Elections, Jamie O, Political Crack, So Called Liberal Media

Democracy Dies In Fecklessness, Part 1

This is not a promotional image for a prestige streaming limited series about a wealthy Upper West Side serial killer. No, it’s a photo that Joe Kahn, executive editor of The New York Times, actually agreed to let out into the world.

This is a two-part post is mainly aimed at people who are liberal or liberal-ish and are not seemingly aware of the glaring lurch to the right by two of the flagships of the fading medium of print journalism, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Today, part one, the New York Times. You can read part two about The Post here.

First off, let’s take a look at the New York Times. Media critics such as Jay Rosen, Maureen Sullivan (former public editor of the Times), Dan Froomkin, and Greg Sargent have written many words about the New York Times’ curious and thinly veiled distaste for Joe Biden.

This is nothing new, a president feuding with a specific media outlet. As Adrastos has pointed out to me before, Henry Luce, publisher of Time Magazine, hated FDR with a boiling passion. Newspapers wrote nasty stuff about Thomas Freakin’ Jefferson. But it is rather glaring. In fact, it’s rather petty.

“All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,” one Times journalist said. “It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.”

A.G. is Times’ publisher, AG Sulzberger, who is extremely fussy that Biden is not playing ball with them. In fact, this does not seem to be the level-headed thinking of someone who runs something called The Old Grey Lady:

“As Sulzberger often tells colleagues and as he and (Times’ Executive Editor Joe) Kahn have stressed in private conversations with the administration, every modern president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has done an interview with the Times. That, however, is an argument deemed uncompelling by Biden aides and one that, to some White House officials, smacks of entitlement. …

 

“In Sulzberger’s view, according to two people familiar with his private comments on the subject, only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency. Beyond that, he has voiced concerns that Biden doing so few expansive interviews with experienced reporters could set a dangerous precedent for future administrations, according to a third person familiar with the publisher’s thinking. Sulzberger himself was part of a group from the Times that sat down with Trump, who gave the paper several interviews despite his rantings about its coverage. If Trump could do it, Sulzberger believes, so can Biden.

Okay, not the best thing to be obsessed with given the deep danger that Trump poses to democracy. However, the New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn doubled down during an interview with Semafor.

What Kahn is basically doing there is saying that democracy is not that high of a priority, and in fact, defending democracy is a sign of bias. This, as Rosen is stating above, is madness.

There was hope that Kahn could get the Times back on track, that he would stop it from treating things like stealing an election and calling for the military to attack Black Lives Matters protestors as only so much political squabble, like a debate on tax brackets. But he has clearly not done that, to the point where he is open about the opinion that being a voice defending our American system is none of their concern.

Make no mistake, there still is great stuff in the Times. Michelle Goldberg, Jamelle Bouie, Charles Blow, and others write smart opinions. Their reporting often is first rate. However, even their great reporting gets hamstrung by terrible headlines that seem determined to normalize Trump. Example:

Then there’s Maggie Haberman, who has sort of become the poster child for the failings of access journalism. I recall that in 2022, a lot of people were huffy that there were those of us who heard Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony who were taken aback by this description of an exchange she had with Trump lawyer Stefan Passantino:

“Yeah, yeah, we did just leave her third interview. You can put it out, but don’t — don’t — don’t — don’t make it too big of a deal. I don’t think she’ll want it to be too big of a deal. All right. Thanks.”

 

And I said, “Stefan, was that Maggie Haberman asking about my interview?”

 

And he said, “Yeah, but don’t worry. She’s not going to make it a big deal.”

 

I said, “Stefan, I don’t want this out there.”

 

He said, “Don’t worry. Like, Maggie’s friendly to us. We’ll be fine.”

Well, last month we got another example of Maggie’s chummy relationship with Trump during that time. Michael Cohen’s testimony outlined Haberman as someone Trump trusted, which reminded law journalist Marci Wheeler of another example of Haberman’s failings:

Not to mention the time she held back stories to put in her book and never reported on them at a time when they might have made a difference. I could go on.

Beyond all of that, the New York Times has made multiple other questionable journalistic decisions. Former Times public editor Sullivan is deeply correct in her response to this example of “not the Times’ best moment.”

We need the Times’ best moments, right now. We don’t need them to normalize a major threat to democracy. The Times should know better, and adjust. They’ve had 10 years to do so, and starting with the Hillary’s Emails disaster, they have proven they are just not interested in doing that, our democracy be damned.

On Friday, I’ll write about the takeover of The Washington Post by British Tory journalists, and what that could mean.

The last word goes to Prince.