The Chief Executive of the New York Times and former director-general of BBC, Mark Thompson, is facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit. The class-action lawsuit details that Thompson has allegedly introduced a culture of 'deplorable discrimination' on age, gender, and race at the newspaper.
According to Telesurtv, two black women filed the lawsuit against Mark Thompson for creating an environment that would give preference to young, white employees. The two women, Ernestine Grant, 62, and Marjorie Walker, 61, said the paper's environment has become rife with discrimination. The lawsuit also details how the Times favors young white employees over older female black workers. They've included the timeline of 8 years wherein the CEO continuously hired younger and whiter employees for advertising staffs.
"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 lawsuit indicated, as quoted by The Guardian. The lawyers are expecting that at least 50 more will rise in this action lawsuit.
However, the Times' head of communications, Eileen Murphy, was fast to dispute the claims, saying the attacks are series of recycled, scurrilous, and unjustified ones on both Mark Thompson and Meredith Levien. "The suit is entirely without merit and we intend to fight it vigorously in court," she said.
Fox News published that the claimants, Grant and Walker, who worked in the Times' advertising department, claimed that they were repeatedly passed over for promotion by younger white employees despite their great experience. Also, these younger white employees are being treated better than them in terms of financial nature. There were also given 'Summer Fridays,' afternoon offs in summer while the perk was not offered to older employees of color.
The lawsuit also cited the name of Jill Abramson, the paper's first female editor who was 'unable to turn around the troubling realities of newsroom. She reportedly got fired for complaining that she's getting lesser salary than her male peers. Moreover, a 2014 survey showed that Times had the least female bylines of the nation's largest newspapers.
