(Marina Garnier)
It took two weeks — and one long pause — for New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson to publicly express support for new CEO Mark Thompson.
Thompson, the former director-general and editor-in-chief of the BBC, has been under fire since a sex-abuse scandal erupted there.
Thompson has denied any involvement in a decision to kill a news show about molestation allegations against late BBC host Jimmy Savile.
When asked yesterday during the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York whether the newsroom was hostile toward Thompson, Abramson said, “hardly,” adding that he is “full of energy and ideas.”
Thompson’s appointment has drawn scrutiny from Times ombudswoman Margaret Sullivan and columnist Joe Nocera, who questioned whether Thompson was the “right man” for the job.
Abramson said yesterday that they “toil in the opinion realm.”
“We have a team of reporters working on the story,” she said. “We’ve done a number of stories on the BBC investigation.”
She also stressed that it wasn’t the newsroom’s place to comment on management.
“That would not be the newsroom’s to judge,” Abramson said. “We don’t say so-and-so has to resign.”
In a brief interview after her Q&A session on stage, Abramson took a long pause when asked directly if she backed Thompson.
“I’m supervising coverage of the story that involves him,” she said. “I don’t see that as my role.”
When the question was posed to her again by a Bloomberg News reporter, she finally said, “I feel confident in his leadership,” and then added, “I have every confidence in him as CEO.”
During the Q&A session, moderator Henry Blodget asked her what her legacy would be 10 years from now.
“I want people to say I protected and expanded the depth and breadth of our news report and some version of what [the epitaph of famed former Times Editor] Abe Rosenthal said: I want them to think I kept the place straight,” she said.