“How does it feel to be wrong?”
Kathryn Schulz, author of the book “Being Wrong,” a wonderful exploration of human error, posed that question to the audience at her related 2011 TED talk.
The replies were what you might expect: “dreadful … thumbs down … embarrassing.”
Schulz then pointed out: “These are great answers, but they’re answers to a different question. You guys are answering the question, how does it feel to realize you’re wrong.” Up until that point, she observed, “It does feel like something to be wrong; it feels like being right.”
…
I’m guessing no one in the New York Times leadership ever watched that TED talk, or read Schulz’s book.
Critics say the Times’ coverage of the 2024 election does not reflect the urgency of the moment, when presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and his allies refuse to commit to accepting the results in November — unless he wins. Further, Trump’s allies are developing plans for a second Trump administration that would radically increase the power of the presidency, sweeping aside long-established guardrails.
For many, nothing less than the fate of democracy is on the ballot — and the Times’ coverage does nothing to reflect that, falling back on its traditional, on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other-hand approach.
It’s a familiar complaint: The Times has been accused of false equivalency between the candidates in its past election coverage.
Equally familiar is the Times’ dismissive response, this time in the form of a much talked-about interview in Semafor with Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn:
“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 — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them.”
There’s a lot to unpack here.
First, Kahn trots out the Times’ favorite straw man: that critics want the paper to become a “propaganda arm” for Biden. But some of the Times’s staunchest critics on this are veteran journalists; they are not asking the Times to put on a Biden button.
Second, Kahn says, almost in passing, “Given that Trump’s not in office, it [the election ] will probably be fair.” What does that say about any future election if Trump were to win in 2024? What does the Times say about that?
Third, Kahn points to polling to explain the paper’s coverage priorities — a master class in circular reasoning.
Of course, Kahn was handed the straw man by the interviewer: Ben Smith, formerly of the Times. His set-up led with this: “I stopped by Joe Kahn’s modest office in the New York Times newsroom Thursday to ask him what some of his readers want to know: Why doesn’t the executive editor see it as his job to help Joe Biden win?”
The interview came in the wake of a Politico article on friction between the administration and the paper — in which the Times’ persistent highlighting of Biden’s age was laid at the feet of Publisher A.G. Sulzberger:
“In Sulzberger’s view, according to two people familiar with his private comments on the subject, only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency. Beyond that, he has voiced concerns that Biden doing so few expansive interviews with experienced reporters could set a dangerous precedent for future administrations, according to a third person familiar with the publisher’s thinking. Sulzberger himself was part of a group from the Times that sat down with Trump, who gave the paper several interviews despite his rantings about its coverage. If Trump could do it, Sulzberger believes, so can Biden.
“‘All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.’”
At least two Times reporters dismissed the report, and the paper itself issued a statement sharply critical of Biden, saying he “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”
It was hard to miss the irony of that statement after Kahn submitted to softball questions from a former colleague.
The episode has prompted an array of comments from other journalists: