The contractors had been paid, and CJR knew it
The premise of Riddhi Setty's July 22 article for the Columbia Journalism Review was that contractors had gone unpaid. They had not. The contractors named in the piece were engaged by Pleroma MGMT, and Pleroma MGMT paid them in full.
Pleroma MGMT is a separate company from IBT Media. It is also not the same entity as any of the other companies mentioned. The distinction is not a technicality; it is the whole of the story. The dispute Setty set out to cover was solely a Pleroma MGMT matter, and by the time she published, it was a resolved one.
CJR did print Pleroma MGMT's statement that its records showed payment in full. That is to its credit, and it is also the problem. An outlet that has the answer in its hand, even including it deep within the article, and still frames the story around non-payment has made a choice about what its readers should come away believing.
Once they realized that all payments were made, CJR should have simply reported that they investigated payments for contractors and found that they were all paid. The payment story CJR was intending to publish did not turn out as they expected, and there is no shame in that. However, strangely, instead of admitting the facts, CJR's story started to morph and change.
A timeline that does not match the building's record
What supplanted the payment story was an account of Setty's own reporting visit — and that account does not match the building record.
On June 12, Setty arrived without an appointment at a private office building in Midtown Manhattan. According to the security guard on duty, as reported by the Latin Times, she named a single destination:
"I am going to the sixth floor."
— The destination the guard said Setty gave him, as reported by the Latin Times
In CJR, Setty described a short visit: up to the sixth floor, a meeting with Titus Choi, and an escort back down roughly ten minutes later. The building's elevator and security records tell a different story. Those records, as reported by the Latin Times, show a visit of 53 minutes, with stops on tenant floors Setty had not named to security and where she had no appointment.
Ten minutes on one floor and 53 minutes across several are not variations of the same account. Setty was in a position to know how long she had been in the building. Her published version omitted forty-three of those minutes and every floor but one.
This is what the trespass complaint filed with the NYPD Midtown South Precinct concerns, a visitor admitted for one stated destination who, according to the building's record, went well beyond it. Whether that meets the legal standard is for others to determine. What is not in dispute is that CJR's readers were not told the visit was longer than ten minutes or that it reached floors other than the sixth.
Setty's stated reason for arriving unannounced was a bounced email:
"The bounce-back was when I decided to stop by the office."
— Riddhi Setty in CJR
Pleroma MGMT says Setty had been directed twice to Simon Lee, its representative, before that visit, and that she never asked him for a meeting. A reporter who has a named contact and does not use him has made a choice, not encountered an obstacle. And a bounced email to a person who was not the designated contact, whatever else it explains, does not explain why she visited every floor of the building, without permission, over the course of 53 minutes. It does not explain her dishonest statement to the building security.
Why did CJR defend the account instead of checking it?
This is the part that should concern CJR's readers more than anything involving IBT Media.
Before publication, the Latin Times had already reported the 53-minute visit to the other floors. Questions went to Setty and to CJR's leadership. CJR was told that timestamped footage of the visit existed. None of that is contested.
At that point CJR had two options. It could ask the building for the footage, compare it against its reporter's account, and publish whatever it found. Or it could publish its reporter's account. It published its reporter's account, put the police report in the headline, and gave Setty room to call the reaction "pretty weird", without telling readers what the complaint was actually about.
A journalism review, of all publications, understands what it means to be offered documentary evidence that contradicts your story and decline to look. CJR has written that story about other outlets many times. In 2024, it cautioned reporters to know where they are and to stay off private property without permission. That is the standard CJR sets for others. The question is what standard it applied here, and why the answer appears to be a different one.
The most charitable reading is institutional reflex: a fellow was accused, the accusation came from a third party, and the instinct was to close ranks. The less charitable readings are available to anyone who cares to draw them. CJR is the only party in a position to rule them out, and so far it has not tried.
The detour that had nothing to do with the story
Setty's article was framed as accountability reporting on behalf of contractors. Roughly halfway through, it shifts attention away from Pleroma MGMT, the company that engaged and paid those contractors, and toward IBT Media, which did not engage them, did not owe them, and was not a party to the dispute.
