As other diaries have suggested, the framers of our Constitution saw “freedom of the press” as a necessary check against tyranny. I know: Our mainstream press sees itself as a commercial enterprise, a business, but you would think these reporters gave a damn about about their own futures, families, fundamental rights, future of the planet, etc. This election is not a game where they get to stand outside history and referee. Everything is on the line.
Let’s take the New York Times for example. It is a fundamental choice to use your paper to ask one of the presidential candidates to step down. This is the natural outcome of nothing more than deciding to put your thumb on the scales, to influence the political narrative— the results be damned. That the New York Times Executive Editor, Joe Kahn, sees these choices to focus on Biden’s age to the exclusion of much else as somehow self-evident— shows a level of arrogance , blase’ recklessness, and bullshittery, that is astonishing to those of us who live in the land of causal logic.
Below is an excerpt of an interview with Kahn, from the Washington Post, from just two days ago. I presume they are feeling the heat, otherwise, why the interview?
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“Kahn: You know I can’t — you can kind of go through their own campaign statements. They cite the New York Times as failing to do an adequate job of pointing to the disruptive plans and policies and threats to democracy of the Trump campaign and focusing too much on the flaws of Biden. And I’ve seen that kind of repeatedly. I very much disagree with it, but ...
Wemple: Media Matters did a study showing that 78 percent of Times stories in this general topic area were focused just on Biden’s age and mental acuity, and not Trump’s. Six percent focus exclusively on Trump’s. That’s clearly what you were just referencing. Is that a fair proportion?
Kahn: I think it’s just a completely spurious statistic that doesn’t align with the way we covered these issues at all. I think we had full and fair coverage of Biden and his age issue in a way that I think was relevant. And we’ve had extremely full coverage of all the issues around Donald Trump, including his performance — on the stump, on the campaign trail, his sort of stream-of-consciousness rallies, the frequent falsehoods in his public statements and in his social media feed. And just, you know, I just don’t accept the metric that they’re applying to this. We’ve had literally hundreds of pieces of journalism about all aspects of Trump and his performance and his character as a leader and his extremely disruptive agenda were he to come back into office in 2025. But also on all those levers, the volume question, the news: There is no question that a reader of the New York Times would be fully informed about all the issues related to Donald Trump and the implications of him getting a second term, which he’s called an opportunity for retribution.”
EMAIL KAHN, AND CALMLY, BUT FIRMLY, EXPLAIN WHY HE IS UTTERLY WRONG AND IS PLAYING A DANGEROUS GAME WITH DEMOCRACY, IGNORING THE THREAT OF SCOTUS AND PROJECT 2025...
JOE.KAHN@NYTIMES.COM
JOE.KAHN@NYTIMES.COM
JOE.KAHN@NYTIMES.COM