Donald Trump has become an obsession with the New York Times. The Trump angle is sought for every news story and slanted against him. Every editorial or op-ed if not explicitly anti-Trump has an obligatory anti-Trump passage, usually near the beginning. What would have been deemed ordinary political bloviation in any other president (“a chicken in every pot!”) is now termed a lie.
They have little to say that hadn’t been said in 2016. It has become incredibly tedious, preaching only to the choir.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Read Peter J. Boyer’s analysis at Esquire:
Trump was referring to a front-page New York Times article published on August 8, 2016, under the headline “The Challenge Trump Poses to Objectivity.” The opening paragraph posed a provocative question:
“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?â€
he author of the piece was Jim Rutenberg, an important byline at the Times. He writes a media column for the paper, a feature deeply informed by Rutenberg’s experience covering politics and as an investigative reporter. Rutenberg has a keen sense of current thinking in the media hive, and when he wrote that “everyone†was asking the questions he raised in his Trump “demagogue†column, it carried the weight of mainstream newsroom consensus. Reporters who considered Trump “potentially dangerous,†Rutenberg wrote, would inevitably move closer “to being oppositional†to him in their reporting—“by normal standards, untenable.†Normal standards, the column made clear, no longer applied.
Trump said that was an important article because “they basically admitted that they were frauds.”
“They admitted in that story that they didn’t care about journalism anymore,†he continued, “that they were just going to write badly. That was an amazing admission.â€
It’s an essential Trumpian assertion—wildly hyperbolic, but containing what much of Red America would consider a sort of rough truth.
The Rutenberg column was an astute and honest piece of analysis. The unavoidable takeaway from it was that Donald Trump, in shattering the norms of presidential politics, had baited the elite news media into abandoning the norms of traditional journalism—a central tenet of which was the posture of neutrality.
Read the whole thing. Like Mr. Boyer I’m uncertain as to whether the Times or the Washington Post or CNN can ever recover from the Trump presidency. I’m uncertain as to whether the very notion of the role of the major media outlets can.
“What would have been deemed ordinary political bloviation in any other president (“a chicken in every pot!â€) is now termed a lie.â€
You might want to pass on that straightforward observation to your buddies at OTB. They are similarly in the grips of hysteria.
@Drew
You might want to pass on that straightforward observation to your buddies at OTB. They are similarly in the grips of hysteria.
You can lead a Truther to reality, but you cannot make him/her accept it.
“The unavoidable takeaway from it was that Donald Trump, in shattering the norms of presidential politics, had baited the elite news media into abandoning the norms of traditional journalism—a central tenet of which was the posture of neutrality.”
I think that’s a concise and accurate explanation for what has occurred.