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New York Times has fired its Baghdad bureau chief for mishandling of funds, the Semafor revealed on Monday.
The recently launched news website reported that Jane Arraf was put on leave earlier this year amid an investigation by the paper into whether she misused the bureau’s funds.
Sources at the center of the dispute say there would be a controversial $150-a-day pay limit for non-US journalists that prompted disputes by some of the paper’s staff in the Middle East.
Arraf, a veteran of the CNN Iraq bureau who joined NYT in 2020, appeared to have challenged the policy, disputing that her spending within the bureau was improper.
The Semafor also reported that Arraf’s history of clashes with NYT executives led to her being put on leave.
According to people close to the matter, the Palestinian-Canadian journalist also opposed NYT’s decision to cut costs by firing non-US staff in the bureau and even suggested that staff involved should investigate whether the decision violated local Iraqi laws.
The Semafor reported that NYT and Arraf are currently negotiating the terms of her departure and that a successor has not been nominated yet.
However, the controversial decision to relieve her of her position has been met with increased resistance from the paper’s staff.
Arraf’s “unceremonious departure” comes amid a wider media shift that has led US outlets to scale back their presence in Iraq and redirect resources toward the Ukrainian conflict and other topics of national interest.
This attitude has led many Middle East-based journalists to decry the exploitative approach adopted by some US newspapers, affirming that “American interest in the country extended only to conflict.”
NYT’s Iraq bureau, which once boasted over 100 correspondents, has been plagued by controversies in recent years.
Margaret Coker, Affar’s predecessor, was fired for colluding with the Iraqi government to prevent fellow journalist Rukmini Callimachi from entering the country.
Coker believed that Callimachi’s reporting was “reckless” and “did not meet editorial standards.”
These suspicions were later confirmed when a 2020 internal review by NYT found that some of the accounts used in Callimachi’s podcast series “Caliphate” were provided by a Canadian who falsely represented himself as a Daesh executioner in Syria.