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The Left's War Against The New York Times
I cancelled my subscription to the NYT a long time ago. The NYT is very biased against Democrats and the NYT coverage of the Clinton tapes helped elect TFG. I am happy with my subscription with the Washington Post and have issues opening articles posted on the NYT due to the clear bias of this paper. It seems that I am not alone This is a long but good article on the NYT
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See https://newrepublic.com/article/146828/lefts-war-new-york-times
The Times has flourished under Trump, witnessing a surge in digital subscriptions and regularly breaking major news about the administration and the Russia inquiry (not to mention #MeToo). Yet liberal criticism of the Times has also intensified, especially on social media. Not a day passes, it seems, without a prominent Twitter user complaining that the Times is biased against the left, too friendly to Trump and his supporters, or engaging in false equivalences between Democrats and Republicans.
Reporter Michael Schmidt was criticized for not asking more follow-up questions during an impromptu sit-down with Trump in December. His colleague Richard Fausset was accused of normalizing a neo-Nazi in his profile of an Ohio white nationalist the month before. Critics frequently charge that the Times is preoccupied with giving a voice to Trump supporters or even just saying something nice about the president, and the paper has openly struggled with how to cover racists. Broader criticisms go to questions of framing and context—whether news analysis of Trump is too gentle, like when Peter Baker described the president’s “reality-show accessibility,” or why the Times’ mobile phone push notifications seem strangely favorable to the White House. And then there’s the steady moan about the Times opinion section—not just stalwarts like Brooks and Ross Douthat, but Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss, both of whom joined the paper last year from The Wall Street Journal.....
Yet many on the left refuse to forget the Times’ transgressions over the years, such as when it helped President George W. Bush sell the Iraq War. Many complaints have to do with its coverage of just one Democratic family. As Esquire’s Charles Pierce wrote in mid-2016, while Hillary Clinton and Trump faced off for the presidency:
The Times obsession with finding something—anything!—it could hang on the Clintons goes all the way back to that moment three editors ago when the paper realized that its big Whitewater scoop was little more than a bag of Arkansas hot air. It has continued through the coverage of the Benghazi nothingburger, the e-mail nothingburger, and now, the Clinton Foundation nothingburger. When it comes to the once and (perhaps) future president of the United States, the Newspaper of Record is the In-and-Out of nothingburgers.
Of course, many liberal critics blame the current political situation in part on the Times. Willis, a longtime blogger who spent 13 years at Brock’s pro-Clinton media watchdog group Media Matters before joining Shareblue, concedes the paper “has some of the best reporters there are” and “does good work.” But he insists the Times “hates” liberals and harbored “institutional hatred” for Clinton during the campaign, a claim former Times executive editor Jill Abramson has vehemently denied. Willis went so far as to tweet, a few weeks after the 2016 election, that his followers shouldn’t subscribe to either the Times or the Post since “it only encourages the bastards.”
Explicit calls for progressives to pull their money from the Times are surprisingly common now. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, a liberal in good standing with the likes of Tanden, is a prominent example:
Reporter Michael Schmidt was criticized for not asking more follow-up questions during an impromptu sit-down with Trump in December. His colleague Richard Fausset was accused of normalizing a neo-Nazi in his profile of an Ohio white nationalist the month before. Critics frequently charge that the Times is preoccupied with giving a voice to Trump supporters or even just saying something nice about the president, and the paper has openly struggled with how to cover racists. Broader criticisms go to questions of framing and context—whether news analysis of Trump is too gentle, like when Peter Baker described the president’s “reality-show accessibility,” or why the Times’ mobile phone push notifications seem strangely favorable to the White House. And then there’s the steady moan about the Times opinion section—not just stalwarts like Brooks and Ross Douthat, but Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss, both of whom joined the paper last year from The Wall Street Journal.....
Yet many on the left refuse to forget the Times’ transgressions over the years, such as when it helped President George W. Bush sell the Iraq War. Many complaints have to do with its coverage of just one Democratic family. As Esquire’s Charles Pierce wrote in mid-2016, while Hillary Clinton and Trump faced off for the presidency:
The Times obsession with finding something—anything!—it could hang on the Clintons goes all the way back to that moment three editors ago when the paper realized that its big Whitewater scoop was little more than a bag of Arkansas hot air. It has continued through the coverage of the Benghazi nothingburger, the e-mail nothingburger, and now, the Clinton Foundation nothingburger. When it comes to the once and (perhaps) future president of the United States, the Newspaper of Record is the In-and-Out of nothingburgers.
“It’s a very neurotic relationship American liberals have with The New York Times, and that The New York Times has with American liberals,” New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen told me. “I think it has a lot to do with the Clintons.” Rosen said the paper has always prided itself on challenging Democrats as well as Republicans, which sometimes rankles its core readership (including liberal journalists). He said, “I think there is more tension now between the core loyalists of The New York Times and the newsroom, and it’s because of the political situation.”
Of course, many liberal critics blame the current political situation in part on the Times. Willis, a longtime blogger who spent 13 years at Brock’s pro-Clinton media watchdog group Media Matters before joining Shareblue, concedes the paper “has some of the best reporters there are” and “does good work.” But he insists the Times “hates” liberals and harbored “institutional hatred” for Clinton during the campaign, a claim former Times executive editor Jill Abramson has vehemently denied. Willis went so far as to tweet, a few weeks after the 2016 election, that his followers shouldn’t subscribe to either the Times or the Post since “it only encourages the bastards.”
Explicit calls for progressives to pull their money from the Times are surprisingly common now. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, a liberal in good standing with the likes of Tanden, is a prominent example:
Link to tweet
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