Now that Joe Biden Stepped Down for the Good of the Country, Joe Kahn Must Join Him
In their latest installment of an editorial making demands of Joe Biden, other Democrats, and voters, but never Donald Trump, the NYT on Monday joined the horde of outlets begging for an open primary.
They were, of course, too slow to keep up with the Old Geezer they’ve spent the last month calling slow, to say nothing of his Vice President who, in just 36-hours, sealed up the nomination and raised $100 million. It was over.
Try to keep up, NYT?
Even with that embarrassment, NYT decided to keep running the endless stream of print, with Ezra Klein whining like he has done and Patrick Healy leading a panel discussion, as well as his own unsubstantiated claims about competition — especially around convention time — helping a candidacy. Bret Stephens had the audacity to claim that by winning the support of democratically elected delegates, Kamala had been coronated.
Try to keep up, NYT.
So back to the editorial NYT posted after it was over, demanding — begging — that it not be over.
Along with its tribute to Biden and a pitch to use this “fresh chance to address voters’ concerns with better policies” (followed by misrepresentations of the current state of both Biden’s immigration and housing policies — try to keep up, NYT!), the editorial nodded to the import of “describ[ing] all the harm Mr. Trump would do to this country.”
Mr. Trump is a felon who flouts the law and the Constitution, an inveterate liar beholden to no higher cause than his self-interest and a reckless policymaker indifferent to the well-being of the American people. His term in office did lasting damage to the people and the project of America and to its reputation around the world. In a second term he would operate with fewer restraints and more willing enablers, and he and his emboldened advisers have made clear they intend to exercise power ruthlessly.
Yet it’s not enough to describe all the harm Mr. Trump would do to this country: The Democratic Party needs to offer the American people a road map to a better future.
This is the second time that this bossy stream of editorials has emphasized the import of describing the danger of Trump: In the first, NYT faulted Biden for failing to “hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies” during the debate.
But this second editorial expands its descriptive scope: Trump’s lies must be debunked and the harm Trump did to this country must be described.
By others. By Democrats.
Yet, even as NYT was obsessing with Biden’s age, it failed in those duties, debunking Trump’s lies and describing the damage he has done.
For example, NYT fell for a PR effort by the Trump campaign to pitch a platform that embraced fetal personhood as a moderation on choice. After spending months leading others on efforts to describe Trump’s amped up authoritarianism in a second term, NYT both-sidesed Trump’s efforts to disavow Project 2025. Even as NYT front-paged Peter Baker’s pursuit of conspiracy theories about the official medical records Biden did release, NYT never described asking for official medical records on Trump’s shooting injury, even while it joined Maria Bartiromo and Benny Johnson to platform Ronny Jackson’s claims instead. NYT finally got around to fact-checking Trump’s RNC speech; they posted it just after midnight overnight, today. CNN, by comparison, had their fact-check up while people were still talking about the speech.
Neither is NYT fulfilling the job of describing the harm Trump would and did do to this country. The other day, NYT let its pharmaceutical reporter falsely claim that Mueller found “no evidence that Mr. Trump or his aides had coordinated with [Russia’s 2016] interference effort,” something that not even the linked story from March 2019 supported, and something that has been further debunked by subsequent reports that Konstantin Kilimnik was a Russian agent and that he passed on the strategy Paul Manafort gave him to other Russian spies (which NYT has reported but presented as limited to polling data) or the footnote unveiled just before the 2020 election that showed the investigation into whether Roger Stone conspired in a hack-and-leak with GRU was ongoing when Mueller finished (something NYT has never reported).
In March, NYT had a good story on Manafort’s reappearance in Trump’s orbit. It did an op-ed on Manafort’s likely role in a second Trump term. While both noted that Trump pardoned Manafort, neither laid out that Amy Berman Jackson judged Manafort to have lied about sharing that campaign strategy with Kilimnik and the deal to carve up Ukraine discussed at the same time. NYT appears to have ignored Manafort’s appearance at the convention.
