On Wednesday, our publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote a letter to Times employees concerning last week’s publication of an anti-Semitic cartoon. A.G. calls the cartoon inconsistent with Times values and outlines the steps the company is taking to make sure the publication of such offensive imagery does not happen again.

Colleagues,

Last Thursday an anti-Semitic cartoon appeared on the Opinion page of the international print edition of The New York Times. The image was offensive and inconsistent with our values.

We investigated the incident and found the syndicated cartoon was downloaded and published by a single production editor working without adequate oversight. We have issued an editor’s note and a separate apology, which stated that this imagery is always dangerous and has grown more so at a moment when anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world. We also committed to making changes to prevent something like this from happening again.

Today, I wanted to share with you the steps we’ve taken so far to meet that commitment:

We are changing our production processes to ensure adequate oversight and address issues with the international Opinion pages that enabled this mistake.

We have stopped running all syndicated cartoons, which are created by those with no direct ties to The Times and thus give us limited editorial control.

We have canceled our contract with CartoonArts International, the syndicate that provided the cartoon and defended its release.

We are taking disciplinary steps with the production editor who selected the cartoon for publication.

We are updating our unconscious bias training to ensure it includes a direct focus on anti-Semitism.

This episode is a reminder that all of us are custodians of our trust and credibility with readers. Our journalists work hard every day to help people understand a vast and diverse world and ensure prejudices of any kind do not make it into our report. Though I’ve been assured there was no malice involved in this mistake, we fell far short of our standards and values in this case.