Former Levi's President Jennifer Sey calls out NY Times over COVID fear-mongering: 'I feel enraged'
Jennifer Sey, 'Levi's Unbuttoned' author and former Levi's brand president, rips the New York Times for being 'complicit' in school lockdowns after the outlet's newer headlines label them as harmful.
Jennifer Sey says she lost her job as a Levi's executive last year after speaking out against school lockdowns she warned were detrimental to children and garnered criticism from mainstream media outlets that hit her for her stance.
Despite three years of what Sey slammed as "fear-mongering" against children returning to the classroom, The New York Times now seems to agree.
"Many young children failed to reintegrate to classrooms quickly because they needed to relearn basic socialization skills, one clinician said, while teenagers returned to schools bearing anxiety disorders ‘beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my career,’" NYT Health tweeted last Wednesday.
Sey, firing back, wrote, "When parents raised this we were called racists & mocked by @nytimes reporters. You refused to include us (fairly) in any coverage. We were vilified as alt right psychos. Some of us lost jobs for saying what you say here. But we were right. You owe us & kids a major apology."
Former Levi Strauss & Co. executive Jennifer Sey says she lost her position after speaking out against COVID-era school closures. (Photo by Christian Alminana/Getty Images for Cannes Lions)
"I endured an aggressively hostile work environment for 2 years at @LeviStraussCo & ultimately lost my job & livelihood for having the insight & foresight to say the thing the @nytimes has finally caught on to 3 yrs later. So this news wasn’t "fit to print" until now?" she added in a separate tweet.
A Times article titled "Students Lost One-Third of a School Year to Pandemic, Study Finds," published last month, also alluded to the harm caused by pandemic lockdowns, pointing to "learning deficits" and failure to recover from learning losses after more than two years.
"I feel enraged," Sey said of the rhetorical shift Sunday on "Fox & Friends Weekend."
"People like you and me had the audacity to say something before The New York Times said it, something that was patently obvious that children would be harmed from prolonged school closures. We were vilified and we were smeared. It's the reason I was ousted from my job," she told Fox News' Rachel Campos-Duffy.
The corporate logo of the New York Times hangs above the front door of their headquarters on October 23, 2018, in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
"It's the reason schools stayed closed for so long, because The New York Times did nothing but further fear for close to three years about the risks of COVID to children. First, it was COVID, then it was masks, then it was myocarditis from COVID, then it was these children were going to kill grandma. It went on and on and on and the fact is, schools in Sweden and Denmark were open the whole time, and it was fine."
Sey said she believes teacher's unions and "Big Pharma" influenced the outlet, as well as the rhetoric surrounding school closures.
"I think The New York Times and the press more broadly failed to do its job. They carried water for the Democratic Party as well as Big Pharma, and they wrote headlines that were essentially talking points from those two parties. They did not interrogate the issues," she said.
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"I feel just enraged when I say this, when I see these new headlines from them. They skipped a step. What about the part where you admit that you were complicit in all of this? What about the part where you invite people like me to talk to you finally and ask us how we knew all along? We knew we were right all along, and we were smeared as racists. We were ousted from our jobs. They skipped a step, and I'm pretty mad about it."
Sey highlighted some of these talking points on Twitter, including ones from New York Times articles discussing concerns over ventilation in schools, "out of control" infections, and a South Korean study showing that school reopenings could "trigger more [COVID] outbreaks."
"This is what the @nytimes printed for two+ years, furthering unnecessary fear about schools and kids. Reporters vilified anyone who challenged," she captioned the post.
The New York Times did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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Sey claimed she was forced out of her job with Levi Strauss & Co. last February after speaking out against school closures, adding that she refused a $1 million severance package to avoid signing a non-disclosure agreement that would prevent her from speaking out on the issue.
She has since written "Levi's Unbuttoned" to call further attention to the issue.
"I was urged to stop repeatedly over the course of two years, and eventually it was decided there just was not a place for me at the company any longer, and I chose to leave on my own terms," she told "America Reports" last August.
Fox News' Yael Halon contributed to this report.