Headline of the Day

Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that’s what the publisher wants.

—Dan Froomkin via his web site Press Watch

He is referring, of course, to AG "Dash" Sulzberger, ,who inherited the role of publisher of the New York Times. (His two predecessors were his dad, AO "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr., and his grandad, AO "Punch" Sulzberger, Sr.)

It’s an increasingly common critique of the New York Times: The largest, most influential news organization in the nation is not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy — while at the same time bashing President Joe Biden at every opportunity.

And it’s been a bit of a mystery. Why would a newsroom full of talented and mostly liberal reporters be engaging in such damaging behavior?

Well, mystery solved.

It’s because that’s what the publisher wants.

Publisher A.G. Sulzberger — perhaps unintentionally — showed his hand in a speech on Monday at Oxford University on “Journalistic Independence in a Time of Division.” His ostensible goal was to defend the Times against its critics. But the two biggest takeaways, in my view, were as follows:

………

What does that mean — practically speaking — to the editors and reporters who work for him? In my view, the message is clear:

One: You will earn my displeasure if you warn people too forcefully about the possible end to democracy at the hands of a deranged insurrectionist.

And two: You prove your value to me by trolling our liberal readers.

That explains a lot of the Times’s aberrant behavior, doesn’t it?

I would not describe the behavior as aberrant.  It is just the conventional wisdom, and the conventional wisdom is wrong. 

If you have a problem, the conventional wisdom is ALWAYS wrong.  If the conventional wisdom were right, then the problem would be solved already.

As an aside, it does segue nicely into my earlier comment about the role of nepotism in journalism.

Even if one ignores the fundamental unfairness of nepotism, the problem is that the inbred idiot descendants of the founders of dynasties cannot do the job competently.