New Jersey reporters have spent months documenting alleged human rights abuses and tense altercations between protesters and authorities at a federal immigration facility in Newark. In at least a dozen documented instances, journalists have been the targets of pepper spray.
Now, journalists at several local New Jersey outlets have found themselves in the middle of another clash related to federal immigration enforcement — this time with their own employer, USA Today Co., the nation’s largest newspaper chain.
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Unionized journalists at the Asbury Park Press and The Record in northern New Jersey have joined more than 800 of their colleagues from across the country to rebuke USA Today’s new data deal with Palantir, the software firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel and used by federal immigration authorities.
“Every problem we have with this partnership really comes down to trust,” Mike Davis, an investigative journalist at the Asbury Park Press in Asbury Park, New Jersey, told Straight Arrow. By partnering with Palantir, he said, the local newspaper’s parent company risks a strained relationship with the communities it covers, including those who are concerned about conditions at the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.
“When you have a hot-button issue like immigration, especially when you have a real epicenter like Delaney Hall, there are concerns that these readers and subscribers and sources that have trusted us in the community are all of a sudden going to feel aggrieved,” Davis said.
On Monday, Davis helped organize a joint letter with rank-and-file workers from 31 newsrooms calling on USA Today to halt business with Palantir, arguing the deal “threatens to undermine trust in our news outlets.” The Palantir agreement, announced late last week and first reported by Nieman Lab, will help the newspaper company monitor and analyze reader behaviors in a bid to increase reader engagement and revenue.
But the deal, unionized journalists argue, threatens the privacy of both readers and reporters. Palantir has a $30 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which uses the company’s artificial intelligence surveillance technology to track migrants to help carry out mass deportations. USA Today’s work with that same company, the journalists wrote, “raises serious questions about the data security of our readers.”
The ordeal puts into focus the privacy implications of data collection practices at the nation’s leading news outlets. USA Today isn’t the only media company whose data from readers could be used to fuel deportations.
“Not only does partnering with Palantir, a major player in the news we cover, create an inherent conflict of interest,” the journalists wrote. “But it fails the journalists who have been assaulted and falsely arrested while covering immigration enforcement actions and protests.”
Why is USA Today partnering with Palantir?
Mike Reed, USA Today’s chairman and CEO, revealed the company’s partnership with Palantir during a quarterly earnings call on Thursday.
Readers’ data, he said, is “actionable intelligence” at the company’s disposal.
“Every visit, every session and every moment of attention creates a signal,” Reed told investors.
“The work our team is doing with Palantir is a direct expansion of this strategy,” Reed said, adding that the partnership is key to monetizing “those relationships faster and at much greater scale.”
Through its deal with Palantir, USA Today plans to leverage AI “to create a unified intelligence layer” to improve reader engagement and drive subscription, advertising and e-commerce revenue, a USA Today spokesperson said in an email to Straight Arrow. The company said it “complies with applicable data protection and privacy laws and maintains strong standards for data security and governance.”
“We require this of our vendors and partners as well, reflecting our belief that safeguarding protected personal information is essential to our business and the audiences we serve,” the statement continued.
Amy Garrard, the company’s vice president of labor relations, said in a statement to Straight Arrow that the newspaper chain respects that employees “have a range of perspectives,” and that its Palantir agreement is “a business decision” to better connect with subscribers.
Palantir didn’t respond to emails from Straight Arrow seeking comment.
USA Today journalists represented by The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, including at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix and the Indianapolis Star in Indiana, claim the company has “provided minimal details” about the Palantir deal. They expressed “serious concerns and questions about how readers’ personal information and data will be used.”
The union represents a little more than 10% of USA Today Co.’s 7,500 employees. In addition to its flagship national newspaper, the company owns more than 200 local newspapers around the country.
The unionized employees said the Palantir deal also carries implications for journalists’ free speech rights. In 2016, digital news outlet Gawker closed shop and filed for bankruptcy after wrestler Terry Bollea, known as Hulk Hogan, won a $140 million invasion-of-privacy lawsuit. Thiel, who also co-founded PayPal, helped fund Bollea’s lawsuit after the gossip site published a sex tape featuring the wrestler and the wife of a former friend.
While “it’s not far-fetched to imagine a future” where Palantir’s surveillance capabilities are turned on U.S. citizens and political dissidents, the USA Today Network staffers noted that “throughout history, journalists are often the first to be targeted.”
“Not only does partnering with Palantir, a major player in the news we cover, create an inherent conflict of interest,” the unionized workers wrote in their letter to USA Today management. “But it fails the journalists who have been assaulted and falsely arrested while covering immigration enforcement actions and protests.”
Which news outlets partner with Palantir?
USA Today isn’t the first media brand to partner with Palantir — nor is it the first one to face pushback for ties to ICE.
Both Fox News and German publishing brand Axel Springer, which owns both Politico and Business Insider, have also signed deals with Palantir to analyze data about readers.
Thomson Reuters, the news wire and data broker, has long provided data for surveillance tools used by federal immigration agents, according to 404 Media. So has LexisNexis, another data broker which also owns the legal news publication Law360.
In March, more than 200 journalists with Law360 and its sister publications called on their parent company to end its $22 million contract with federal immigration officials, arguing the agreement “raises imminent human rights concerns.” Journalists at Reuters have also called on management to explain their relationships with the Department of Homeland Security, according to Poynter.
Law360 journalists said in the letter they were concerned the company “is directly aiding the separation of families, the removal of children from schools and the death of individuals in detention centers.” The LexisNexis database, rank-and-file workers alleged, “gives ICE the ability to find migrants where they work and identify their family members.”
Neither LexisNexis nor Thomson Reuters responded to emails from Straight Arrow seeking comment.
Axel Springer has used Palantir as an analytics platform for several years, a spokesperson told Straight Arrow in a statement. While the company “works with a range of technology companies and vendors to support our business and technology needs,” the spokesperson said, news publications like Politico and Business Insider “operate with complete editorial independence.”
Davis, the Asbury Park Press reporter, said that in his years of bargaining with USA Today leadership, he concluded that “you can’t trust corporate.” He said leadership hadn’t adequately weighed how the Palantir partnership could affect newsgathering.
Davis acknowledged that USA Today and other financially distressed legacy news brands are scrambling to develop strategies that convert social media followers into loyal subscribers and, he said, “whoever solves that problem is going to be very lucky.”
“But what I do know is that whatever the solution is,” he said, “I don’t think the solution should involve a company like Palantir.”
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