Nor has NYT shown the least curiosity regarding the role of Donald Trump or his Attorney General in framing his opponent back in 2020. While, in real time, NYT did an exceptionally good story about the Brady side channel Bill Barr set up to ingest dirt Rudy Giuliani had obtained, in part from a known Russian spy, when they attempted to write this after the Alexander Smirnov indictment, NYT covered up Rudy’s central role in related matters. How did the entire Biden – Trump rematch pass without a single story on Trump’s role in framing his opponent?
NYT has covered Trump’s recent coziness with Viktor Orbán, though it was late to the story of Orbán’s post NATO visit and didn’t mention Orbán efforts to end the Ukraine war with Trump. A far better follow-up described that Orbán had relayed Trump’s plans for “a swift push for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.” That was buried, just like NYT’s report on Trump’s growing financial entanglement with the Saudi state, this time on page A8. In NYT’s simpering coverage of Trump’s RNC platform, it mentioned neither the reversals on Ukraine or Taiwan from 2016. And while NYT claims to value descriptions of the damage Trump did to “the project of America and to its reputation around the world,” it recently blamed NATO allies’ concerns about the election exclusively to Biden’s age, rather than the threat that Trump himself poses — and even that was buried in a story buried below other Biden stories.
Joe Kahn’s NYT insists that these topics should be covered.
Yet Joe Kahn’s NYT isn’t doing that job, its day job. It is instead pawning that job off onto Democrats, all the while complaining about the way Democrats are fulfilling the duties of their day job.
And when you raise NYT’s own failures, NYT exhibits the same arrogance, defensiveness, and blindness for which it faulted Joe Biden.
For the good of the country, NYT imperiously demanded, Joe Biden had to step down.
Fine, he did that.
Now either meet the standards your own editorial page lays out or, for the good of the country, find a leader who will.
I know this one article will not make up for all the sins of the NYT, but, it’s something:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html
Clearly worth a read.
The constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.
People that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule
of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.
– Hannah Arendt
It’s good. I kept glancing through it as I was writing this.
It is presented as opinion, yet it presents facts.
Why aren’t NYT’s own journalists doing that?
A little humor for Wednesday morning?
Shouldn’t the second “Manafort “ in this quote read “Kilimnik”?
“Amy Berman Jackson judged Manafort to have lied about sharing that campaign strategy with Manafort..”
As for the NYT, I think it’s possible they actually want Trump to win, perhaps with some level of plausible deniability. They can’t be as naive as their coverage suggests, can they?
TY.
Thanks so much for this epic take down EW.
What enrages me so much about the NYT is it, like John Roberts, pretends to be just calling balls and strikes, when in actuality they put a very heavy hand on the scale. Because the perception of their balance persists in the public eye, they easily lead others to follow where they want them to go.
One need look no further than Biden’s masterful handling of what might have been a catastrophic decision to step aside to see the man remains at the top of his game. But none of that mattered. The NYT, CNN, NBC, (for the love of God) MSNBC, et al. wanted him out, with insider Democrats lending a helping hand to see if they might replace him with their own personally preferred candidate who didn’t have the courage or backing to challenge him in the primary.
Biden made sure to set up Harris to carry on in his stead. I suspect the massive support she has received since is as much about supporting the Biden administration as it is a response from Harris enthusiasts. Those combined motivations will not be overcome by mewling insiders or media who tried to sow chaos and instead created a massive force to be reckoned with.
It is important to hold the NYT and their fellow travelers to account for what they have done, even while we celebrate Harris and the juggernaut her candidacy has already become. Instead of chaos and division, the NYT has summoned a beast fueled by wrath and joy and hope.
My one wish is that as Harris’ & Team Democrats’ power rises, that of the NYT and right leaning media falls.
Hear! Hear!
Very well stated, phred!
Thanks harpie : ) That’s high praise coming from you : )
Couldn’t agree more!
