The Times isn’t gonna be happy about this;
Yep. How will the NYT spin this and demonize Harris over what they are sure to perceive as a snub?
I would not anthropomorphize the New York Times. It is not a person.
It is possible for a newspaper to be controlled by the proprietor. That used to be the case at the Chicago Tribune ( “Colonel” McCormick). It came close to being true at the Philadelphia Inquirer under Walter Annenberg. Example:
As far as the New York Times threatening Harris if she does not grant them an interview, I am missing either a physical threat or a threat to withhold endorsement. And I predict they will run a Harris endorsement editorial, Times interview or not.
I think it would be appropriate for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the leading newspaper in my state, to have withheld an endorsement of Josh Shapiro if he had declined to discuss his candidacy with the editorial board. By analogy, the same with the leading national newspaper, in any country, in the case of an election for that nation’s head of state or head of government. It would be fine to say that was their policy. It makes sense, because they would not have information beyond what I have. I just do not think the New York Times, as in institution, has this policy.
Sometimes Trump is correct:
That’s true. A bunch of their reporters commonly use the word baseless in articles about his statements. That’s unprecedented roughness. Maybe the word baseless is, on rare occasion, used to describe an incorrect statement by Harris, but it is rare.
All candidates should be scrutinized by the press. So long as the editors aren’t using words like baseless equally for both candidates, that’s not bothsidesism…
I expect a quality news source to be non-biased in how it reports the news.
As for editorials and op-eds, a responsible outlet does not descend to “well, one side says this and the other side has equally presentable arguments”, regardless of whether the goal is to spark controversy and sell subscriptions or get clicks.
Is this meant to be a joke or something? Does Harris make a thousandth as many “baseless statements” (lies) as Trump does?
Harris did not go through a bruising primary. Trump is what he says he is. This has allowed Harris to unite the fractious Democrats. In part this is never Trumpism and realpolitik. But it is also because mainstream people, the reasonable independents, identity soldiers, safety netters, and disaffected republicans have been able to project onto Harris things that they like. This has been made easier by adopting modpol techniques of taking “traditionally Republican” themes and not giving many interviews. And journalists don’t like it when politicians do not give them interviews. But sadly, vague policies are sometimes sound politics.
I’m sure the NY Times has continued to run concern pieces about an old person becoming president, since Trump is just about as old as Biden. I’ll go check the website.
Oh, that’s weird. Age pieces seem to be gone.
I don’t know if this is the answer to your question but they have this article in today’s paper with the headline - The Challenge of Interviewing Kamala Harris. (free gift link).
The subhead is ‘She didn’t break eye contact. It was intense. You feel on trial.’
Rather than print the interview done in 2023 they do an interview with the reporter who conducted the interview. It was “contentious” and an “arduous” interview.
The impression I got from reading it was that they were trying to make her seem difficult or defensive rather than a strong, confident and self assured woman.
Yeah, reads like a hit piece to me. I wish they would apply the exact same standards to any interviews with Trump.
Basically they said something like “Congratulations!!- and we HOPE you will give us interviews, unlike your predecessor”. I read that as a threat. Then they followed it up a little bit later with "Why Hasn’t Harris given any interviews? What is she trying to hide"? or similar terms.
"It’s also an opportunity, following a month of rallies and campaign speeches, for the pair to tell a deeper story about themselves and their vision.
But getting them to do that might not be easy.".
Absolutely.
Yesterday on the op-ed page was a stinking pile of excrement under the title “Trump can win on character” emitted from the rear end of someone named Rich Lowry. I won’t bother to link it since it is too gruesome to read. This is taking bothsideism to absurdity.
It was a horrible article, but the clickbait rage-inducing title had very little to do with the substance of the article.
They way I read it, the substance (and I use the word loosely) of the article was that if Trump calls Harris “weak” and “phony” eleventy-million times a day instead of insulting her race and comes up with a good nasty nickname for her to boot, voters will indeed believe that she is weak and phony, and this should be his strategy
Which is sort of like predicting the sun will rise in the east so you can take credit for it, and, if anything, it highlighted the brilliance of the probably accidental Democratic strategy of breaking out a new candidate at the last minute.
The article was a waste of ink, but despite the clickbait title it didn’t say word one about Trump’s character.
But the NYT still sucks.
ETA - Edited to remove hijack once I realized I was in the NYT thread, not the Harris campaign thread,
It isn’t bothsidesism because a lot more of their op-eds are pro-Harris than pro-Trump.
But I’d have an issue if they never ran an opinion article that was pro-Trump when 44 percent of polled voters are for him.
Was Rich Lowry’s pro-Trump op-ed bad? Yes. As a never-Trump type, I’d say that every pro-Trump article is bad. So, if they waited for somebody to submit a good pro-Trump opinion piece, they would never be able to present that POV.
Thr New York Times is a liberal newspaper. If that’s not good enough, and someone wants a paper that is closer to one-sided progressive, they could try the Philadelphia Inquirer.
If 44% of polled voters were Nazis, would that justify the Times running op-eds in support of white supremacy?
If it goes well, maybe it is wise to make even an interview a big deal. Still, surprising that Harris and Walz chose CNN over NYT and 𝕏.
Lowry is an editor for the National Review. He is talking about attacking Harris’ character and not defending Trump. In another thread I linked to a recent Atlantic article which takes his views apart.
It would justify running one or two, yes — while running a lot more explaining why white supremacy is wrong. Acting like one gets cooties if exposed to repugnant ideas goes against liberal principles.
I checked what the Times did when segregationist George Wallace ran in 1968. Wallace did not poll anywhere near 44 percent, but he came close to throwing the election to the House, where southern states planned to insist on support for segregation as the price to be paid by the next president in return for their support.
On October 20, 1968, they properly published:
Some ideas are so repugnant that they don’t deserve to be treated seriously. The press has a duty to serve the public good, and platforming fascists who want to turn this country into a white Christian theo-ethnostate is betraying that duty.
An op-ed from 1968. That’s indicative of, um, something.
You have totally misunderstood Popper’s paradox of tolerance. Popper says:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
In other words, the only type of intolerance we should not tolerate is that which would suppress argument in the first place. I.e, what you are suggesting.