be ‘people who look like the people we are selling to’ and even going so far as to say ‘this isn’t what our sales team should look like’,” they allege.
They claim that discrimination became a “modus operandi” at the New York Times under Mr Thompson and Ms Levien.
The plaintiffs have asked for their case to be heard by a jury.
The New York Times has so far not commented.
