This is just embarrassing for the New York Times
The New York Times has long been held as the gold standard of journalism, and over its nearly 175 year history, broke a number of important stories, but none of that necessarily makes it above criticism. For much of the Trump years, the paper enjoyed a high subscription rate as people regularly checked their phones and inboxes for the latest updates – a whole lot of us just trying to be sure we still had a country left. The problem is that this fed a rather vicious cycle. Rather than galvanize them against the authoritarianism that’s become increasingly commonplace among Republicans who have largely despised the free press for decades, the NYT like too many other media outlets, took the inoffensive approach of blaming both sides – that it wasn’t Republicans to blame, but politicians.
When Donald Trump was in power, the Times found a way to capitulate in order to get access to the White House. Now that that’s no longer the case, things are somewhat less urgent, with a White House less publicity-hungry than the last. This led to an embarrassing feud between the paper and President Biden, who snubbed them to go on Howard Stern rather than sit for an exclusive interview. To add insult to injury, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner roasted the incident, where President Biden took things in a good stride.
The New York Times, however, did not, with critics panning Colin Jost for his standup routine at the end of the night. Despite legacy media’s insistence that they represent the fourth estate, the 24 hour news cycle has also done a lot of damage to news coverage and the country’s overall polarization levels, and they’re also somewhat out of touch with the average consumer of news, something that the Biden administration continues to work around. The last few days have been horrible for the Times in the court of public opinion, as they should be. It’s long past time they correctly assigned the blame to who’s actually responsible for the erosion of our democracy – and it’s not the Democrats.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making