The effect was obvious. A simple Pleroma MGMT story about resolved payment disputes morphed into a collection of accusations against IBT that helps Newsweek in its long-running fight with the company (the two companies are locked in a public dispute over the true ownership of Newsweek). No evidence showed that IBT had anything to do with the story, yet Setty placed it front and center in her article.
This gives the appearance that Setty was acting as Newsweek's agent by using an unrelated payment dispute to damage IBT. Questions sent to CJR about this connection were not honored with a straight answer. Instead, various CJR editors responded by calling the questions "riddled with false statements" that rendered the "conclusions nonsensical." It was interesting that they did not deny the connection outright. Setty claimed not to "know" any Newsweek personnel mentioned, but this did not explain why her article was so unusually aligned with Newsweek's interest in a private legal dispute with a company unrelated to the subject of her story.
Why did CJR ignore the real Newsweek story?
While CJR was turning an already-paid Pleroma MGMT dispute into an attack on IBT, Adweek was reporting a genuine publishing crisis at Newsweek. Similarweb data cited by Adweek showed Newsweek's monthly readership falling from about 100 million in May 2025 to 23 million in June 2026, a drop of over 75 percent. Adweek also reported layoffs in Newsweek's rankings and video teams. Sales and product staff were cut as well. Two senior executives left.
"Newsweek had seen its traffic decline nearly 75% in a single year, a collapse that coincided with layoffs."— Mark Stenberg, Adweek
That is a story about the health of a major news publisher. It concerns audience loss and job cuts. CJR exists to scrutinize journalism, yet a search of its site as of August 3 found no article examining these negative trends at Newsweek. CJR instead published a report about a payment dispute that had already been resolved and then dragged in the name of IBT, which is an adverse party against Newsweek in recent legal battles.
Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad answered the traffic collapse with what Adweek called a "counter-narrative." He said Newsweek was on pace to exceed $100 million in revenue and declared, "Despite that, this year will be our highest revenue ever." Those figures came from Pragad, with no audited statements or other independent proof available publicly. Adweek reported that Pragad declined to give a breakdown of revenue by source. He also would not disclose Newsweek's exact number of paying subscribers. These numbers and claims deserve more scrutiny.
More importantly, Pragad's revenue claim did not answer why Newsweek's readership has been dropping so sharply. According to Adweek, Newsweek's publishing division was expected to shrink by 20 to 25 percent in 2026. The largest source of the company's growth was Adprime, an advertising-technology company Newsweek bought in 2025.
This is the publishing story CJR should have examined. Why did Newsweek lose most of its monthly audience in a year? How many employees lost their jobs? What evidence supports Pragad's corporate revenue claims? Why did he withhold the breakdown? Does a media company (Newsweek) owning an advertising company (Adprime) create the appearance of impropriety? Are there safeguards to prevent paid coverage from influencing the news reporting?
Instead of running a story attacking a legal opponent of Newsweek, CJR should have reported the precipitous drop in audience at Newsweek instead.
CJR owes readers a correction, and an explanation
The corrections are narrow, factual, and verifiable. CJR should state:
- that the contractors were engaged and paid by Pleroma MGMT;
- that Pleroma MGMT is a separate company from IBT Media, and that IBT Media was not a party to the payment dispute;
- the full duration of the June 12 visit and the floors reached, according to the building record;
- what Setty told building security when she was admitted;
- that Setty had been given Pleroma MGMT's representative as a contact before the visit and did not request a meeting.
CJR should also explain, to its own readers, why it treated a legal adversary of Newsweek so harshly while publishing kind stories about Newsweek and avoiding coverage of the outlet's current controversies. These are all choices. This is not a demand for an apology. It is a demand for a publication that calls itself a "journalism review" to review its own journalists' actions and motivations. It should also take care not to report in a manner that gives it the appearance of acting in concert with a publication, in this case Newsweek, that it has a responsibility to cover critically.
