News/Commentary

NYT reporter admits responsibility for leaking personal info of Jewish business owners

August 17, 2024 | | Print Article

Disciplined, but not dropped, a New York Times reporter admitted responsibility for leaking the personal information of hundreds of Jewish business owners prior to them being threatened and vandalized.

College campuses and “Jihad Squad” campaign events may be among the most well-known perpetrators of Hamas sympathies following the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel. However, corporate media’s own biases proved just as prevalent and, in at least one instance, manifested direct threats to Jews in Australia.

Across Melbourne, reports of vandalism and direct threats followed the leak of the names of business owners, their addresses and various internet accounts all associated with a WhatsApp group started specifically following the Islamist extremism that left hundreds of men, women and children dead.

Thursday, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the source of the doxxing was confirmed to be Natasha Frost, a Melbourne-based reporter for the Times who admitted she had leaked the information, but only to one person before it ended up in the hands of anti-Israeli protesters.

“I shared this document with one individual. Its subsequent dissemination and misuse happened entirely without my knowledge or consent,” she said through a company spokesperson to the Journal. “I was shocked by these events, which put me and many others at terrible risk. I deeply regret my decision.”

Examples of vandalism included graffiti with death threats, even at a school, and stickers calling for boycotts and promoting stereotypes against members of the Jewish faith.

The Journal detailed how a shop owner in Melbourne, Joshua Moshe, had been “left an expletive-laced voicemail” by a woman “followed up with a text message showing a photo of their 5-year-old son,” before the shop was vandalized a number of times, including with graffiti and “stickers displaying a crossed-out Israeli flag labeled ‘boycott.'”

Frost had reportedly signaled her departure from the group, which she had been invited to join in early Nov. 2023, when she had penned a story about the Australian Broadcasting Corporation providing a platform to Antoinette Lattouf, a matter of contention for the Jewish business owners over a lack of impartiality.

Around the same time the story was released, so too did information about members of the WhatsApp group. Speaking on the matter of one of their own reporters being behind the doxxing, a spokeswoman for the Times told the Journal, “It has been brought to our attention that a New York Times reporter inappropriately shared information with the subject of a story to assist the individual in a private matter, a clear violation of our ethics.”

“This was done without the knowledge or approval of The Times,” she went on, as it was reported that Frost was disciplined to an unknown extent and remained on staff.

The Grey Lady had notably been among the corporate media outlets that had jumped on a readily debunked report that the Israeli Defense Forces had bombed a hospital in Gaza as numerous outlets continued to run uncorroborated death tolls from the Gaza Health Ministry.

Following the report, they published an editors’ note acknowledging that “early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”

Meanwhile, cultural clashes around the world were met with crackdowns on free speech rather than seeking to address the societal differences and Australia was no different as Attorney General Mark Dreyfus sought to advance stricter penalties for doxxing.

“The increasing use of online platforms to harm people through practices like doxxing, the malicious release of their personal information without their permission, is a deeply disturbing development,” he said while committing to strengthening privacy protections.

Kevin Haggerty
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