The New York Times is failing our country

A great news organization would care more about democracy than entertainment.

Last week on MSNBC, the “Morning Joe” pundits were talking about Donald Trump’s latest scheme to con the rubes, his sale of Trump Watches.

Elisabeth Bumiller, the New York Times’ Washington bureau chief, told her fellow panelists: “He’s entertaining. Let’s not forget.”

But he’s not entertaining, Elisabeth. He’s frightening.

I guarantee you that the Haitian immigrants who look warily out their windows when cars drive slowly past their homes are not entertained. They’re terrified.

We all should be terrified of Trump becoming president again. And the New York Times’ ability to laugh it off shows how it is failing to live up to its duty as a major news organization in a democracy.

Referring to shocking misconduct by Trump, a recent Times story gave up the game:

I would put it slightly differently: The New York Times’ own “tepid response” to Trump’s misconduct shows that the Times itself “is inured to his style.” And the Times’ coverage is one reason “his showmanship has dominated the news.”

When the Times covers Trump like he’s one of the Kardashians, it’s no wonder that people don’t show the proper alarm about his violent rhetoric, which echoes the hate speech of 1930s Germany and 1990s Rwanda. 

Time after time, the New York Times sands off the sharp edges of Trumpism:

• The Times described JD Vance’s denunciation of “childless cat ladies” and his lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats as “combative conservatism” when it’s really sexism and racism. 

• When Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” the Times toned that down with a headline saying he “expressed disdain” for her.

• When top Republicans lied about Haitian immigrants, the Times’ headline said “Republicans Seize on False Theories” as if those theories came out of the ether instead of originating and being spread by the pro-Trump right wing. 

• Early in the pet-eating hoax, the Times wrote this headline: “JD Vance Appears to Backtrack on False Claim About Haitian Migrants in Ohio.” But that was an embarrassing misreading of what Vance did. The correct headline would have been: “Vance Says Claim About Haitian Migrants May Be Hoax, but Urges People to Spread It Anyway.” That’s what he did. Three weeks later, Vance still hasn’t disavowed the lie and apologized.

• This past weekend, the Times wrote a ridiculously warm-and-fuzzy mentor-protege story about Trump and Vance, making them seem like Dumbledore and Harry Potter when they’re more like Dr. Evil and Mini-me. (Or not fictional characters at all, but real-life fascists.)

I’m sure the Times thinks it’s doing just fine. Times star reporter Maggie Haberman said recently that “the media does a very good job covering Trump.”

But the fact is, there’s not nearly enough alarm in the Times’ reporting. Trump’s oft-repeated lie about Democrats wanting to murder babies after birth is mostly ignored. When it showed up in a Times story recently, it was mentioned in the 12th paragraph. And we should never forget that when Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution, the Times put it on Page 13. 

Trump is promising a dictatorship, with prosecution of his political enemies, a crackdown on the press, and “bloody” mass deportations. Yet the Times all too often treats Trump as an amusement and forgets that a key role of journalism is to warn people of threats to their safety. It’s not all about recipes and crosswords.

The Times has given us plenty of warnings about one thing, though: Kamala Harris not giving access to the Times. Harris must do more interviews and lay out more policy specifics, the Times says. But the policy complaint is odd coming from a news outlet that seems way more focused on the drama of the horse race than the issues.

As detailed a year ago in this newsletter, the Times has a track record of lousy headlines. This one about Harris last Friday really set me off:

Why is Trump’s name in this headline? Is he always the lead actor, with everyone else in the supporting cast? Is this election a sequel to “The Apprentice”? 

And why is it assumed that Trump is “tough” and a woman running against him might not be? Harris is tougher than Trump. She was a prosecutor. Trump is such a coward that he avoids firing people face-to-face. 

And why is Harris “trying” to project toughness instead of projecting it? The headline is a hot mess. As is the Times’ political coverage in general.

To be fair, the Times occasionally hits the right note. It is slowly increasing its use of the word “lie” to describe right-wing disinformation after long preferring phrases like “a penchant for dispensing with the facts.” And the Times did write a story headlined “As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity.” But the Times’ questions about the aged, unhinged Trump are far more rare than its questions about the aged, sane Joe Biden. 

As expected, the Times editorial board endorsed Harris for president. But even then, it did so in a backhanded manner by suggesting her main asset is that she’s not Trump. The endorsement was in the usual spot for editorials rather than being splashed across the top of the website as it should have been, considering the stakes. And editorials aren’t enough. The Times’ news stories need to reflect the seriousness of the threat.

Some say it doesn’t matter what the New York Times does – that persuadable voters aren’t reading the Times. But as a former newspaper editor, I know that many news outlets mimic the Times. Its behavior tells a lot of editors in other newsrooms how strongly or weakly they should take the threat to democracy. 

I don’t like slamming the New York Times. I want it to be a great newspaper. I truly thought if the rise of fascism ever got this far, the Times and other major news outlets would confront it in a much firmer fashion. But in a speech last March, Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger dismissed the idea that his newspaper should worry about being on the right side of history. 

So it won’t be. Apparently Sulzberger intends to keep his newspaper in its safe space of normalization and trivialization, firm in the hope that if a dictatorship descends, the Times will still be allowed to publish its recipes and crosswords.