Former New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles alleged the paper held a story she wrote about the aftermath of the deadly Kenosha, Wisconsin, riots until after the 2020 presidential election.
In a blog post for Common Sense, Bowles said she visited Kenosha herself after the riots to see if the “mainstream liberal argument” that riots were necessary to advance racial justice was true.
“When I was at the New York Times, I went to Kenosha to see about this, and it turned out to be not true,” she recalled.
“The part of Kenosha that people burned in the riots was the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots,” she said. “It was very sad to see and to hear from people who had suffered. Beyond the financial loss, small storefronts are quite meaningful to their owners and communities, which continuously baffles the Zoom-class.”
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But after she filed the report, her editors held it from publication for weeks, and then months, she said.
“A few weeks after I filed, an editor told me: The Times wouldn’t be able to run my Kenosha insurance debacle piece until after the 2020 election, so sorry,” Bowles said.
The Times gave her a variety of excuses, including “space, timing, tweaks here or there.” Eventually, the story was published — but only after President Joe Biden won the election.
“Whatever the reason for holding the piece, covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority,” Bowles said. “The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore.”
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Bowles left the New York Times earlier this month, alleging the work environment had become toxic. She said some of her former colleagues would leak stories to embarrass her just because she was interested in writing stories that the Left did not want to touch.
