NYT reporter linked to leak of Australian Jews’ details, which led to doxxing attacks

The New York Times said Friday it had taken “appropriate action” against its reporter, after it came to light that she had leaked private details from a WhatsApp group in which some 600 Australian Jewish creatives had sought support amid surging antisemitism, causing a storm of doxxing attacks.

The Melbourne-based reporter, Natasha Frost, told The Wall Street Journal that she had shared the information with one person outside the group, and had not intended for it to be widely disseminated.

Frost, whose New York Times bio page still says she writes for the newspaper’s “Europe Morning Briefing” newsletter, downloaded some 900 pages of WhatsApp messages from the group earlier this year, according to a WSJ report last week.

The reporter shared the document with the subject of a story she wrote, according to a statement from the Times, “to assist the individual in a private matter.”

When the information from the group reached anti-Israel activists, it set off a firestorm of harassment against some of the group’s approximately 600 members, most of whom are private citizens.

Clementine Ford, a feminist writer and strident critic of Israel with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, shared the group transcripts in February, which by that point were circulating alongside a spreadsheet with names and job titles of group members, as well as about 100 photos of people in the group.

“If you want an insight into how coordinated efforts are to silence Palestinian activists and their allies, you can read the leaked chat here,” Ford wrote at the time.

The feminist writer had been a topic of conversation in the WhatsApp group, following comments she made after the Hamas terror group’s October 7 attack on Israel, when some 3,000 terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war.

Ford derided Jewish feminists who solicited their peers for condemnation of sexual violence committed in the attack. “I don’t care that you felt betrayed or let down, and I especially don’t care that you want to have a big crybaby rant,” she said on Instagram in December.

In a statement to the Journal, Frost acknowledged that she’d “shared this document with one individual,” but said its “subsequent dissemination and misuse happened entirely without my knowledge or consent.

“I was shocked by these events, which put me and many others at terrible risk. I deeply regret my decision,” Frost said.

Though neither the Times, Frost herself, nor the Wall Street Journal has explicitly identified the person with whom Frost shared the document, the reporter did write a story in January about Antoinette Lattouf, an Australian broadcaster whose career took a hit after pro-Israel activists drew attention to comments she had made about the Gaza war.

Frost left the WhatsApp group shortly before the story came out, telling an administrator that she was leaving in part to avoid any perception that she might violate members’ privacy. At the time, Frost noted that she was likely to write about Lattouf, according to The Wall Street Journal, and details from the group began to leak online around the same time that the story was published.

Lattouf declined to comment for the Wall Street Journal story, and has not spoken publicly about the matter.

As a result of the leaks, Joshua Moshe, a gift shop owner who was part of the leaked WhatsApp group, was driven to move his store after it was vandalized several times.

At one point, Moshe told the Journal, he received a photo via text message of his 5-year-old son immediately after getting an expletive-laden voicemail on his phone.

Another member of the group, high school teacher Siana Einfeld, installed security cameras in her home after her workplace was phoned repeatedly, with callers telling the school Einfeld was “complicit in genocide.”

The incident sparked a conversation in Australia about potential laws to forbid the sharing of people’s private information online without their consent— the practice colloquially known as “doxxing.”

In the wake of the leaks, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had asked for legislation to be brought forward as part of a broader reform of privacy laws.

“The recent targeting of members of the Australian Jewish community through those practices like doxxing was shocking but, sadly, this is far from being an isolated incident,” said Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who is Jewish, at the time.

In May, the Australian government announced an effort to overhaul the country’s privacy laws, and said in a statement that it would “bring forward legislation in early August to outlaw the release of private information online with an intent to cause harm.”

In the wake of the Wall Street Journal report linking Frost to the leaks, The New York Times reporter appeared to have removed her social media accounts, and did not make any further statement.

Frost has frequently written about the Israel-Hamas war as part of her daily coverage, and wrote a feature article in 2023 about Yiddish revivalism in Melbourne.

JTA contributed to this report.