It may be hidden from the NYT, but every caring father, every thoughtful grandfather, and every cogent CEO knows what President Biden has constructed. Only journalists, who have become Orwell’s crows, don’t see it. As Ms. Wheeler wrote, is says more about the selfish arrogance of journalists than about Trump.
The NYT should be sold at checkout stands so Men in Black can get their interstellar news.
NY Times needs and deserves a discerning mind at the top.
Well done and thank-you.
Obviously the NYT gets the most attention because it has by far the greatest reach, still setting much of the editorial and journalistic agenda, both for other newspapers (many of whom subscribe to the Times’ news and op-ed services) around the country, and for other media (radio, TV, online).
But NYT is not alone. See, for example, the Boston Globe’s editorial in yesterday’s print edition (via my own attempted takedown of it): https://masscommons.wordpress.com/2024/07/23/this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-things-boston-globe-editorial-board-edition/
Again, thanks for your persistence and inspiration.
The New Yorker, always obsessed with goings-on at the Times, recently ran an interview with Khan:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/the-culture-wars-inside-the-new-york-times-joe-kahn
If only they’d assigned Isaac Chotiner! Though Condé Nast would never want to embarrass their hometown paper.
You nailed it! Well said and well done!
The NY Times has devolved into the National Enquirer, i.e., a rag grocery store type publication placed next to the check stand baited with David Pecker inspired “catch and kill stories” and hoping impulse buyers will bite the bait.
David Pecker’s testimony explained how the scheme worked; but instead of exposing the scheme to the public at large, the likes of NY Times and WAPO use the scheme to attract attention.
Excellent dissection.
It is outright bizarre — and undoubtedly indicative of what must be some pretty weird internal disarray under Mr Kahn — that in the year 2024 there would be a five day gap between the Trump speech and the appearance of a NYT ‘fact check’.
Thanks.
All the more reason to support independent journalism.
https://www.emptywheel.net/support/
Meanwhile, Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee continues to chill misinformation research:
“Trump allies crush misinformation research despite Supreme Court loss
High court ruling green-lighting contact between government and tech companies to stymie falsehoods online hasn’t deterred a GOP campaign against academics, nonprofits and tech industry initiatives aimed at addressing their spread”
[snip]
Wardle realized the backlash was reverberating offline a year ago when members of the Rhode Island state legislature received an article that called her lab at Brown University the “number one leader nationally” in the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.”
She won’t be tracking election misinformation during the 2024 presidential elections.
“Who is doing that in November?” she said. “There’s a massive hole.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/14/trump-allies-disarm-misinformation-researchers-ahead-election/
TY, Clare. I didn’t know about this. Academic researchers are dependent on funding streams to sustain their projects–an obvious statement to those here, I know, but one that becomes vexed when the political aims of those who control budgets conflict with information gathering and free speech (to say nothing of “academic freedom”).
I wish I could say I was shocked to hear of this happening in next-door Rhode Island. But the rhetoric of “censorship” (which Wardle’s research is not) has led many a blue-state legislature into devil’s bargains of this ilk. Needless to say, the real censorship lies in defunding her work, and in never funding federal studies of various gun issues, etc.
If it’s “too controversial,” it needs doing. And it needs the money to get done.
Who needs another Kahn job?! Harris is so inspirational to young people that there has been a record breaking level of voter registration.
NYT needs to rethink their business plan going forward. If not, too bad for them if they willfully decide to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Another clodpoll clamoring for self-importance: John Morgan whining to Neil Cavuto(Yuck!) John, a personal injury attorney from Florida makes plenty of claims to try to make people believe he is unbiased. But I’d like to remind folks, he’s a friend of Roger friggin Stone!!
The NYT and media in general have gotten used to the Right Wing Noise Machine setting the narrative and feeding them the story. They like that, because they don’t have to work as hard. While the left certainly has its own media, it cannot compete with the right’s coordinated and well-funded ecosystem of propaganda groups.
