Dean Baquet

The New York Times has no editorial policy

The New York Times put many lives in danger in June when it published an op-ed from Republican senator Tom Cotton, advocating for President Trump to send the National Guard into several riot-torn cities. At least that’s what several of the paper’s employees claimed, both in an open letter to the paper’s editor and the editor of the opinion board. Cotton wrote threatening words such as ‘Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.

hong kong new york times

Why the mainstream media won’t take Tara Reade seriously

'The gym bag, I don’t know where it went. I handed it to him. It was gone and then his hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And then he went down my skirt, but then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers.' That's how former Senate aide Tara Reade described a 1993 encounter with her former boss Joe Biden on a podcast last month. A Biden spokesperson says the account is 'false’, but Reade's claim is supported by a friend and her younger brother, who both say she told them about the alleged assault shortly after it happened. But most establishment media outlets, such as the Washington Post, didn’t give her allegation more than a passing mention. Biden managed to give seven interviews to the press without being asked about Reade's claims once.

joe biden tara reade

The NYT and the triumph of narrative journalism

The Mueller report did not bring down Donald Trump. The president will not be impeached before the 2020 election, and it is clear – in spite of the hopes of the good men, women and nonbinary soldiers of the Resistance – that he is not a Russian superbot manufactured in a cutting-edge information warfare lab in the dark belly of the Kremlin. Trump is not the Manchurian president. An ominous question emerges for liberals: who is Donald Trump, if he is not Vladimir Putin’s dogsbody? What the hell are we going to do with him? Why is he still fouling up our government? The pack howls, but in the four years since Trump descended the golden escalator from the world of television entertainment to the world of political entertainment, they have yet to catch him.

dean baquet narrative