[1] As an editor at the newspaper, Rosenthal oversaw the coverage of numerous major news stories including the escalation of the United States military's involvement in the Vietnam War (1961–1975), the New York Times scoop of the Pentagon Papers (1971), and events that were part of the Watergate scandal (1972–1974).

Rosenthal was instrumental in the paper's coverage of the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder case, which established the concept of the "bystander effect", but later came to be regarded as flawed and not credible.

[1][2][3] The youngest of six children, he was still a child when his family moved to the Bronx, New York, where Rosenthal's father found work as a house painter.

[4] Rosenthal developed the bone-marrow disease osteomyelitis, causing him extreme pain and forcing him to drop out of DeWitt Clinton High School.

In 1959, Rosenthal was expelled from Poland after writing that the Polish leader, Władysław Gomułka, was "moody and irascible" and had been "let down—by intellectuals and economists he never had any sympathy for anyway, by workers he accuses of squeezing overtime out of a normal day's work, by suspicious peasants who turn their backs on the government's plans, orders and pleas.

"[1] Rosenthal's expulsion order stated that the reporter had "written very deeply and in detail about the internal situation, party and leadership matters.

[1] As metropolitan editor of The New York Times, Rosenthal was instrumental in pushing an inaccurate account of the murder of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964.

[6] He assigned the story to reporter Martin Gansberg, who wrote an article published March 27, 1964, titled "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police."

Meehan asked The New York Times reporter Martin Gansberg why his article failed to reveal that witnesses did not feel that a murder was happening.

Not wishing to jeopardize his career by attacking powerful The New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal, Meehan kept his findings secret and passed his notes to fellow WNBC reporter Gabe Pressman.

The Nixon administration sued to stop publication, resulting in a US Supreme Court decision, upholding the right of the press to publish items without "prior restraint" on the part of the government.

"[14] Rosenthal was criticized as being homophobic and curtailing coverage of issues about and relating to gay people, including the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

His epitaph inscribed on his grave marker ("He kept the paper straight") was chosen to memorialize his efforts at The New York Times to deliver unbiased news.