I think Democrats need to stop complaining about how they wish the media worked, and recognize that they need to change their strategy to match how it actually works. If the NYT wants Democrats to do its job for it, and that’s what it takes to get the reporting America needs, then that’s what we need to do.
“The left” doesn’t have billionaires to fund things for them.
The left does have billionaires but they fund stuff taxes should fund, like the arts and education and feeding poor people, ex. MacKenzie Scott.
Maybe if they weren’t filling the urgent need resulting from gaps the GOP causes in policy and taxes they could fund more left-leaning media.
Or maybe they could fund candidates and legislators who would regulate media like other commerce and insist on deconsolidation of media regardless of platform.
Or maybe they could fund candidates and legislators who would regulate media like other commerce and insist on deconsolidation of media regardless of platform.
YES!
So you’re saying a site like this one shouldn’t hold a First Amendment-protected industry accountable for its attack on the country which supports and defends it?
You could stop reading media criticism if you don’t like it. Your choice of reading is defended by that same First Amendment — exercise it.
No, the media criticism is absolutely necessary and part of the reason I follow emptywheel. I’m sorry if I implied it wasn’t. I’m just saying that it’s not enough to diagnose the problem. We can and should demand accountability, and hope for change, but hope is not a strategy.
Apart from the above billionaire idea, how do we connect the media criticism to action?
Taking down Biden was not democracy in action. It was done via extra-democratic means to accomplish an end not provided for in the rules of the party. It worked, he is gone and the vacuum thus created has been filled through a non-democratic process that, nonetheless, pretty closely resembles consensus. Those now demanding an open primary because that is the only course they will certify “democratic” enough and acceptable to their sensibilities have just been treated to an instance of the breakers not being able to control going forward a process they have broken. The pent-up forces unleashed by Biden stepping aside found their own, incredibly powerful expression in the tsunami of endorsements, money and delegate pledges to Harris. This was not a mob action nor a scheme engineered by an elite. It was what has so fortuitously emerged from potential chaos. We dodged a bullet here. We should ignore the NYT’s dubious agenda, whatever is motivating it, and graciously accept and apply our good fortune to renewing democracy in America.
Excellent dissection.
It occurs to me that the paragraph quoted above beginning
“Mr. Trump is a felon who flouts…”
serves exactly the same purpose to NYT, as the occasional use of the word “peacefully” did for Trump in his incendiary Ellipse speech — provide implausible deniability, providing a penumbra of noise alongside the signal, the better to troll the libs.
I spent 30 years of my life working in the finance sector, mostly with Times readers. They were all well-educated and all very respectable, and mostly conservative by disposition. Few called themselves “Republicans,” because the Republicans’ base is just a bit too–uh–sweaty. Uncultured. But still, our Times readers were very “pro-market.” This means a moderate form of anti-regulation bias. They didn’t want to smash the regulatory state, which would be uncultured. “Reasonable” regulation is far better for my Times reader friends, since the regulator can always be blamed when the headlines go south.
They’re not opposed to “diversity”, as long as kept cool and quiet, and doesn’t hurt their prospects or their children’s. Nor were they opposed to the abstract idea of unions, at least until they got to the “who pays” aspect. They considered themselves sensible liberals.
The Times exists for these people.
The hippies (there were a few of us) avoided the Times, and got our Krugman/Bouie fixes on the down-low. We would read the FT or WSJ instead, the latter for its excellent business news. The Times was always worthless on that particular beat.
A Google search tells me that for much of its history, the NYT hasn’t employed an Ombudsman. Why the fuck not?
As a long-time former journalist, I am astounded that the Times allows Maggie Haberman to cover Trump after the emails were uncovered showing that Trump’s people routinely planted stories with her. Have they ever addressed that? She uncritually posts point of view stories that are clearly false political spin, so much so that they consider her part of their team. So unethical, she should be nowhere near that beat since she is compromised.
I once (almost 40 years ago) got removed from a municipal beat for chirping back at a local politico who was part of a concerted effort to intimidate our reporters.