(But claims by Donald Trump that the election was “rigged” are “baseless” and supported by no evidence at all….).

Ben Smith, the former media columnist for the New York Times, is hardly an unbiased interviewer when it comes to his old employer. He’s a product of the Times culture, and the Times culture is, has been and continues to be corrupted and unethical. The message of his recent interview with newish executive editor Joe Kahn is that the Times is all better now and is objective again after a teeny dip, though it hasn’t been objective in my lifetime.

What is revealing about the interview, however, is that if one can wade through the doubletalk, careful caveats, avoidance of direct statements and verbosity, Kahn admits that the Times was in the tank for Biden and the Democrats in 2020 as the pandemic and Black Lives Matter hit, and that it was wrong for the Times to do that, and they are really, really sorry and promise not to do it again.

Strangely, the Times has not apologized to Donald Trump, Republicans, the American voters and the Founders for this. His statement also puts in perspective the rote talking point, every time the news media sneeringly refers to Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen from him, that the claim is “baseless.” That the leader of the U.S. news media still regarded as the role model for the rest deliberately abandoned its already partisan-biased version of journalism for pure advocacy and propaganda in the year of a national election is very much a “base.” Ethics Alarms, among others, has said so, and was saying so in 2020. Remember those scary (and fake) Hunan virus death charts with red spikes reaching through and above the mast head? Yeah, I think we got a little carried away, says Kahn.

Oh, well that’s okay then. Everybody makes mistakes….

The man is, in order, as expert at avoiding speaking plainly as any politician, infuriatingly equivocal, blatantly partisan, and a master of spin. Nonetheless, if you can pick your way through all the fog, the confession is there. Here are some key sections with some commentary by me):

• Ben Smith: “Dan Pfeiffer, who used to work for Barack Obama, recently wrote of the Times: “They do not see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power.” Why don’t you see your job as: “We’ve got to stop Trump?” What about your job doesn’t let you think that way?”

  Joe Kahn: “Good media is the Fourth Estate, it’s another pillar of democracy. One of the absolute necessities of democracy is having a free and fair and open election where people can compete for votes, and the role of the news media in that environment is not to skew your coverage towards one candidate or the other, but just to provide very good, hard-hitting, well-rounded coverage of both candidates, and informing voters. If you believe in democracy, I don’t see how we get past the essential role of quality media in informing people about their choice in a presidential election. To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda. It is true that Biden’s agenda is more in sync with traditional establishment parties and candidates. And we’re reporting on that and making it very clear. It’s also true that Trump could win this election in a popular vote. Given that Trump’s not in office, it will probably be fair. And there’s a very good chance, based on our polling and other independent polling, that he will win that election in a popular vote. So there are people out there in the world who may decide, based on their democratic rights, to elect Donald Trump as president. It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It’s the job of Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening. It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one.”

Translation: “We know Trump is a threat to democracy (if he were President, the election wouldn’t be fair”), and somebody’s got to stop him, but it shouldn’t be us.” Can Donald Trump get fair coverage when the Times’s chief editor thinks like that? No, no, a thousand times no…. even if he thinks he’s trying to be fair.

• Ben: “Do you think that an alien reading The New York Times would come away thinking Joe Biden is a good president?”

  Joe: “I think you would see a much more favorable view of Biden’s conduct over foreign policy at a difficult time than the polling shows the general public believes. The reporting in detail on his real commitment to national security; his deep involvement on the Ukraine war with Russia; the building or rebuilding of NATO; and then the very, very difficult task of managing Israel and the regional stability connected with the Gaza war … shows a degree of engagement and mastery over some of the details of foreign policy. I believe even an alien would see Biden as much more hands-on in this area. You may not like the results. I think the general public actually believes that he’s responsible for these wars, which is ridiculous, based on the facts that we’ve reported. But I think you’d get a very favorable portrait of him. I also think we’ve done much more — whether it’s the Inflation Reduction Act, whether it’s the infrastructure bill — on the details of the legislation that passed, and the efforts of this administration to actually implement that and get the money out there. So if you were reading The New York Times you would know about that legislation. In the general public, he actually doesn’t get enough credit for the legislation.”

Translation: Kahn really and truly thinks Joe Biden is a good and effective President! Like Rob Reiner does. Like “The View.” Like Stephen Colbert. Like Nancy Pelosi. He “shows a degree of engagement and mastery”—mastery! Joe Biden! Getting “the money out there” is a good thing—never mind that this is fueling inflation and blowing up the debt. The man is either lying or incapable of effectively interpreting what is right in front of him, and he is the shepherd of the New York Times news reporting in this election year.

• Joe: “Don’t you feel like there was a generation of students who came out of school saying you should only work at places that align completely with your values?”

  Ben: “Don’t you think we all sort of said that to them?”

  Joe: “I don’t think we said it explicitly. I think there was a period [where] we implied it. And I think that the early days of Trump in particular, were, “join us for the mission.”

  Ben: “Was it a mistake to say that — even to think it?”

  Joe: “I think it went too far. It was overly simplistic. And I think the big push that you’re seeing us make and reestablish our norms and emphasize independent journalism and build a more resilient culture comes out of some of the excesses of that period.”

 

Oh. The problem with being openly biased for progressive agendas and against Trump and conservatives was that it was “simplistic.” Not that it was manipulative, an abuse of power and influence, unethical journalism, and destructive.

• Ben: “Do you wish you’d started sooner[walking back the paper’s “advocacy journalism”]? Do you think the Times let the inmates run the asylum for too long?”

  Joe: “I wouldn’t use those words. I do think that there was a period of peak cultural angst at this organization, with the combination of the intensity of the Trump era, COVID, and then George Floyd. The summer of 2020 was a crazy period where the world felt threatened, people’s individual safety was threatened, we had a murder of an innocent Black man by police suffocation. And we have the tail end of the most divisive presidency that anyone alive today has experienced. And those things just frayed nerves everywhere.”

Who made it such a divisive presidency, asshole? That just happened, and the Times was just a bystander, then was caught up in it?  You abandoned fair journalism because of “cultural angst.” so its okay, right? Everybody was doing it!  And your nerves were frayed, so you couldn’t do your jobs correctly. Seriously? That’s the Times’ story now?

•  

  Ben: Do you think you made mistakes, or just that it was very hard to navigate that moment?

  Joe: I think it was very hard to navigate that moment. Everybody’s remote. We’re dealing with this political upheaval. We still did good journalism through that moment. But I think we’ve looked back at that and learned. “The world felt threatened, people’s individual safety was threatened”…gee, do you think those red death spikes on the Times front page had anything to do with that? And since when was George Floyd “innocent”?

In summary, the Times executive editor admits the paper was pimping for Biden and the democrats and practicing biased, unethical journalism, but wants us to know its okay, we can trust it now.

Wrong. His interview shows exactly why we can’t trust the Times.