New York Times singles out CEOs who didn’t sign anti-voting laws statement published in the New York Times

The New York Times is naming names again.

The paper of record on Wednesday singled out business CEOs who declined to sign a statement, which appeared this week as a two-page advertisement in both the New York Times and the Washington Post, protesting voting laws such as the one passed recently in Georgia.

“For American democracy to work for any of us, we must ensure the right to vote for all of us,” the statement reads, adding its signatories should “oppose any discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot.”

The ad, which ran on Wednesday, features signatures from hundreds of business leaders, including former American Express CEO Ken Chenault, Warren Buffet, and Merck CEO Ken Frazier.

It’s an impressive list, but not impressive enough, according to the New York Times DealBook, which published a brief follow-up report titled “The C.E.O.s Who Didn’t Sign a Big Defense of Voting Rights.” Its subhead adds, “Hundreds of leaders and companies signed a letter opposing strict limits. They did not.”

“There are some notable omissions,” the report reads. “Many companies declined to sign the statement, and some executives, such as Mr. Buffett, signed for themselves but not on behalf of their companies. Coca-Cola and Delta, which spoke out about the Georgia law after it was passed, declined to add their names, perhaps fearing more blowback for earlier statements and also not feeling the need to speak again.”

It adds, “JPMorgan Chase also declined to sign the statement despite a personal request from senior Black business leaders to Jamie Dimon, who made a statement on voting rights before.”

There is more.

“Why didn’t Walmart sign?” the New York Times asks.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, by the way, put out a company-wide memo explaining the retailer’s position on Republican-backed Georgia-style voting laws.

“We are not in the business of partisan politics,” he said. “While our government relations teams have historically focused on core business issues like tax policy or government regulation, Walmart and other major employers are increasingly being asked to weigh in on broader societal issues such as civil rights.”

He adds that though Walmart didn’t sign the statement, “we do want to be clear that we believe broad participation and trust in the election process are vital to its integrity.”

As for the New York Times naming-and-shaming business leaders, a couple of thoughts:

First, it seems like a conflict of interest for the paper to target CEOs who declined to sign a statement that ran as a paid advertisement in the pages of the New York Times. That the New York Times received compensation to run the statement makes its follow-up reporting feel a little like coercion or, at the very least, a warning.

Second, as for CEOs whose names are absent from the open letter-turned-paid-advertisement, it may be worth mentioning the New York Times’s own president and CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, is not among the statement’s signatories. The New York Times is likewise missing from the letter’s list of corporate supporters. It seems a bit strange to call out business leaders and companies for declining to sign a statement in which the New York Times itself is not represented.

Anyway, if it’s any consolation for the people at the New York Times, they can go to bed tonight at least knowing their write-up Wednesday is not even the creepiest example of their paper singling out individuals for not siding with the “right” political causes.

That dubious distinction still belongs to when the New York Times, in 2015, published, and then withdrew, a list of the Jewish members of Congress who opposed former President Barack Obama’s disastrous Iran nuclear deal. Publicly shaming business leaders for failing to getting behind the “correct” political cause is bad, but it’s still not as bad as the New York Times’s Jew tracker.”

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