The New York Times is very angry
PLUS: Fallout continues from Trump's Time interview "If He Wins"
Eli Stokols of Politico is one of America’s very best political journalists. He is a superb and fair chronicler of this chaotic and dangerous hour of American life.
Last week, he reported on the enmity between the Biden White House and The New York Times, which stems from the Times’ failure to follow sourcing agreements, and a high-handed refusal to acknowledge and correct the error. The story, a masterpiece, has received a lot of attention in Washington, DC, where the sub-plots of campaign season are fought fiercely in the shadows, where you never hear about them. Puck News’ world-class media reporter Dylan Byers has written extensively about the contretemps, and has added his insights as well.
Before digging into the Stokols’ profile let me put my disagreements with two elements of the story and headline upfront.
First, the headline should read as follows: “The Petty Feud Between the NYT and the White House.”
Second, Stokols refers to the world’s largest word puzzle company as the “paper of record.”
Nonsense.
Those days are gone. Forever. They are as dead as OJ.
The New York Times holds no special position or status in American life. While it does produce exceptional journalism, so does Rupert Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal. It also produces a growing volume of dreck.
The New York Times is just one more organization that has failed to protect the public interest and trust, by failing to repeatedly live up to its own standards and values. It does not hover above other media companies. It is not more truthful, more ethical, more trusted on a hierarchy of journalistic importance where the Times is supreme. Perhaps this delusion exists within the vast Times’ ego-sphere, but if so, it is no less fantastical than the one that surrounds Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago.
The Times’ political reporting is a mess in the way that Chernobyl was a disaster. The coverage floats in a sensory deprivation chamber, detached from events, danger and news. The brokenness of The New York Times’ culture has been well-documented from impeccable sources, including Bari Weiss, James Bennet and Adam Rubenstein.
What they and others make clear is that the world’s leading puzzle company has become puzzled about journalism. It is utterly cloistered and illiberal, with a newsroom held hostage by a different cut of the mob running loose on the Ivy League campuses that breed Times journalists like the Trump sauna breeds….well, you get the point.
The Stokols’ story is a psychological portrait of the Times, starring Elisabeth Bumiller, its Washington bureau chief, as the protagonist through which we see the world through the eyes of the Times at the frontlines of DC reporting.
Bumiller is a Times lifer and an exceptional reporter — one of my all-time favorites from the campaign trail. She was in a league of her own when it came to antagonizing John McCain, whom she drove particularly insane. The recurring cycle went something like this: each day when McCain boarded the plane, Bumiller would be laying in wait, ready to ask an aggressive, appropriate, occasionally caustic, sometimes difficult, always tough question that would unlock his nuclear detonation code. It was incredible to watch, a real-life “Peanuts”episode playing out everyday, like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football. McCain would invariably get pissed, and the rest of the press corps would write stories about him being a cranky old man with a terrible temperament. It went on day in and day out, and the cycle always ended with Bumiller complaining about how McCain talked to her.
Elisabeth also distinguished herself as a true champion on the “Straight Talk Express” during the greatest drinking evening of the campaign. When Time correspondent, late in the evening — or maybe early in the morning — was thirsting for another sip from the moonshine, given to me by my friend Slick Melvin in Hazard, Kentucky, they ripped the mason jar out of Elisabeth Bumiller’s hands, spilling it all over McCain’s bus. I’ve never blamed her, but it is a story for a different day.
The key quote in the Stokol story belongs to Ms. Bumiller, and it precisely articulates a key Times commandment, which is below:
Bumiller and other Times White House reporters note that it’s always been the newspaper’s prerogative to determine what to cover and how. “This is pretty much par for the course,” Bumiller said.
This is precisely correct. The White House should understand and appreciate this position.
The difficulty in the relationship is the lack of reciprocal understanding on the Times’ part. If the White House and Times were dating, the Times would be a distant and aloof partner, a man who couldn’t hear and wouldn’t listen. Each hour would prove the point that there is no flower in the world more delicate than the male ego.
Whose prerogative might it be to decide to whom the president of the United States of America talks, and when?
This should not be a difficult concept to grasp, but arrogance, entitlement and delusion can be blinding. Here is another excerpt from the story that illuminates a deep detachment from reality, as well as staggering self-regard. It is the Times-ian equivalent of the office jackass who went to Harvard, and feels the need to tell his colleagues 12 times a day:
A few months later, with the Times’ White House team still banned from the embargoed list and frustrations on both sides mounting, senior administration officials invited Executive Editor Joe Kahn, Managing Editor Carolyn Ryan and Bumiller to the White House. Although there was some discussion inside the Times of whether Kahn should respond to a summons to Washington from anyone besides the president himself, he decided to go, largely to make the case for Biden to do an interview.
LOL. Really?
The view at the Times executive table is that Anita Dunn and White House communications director Ben Labolt don’t measure up for a meeting with the Times executive editor Joe Kahn? He only deals with the president of the United States?
There are no words other than I suppose this gentle truth, which is that Joe Kahn is not President Biden’s peer. He is an American newspaper editor elected by no one. Interviews with the president are the prerogative of the WH communications director.
The notion that A.G. “Blaze” Sulzberger, nee of Manhattan’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Brown University is owed something because…doesn’t add up. Apparently an outsized sense of entitlement comes along with management responsibility as the former ‘paper of record’ passes from the hands of one soft-handed billionaire to the next.
A.G. Sulzberger, the 43-year-old publisher who helms the Times, has decided that his first bad day in life is the reality that the president of the United States has better ways to spend his time than speaking to Times reporters, whose neediness is as legendary as their thin skin.
The notion that Times agita should be put before the president is as preposterous as Ivanka sitting next to Angela Merkel, Jared Kushner making Middle East peace, or this Times fluff piece about US Senator JD Vance, a fascist, published just six days ago. Vance has repeatedly called for an end to American democracy. This story proves beyond all reasonable doubt the fatuousness and banality of so much of the Times coverage.
What the White House keeps trying to tell them is that they are one of many, nothing particularly special, and utterly transactional.
Petulance among the entitled is an awful thing to see, but it is unavoidable in this instance because A.G. Sulzberger has a great white whale. He wants an interview, and the craziest thing about the whole thing is that he actually believes that Times reporters hold enough trust, judgment, integrity and credibility to let all of the rest of us know if Biden is fit for office, when they refuse to report on the manifest danger and unfitness they have mollycoddled for nine long years of ‘wink and nod’ access coverage that was great for clicks and bad for America. Let’s look at another quote from the story:
“They’re not being realistic about what we do for a living,” Bumiller told me. “You can be a force for democracy, liberal democracy. You don’t have to be a force for the Biden White House.”
Bumiller is half correct here. The Times’ failures around the defense of liberal democracy have nothing to do with how Biden is covered, and everything to do with how the fascist movement is not covered. This is the greatest deficit in the Times coverage, which is compounded by arrogance, aloofness, cloistering, corruption and incompetence.
Donald Trump is the interview that matters, and the Times hasn’t gotten the job done — in no small part because their lead political reporter is ethically compromised and a part of the Trump show to such a spectacularly inappropriate degree that Trump calls her “my psychiatrist.”
The result has been nine years of crap journalism, a growing national emergency and the rise of new sources of news like Puck and
, as well as the resurgence of venerable magazines like Time.This is the cover of Time this week:
It contains the most important story of the 2024 campaign. It is the story the Times has ignored, downplayed, dismissed and emphasized because it was inconvenient for access and status.
Here is the Times’ mission:
We seek the truth and help people understand the world.
This mission is rooted in our belief that great journalism has the power to make each reader’s life richer and more fulfilling, and all of society stronger and more just.
When they start living up to their standards again President Biden should think about it, but until then, the words of Yev Kassem, better known as the “Soup Nazi,” will have to suffice: “No interview for you!”
Lastly, The New York Times lied when they claimed they do not act vengefully in their news coverage.
Here is the quote from Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesperson, following the publication of Stokols’ story:
The notion that any line of coverage has been ordered up or encouraged in retaliation for declining an interview, or any other reason, is outrageous and untrue.
I can prove this isn’t true because the Times defamed and smeared me on the front page in an act of revenge. You can decide, but I have nothing to prove so long as you can read and comprehend English.
I wrote a story detailing one of John McCain’s lowest moments. It was a story about public lying, and I shared it as my first post on Substack.
What I said was that John McCain lied to me and the country. Later, when he told me the truth, he made me complicit in the lie.
Here is the Times’ headline from the Jeremy Peters story. It’s a lie, and it’s par for the course:
More than anything, what the Stokols’ story confirms is that the Times is as absolutely as big a mess as Bari Weiss, James Bennet, and others say it is.
Lastly, if President Biden needed to sit down with a media executive, why would he pick Joe Kahn? Jim Vandehei is a better fit. He’s worked for a living, and hasn’t had anything given to him. The president would probably appreciate that. It would mean they had something in common, and who knows, he might even decide they are interview-worthy? Until then, Howard Stern it is. He’s like the Times, but deeper, more insightful and with a bigger reach.
If you love insider stories, you will love this one. Truly, a masterpiece.
PLUS: Fallout continues from Trump’s Time interview
The fallout continues days after Time published its cover story, "If He Wins," based on a series of interviews with Donald Trump. I joined Scripps News to talk about the chilling piece, which is a recipe for dictatorship, and what it will mean for Americans.
NYTimes coverage of Trump can only be called a disappointment. Just one example:Trump’s Russian ties have never been fully discussed. Just who do they think those Russians were who were talking with Don Jr about adoptions (?). Alfa Bank, anyone? Unfortunately, the Times is part of the NY establishment that has always been entertained by Trump and has helped him get away with too much for far too long.
I appreciate the context. Difficult to believe, that the NYT nepo baby publisher is like the Trump boys, born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a triple.