UNITED STATES
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Author and activist Nancy Levine on Thursday published an open letter on Medium directed at Liz Spayd, The New York Times’ public editor. Levine asked the Times to provide better coverage of child sexual abuse.
Levine also asked for transparency about a potential conflict of interest she believes is limiting the publication’s coverage of the proposed Child Victims Act, a piece of New York state legislation that would eliminate the statute of limitations for prosecuting cases of abuse against underage children. So far, 38 survivors of abuse and advocates fighting against the problem have signed Levine’s letter.
“As advocates working to raise awareness of issues surrounding child sexual abuse, we would like to ask The Times to elevate its editorial sensitivity to covering related news,” Levine writes. “Can we, the community of survivors of child sexual abuse and advocates, count on The Times to elevate its editorial sensitivity to covering news that affects us?”
In the letter, Levine also refers to “an appearance of a conflict of interest” in “The Times’ absence of recent coverage of the Child Victims Act of New York.” In a separate piece, also published on Medium, Levine outlines the potential conflict and shares her correspondence with Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet.
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