Nina Burleigh

Burleigh has written extensively on feminism, issues of human trafficking,[29] domestic violence,[30] and double standards for violence against women,[31][32] American women and power and politics.[33][34][35] She coined the term "Baby Palins” to refer to the young right wing women who decry feminism while benefiting from its gains.[36][37] She has written that "misogyny is the last allowable taboo in our PC world".[38][39] She has also written on women and health care and reproductive law[40][41] as well as the issues and complications of adoption.[42][43][44]

Burleigh has written about her visits to Iraq, her mother's country of birth, both as a child and later in life as a journalist.[45] She has also written about her maternal grandmother's escape from the Assyrian genocide during World War I in the context of present-day refugee crises.[46] Burleigh worked in the Middle East for many years, including covering the politics of the Israeli settlements for Time Magazine, the emerging effect of Islamists on women in the wake of the Arab Spring for Slate and Time, and the politics and science of Biblical archaeology in Israel for her book Unholy Business and for the Los Angeles Times.[47][48]

Burleigh spent several years working on a book about Biblical archaeology and forgery in Israel. The Wall Street Journal said, “Burleigh uses the story of the James Ossuary to trace the eccentric and sometimes dodgy characters who buy, trade and deal in antiquities. But it is also a springboard for her larger meditation on the field of biblical archaeology. In the 19th century, when the discipline emerged, practitioners saw themselves as both religious pilgrims and serious scholars, perceiving no potential for conflict in their desire to prove the historicity of the Bible. It has only been in recent decades that biblical archaeology truly widened its scope and began to focus not only on the Bible but on the larger world in which biblical events unfolded.”[49]

She has written and lectured on the subject of Biblical archaeology both in her book and elsewhere, speaking on the topic at the Center for Inquiry,[50] in Los Angeles,[51] Washington, D.C., and New York,[52][53] as well as at the Oriental Institute[54] in Chicago and at Duke University’s Seminar on Biblical archaeology and the media.

In June 2009 Burleigh and her family moved to the Italian city of Perugia, where Knox was being tried on a murder charge, to write a book. Burleigh initially intended the story to be an exploration of young women's experiences and media portrayal in the modern world.[55] Within a month Burleigh concluded that much of what was commonly believed about Knox was without foundation, and began to question whether she was in any way involved in the killing. The book strongly advocated the case for the by-then-convicted Knox's innocence, and became a NYT bestseller. Burleigh said she was in some ways uncomfortable with the degree of media concentration on the case, as there were miscarriages of justice affecting all communities.[56]

Burleigh has written extensively about many other aspects of travel and life in Italy, including Chinese immigration, mafia slave labor,[57] gelato school,[58] expatriates and the Gothic.[59]

In January 2019 the Daily Telegraph was forced to apologize and pay "substantial damages" for publishing an article written by Burleigh titled “The Mystery of Melania” that the Telegraph admitted contained numerous falsehoods. “Trump often refers to opportunists out to advance themselves by disparaging her name and image," Stephanie Grisham, Trump's communications director, said in a statement to CNN. "She will not sit by as people and media outlets make up lies and false assertions in a race for ratings or to sell tabloid headlines."[60] Burleigh, however, stands by the article, which was actually an except from her 2018 book The Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women. “The book was published in October and has been widely excerpted and reported on in American publications . . . The book was lawyered for months in advance of publication,” Burleigh said. “Furthermore, the points they objected to include facts that have been previously reported by other writers." She also criticized the Telegraph for apologizing for “accurate reporting” and called the apology “regrettable,” when the Telegraph simply lacked the resources to back-check her reporting in the first lady’s home country of Slovenia.[61] On January 30th, 2019 Burleigh's lawyers threatened the Telegraph parent company TMG with a lawsuit:

In fact, it is TMG's Apology that is false. It appears that fear of Mrs Trump's lawyer Mr Harder, the "Gawker slayer", caused TMG to capitulate abjectly in the face of his letter without regard to normal journalistic principles, at the cost of Ms Burleigh's personal and professional reputation. In reality, the statements in the Article that Mrs Trump complained about were (1) well-sourced, (2) professionally fact checked before publication, (3) extensively reviewed by a lawyer retained by Gallery, (4) given proper and prudent caveats in the Article, and (5) benign. TMG had nothing to apologise for, and both the fact that it did so, and the particularly lurid way it abandoned the Article, have turned Ms Burleigh into an international poster girl for "fake news".[62]