We have a problem: NY Times thinks the REAL story with their bothsidesism is "outrage culture" [View all]
HOW TRUMP AGGRAVATES THE TIMESS LONG-RUNNING IDENTITY CRISIS
Baquet convened a town hall on Monday afternoon to address the convulsions. There was enough stuff that happened that it seemed like a good time to talk it out and hear from people, an editor familiar with his thinking told me. I think this is a really difficult story to cover, the story of Donald Trump and race and his character. Were in a bit of uncharted territory. There is definitely some friction over, how does the paper position itself? I dont think you could argue that we havent been tough on Donald Trump. Theres real debate, and some real disappointment, about how we position ourselves as an institution. Another editor said, What I think is really going on is, reporters on the front lines, particularly reporters of color, are really attuned to something happening in the country that is, to a lot of them, deeply scary, both personally and politically, and theres a hunger to have a conversation about it. If this rhetoric continues, how is the Times covering it? What are the rules of engagement for a president who traffics in this stuff? How do we, as a newsroom, grapple with that?
Last weeks drama appears to have underscored a gulf between some veteran Times journalists and an increasingly influential and vocal cohort of typically younger, next-generation employees. To boil down the nuance as simply as possible, the former camp sometimes views the latter as hypersensitive and politicized; the latter sometimes views the former as blindly tethered to tradition. As a more traditional Times reporter put it, The headline was inelegant, it missed the point, it was poorly written, but it was not a federal hate crime, as you would think based on reactions from some people in the newsroom. The bigger issue is the culture of outrage.
The Times is not prepared for this moment in history, which is indeed aberrant. And Dean Baquet CONTINUALLY mischaracterizes why people criticize him.
Here is the criticism: When one side lies openly, and you repeat the lies, you help the liars. The NYT regularly repeats lies in headlines. The NYT has done a lot to amplify Trump and the GOP lies like Benghazi and "but her emails". We don't think the NYT does this intentionally. We DO think that Republicans have figured out how to 'hack' or exploit the Times' usual rules, and in this they actually *get the Times to tell lies*.
We just want the Times to tell the truth. The problem is, however, one side is not truth-based. So to tell the truth, they would need to favor the left. Because only the left is truthful in America today. Sorry, but that's a fact. And the Times seems unable to handle it.