The Washington Post today published an op-ed by New York Times publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, wherein he writes a lot of words lamenting the authoritarian crackdown on the press in countries like India, Brazil, and Hungary and the public’s demonizing of the press. It’s very well-written. It’s poignant. It’s thick in thought concerning the media’s role in democracy, but I think it misses the point entirely.
After a few paragraphs describing Viktor Orbán’s dismantling of the free press in Hungary, Sulzberger states his thesis: “For those trying to undercut independent journalism in democracies, the attacks typically exploit banal — and often nominally legal — weaknesses in a nation’s systems of governance” and that “…these leaders have realized that crackdowns on the press are most effective when they’re at their least dramatic — not the stuff of thrillers but a movie so plodding and complicated that no one wants to watch it.”
He’s absolutely right. In fact, he’s the most right. Which is what makes the next couple of paragraphs so utterly frustrating.
As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence, I have no interest in wading into politics. I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection. It is beyond shortsighted to give up journalistic independence out of fear that it might later be taken away. At The Times, we are committed to following the facts and presenting a full, fair and accurate picture of November’s election and the candidates and issues shaping it. Our democratic model asks different institutions to play different roles; this is ours.
The Washington Post – How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America
SIDE NOTE: The link in his quote above is also a very good piece by Sulzberger concerning objectivity in journalism. I’m partial to this subject as I used to frequently debate my j-school professors about it–much to their annoyance I’m sure.
That paragraph by Sulzberger is disheartening. It seems almost… intentional in how easily it ignores the actual arguments concerning Trump’s “risk to the free press.” Critics of the press aren’t asking the mainstream media to “cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection.” They are asking for some sense of proportionality and fairness in coverage, and to examine the framing of the issues they do cover.
Concerning framing, the New York Times spent months publishing articles and op-eds overwhelmingly covering Biden’s age with little-to-no coverage of Trump’s age. It began in earnest the week that Special Counsel Robert Hur released his report. The Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Pennsylvania published on Mar. 8 a case study titled, “Joe Biden’s (but not Donald Trump’s) age: A case study in the New York Times’ inconsistent narrative selection and framing.”
During the week of the report’s release, the study tracked the top 20 articles on the Times’ landing page every four hours. They documented 26 unique articles published about Biden’s age with only one exploring the possibility that Trump’s age was of equal or more concern.
They weren’t sure if that was a lot of articles or not so they needed a control. They came in the form of Trump’s Feb. 10 announcement that if reelected he would pull the U.S. out of NATO and encourage Russia to invade our allies if they didn’t pay up. I’ll let them speak for themselves:
This announcement that Trump would upend the world’s core military alignment of the last 75+ years, garnered 10 unique articles in the timeframe.
We believe that the choice of the Times to publish almost three times as many articles about Biden’s age as about Trump pulling the US out of NATO represents a clear example of biased coverage. In turn, this choice misinforms the NYTs millions of readers about the relative value of these topics and their underlying facts. Indeed, the 26 articles about Biden’s age are extremely light on underlying facts: nine are opinion pieces that restate facts from headline articles while many more are “news analysis” pieces (i.e., opinion pieces written by journalists) that speculate on the political consequences of people being worried about Biden’s age. Even the supposedly “hard news” articles are more reports of people being concerned than about any identifiable age-related problem in Biden’s performance as president.
CSS Lab at University of Pennsylvania – Joe Biden’s (but not Donald Trump’s) age: A case study in the New York Times’ inconsistent narrative selection and framing
The study continued to followed the same process for the next month: Tracking the top 20 articles on the landing page every four hours.
Figure 4 yields two observations: first, the initial wave of stories died out leading to a distinct gap in coverage that lasted almost two weeks; and second, this gap ended suddenly with a second burst of coverage that lasted another week. Critically, this second burst was triggered not by some event that generated new evidence about Biden’s age affecting his performance as president, but rather the NYT’s own poll that pointedly asked respondents about the exact issue they had just spent the previous month covering relentlessly.
CSS Lab at University of Pennsylvania – Joe Biden’s (but not Donald Trump’s) age: A case study in the New York Times’ inconsistent narrative selection and framing
Reminder: This was in March of this year. Well before the non-stop, 24/7 deluge of articles and op-eds about how Biden needs to give up the Democrat Party nomination.
In a Feb. 19 interview with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Sulzberger made quite the statement when asked, “Is there anything journalists should do differently when covering an authoritarian candidate?” After a thoughtful response, he ends it with this doozy:
We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden. He is a historically unpopular incumbent and the oldest man to ever hold this office. We’ve reported on both of those realities extensively, and the White House has been extremely upset about it.
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism – New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger: “Our industry needs to think bigger”We are not saying that this is the same as Trump’s five court cases or that they are even. They are different. But they are both true, and the public needs to know both those things. And if you are hyping up one side or downplaying the other, no side has a reason to trust you in the long run.
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism – New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger: “Our industry needs to think bigger”
Ridiculous. For one, Biden is not an authoritarian candidate, and two, the coverage of Biden has been grossly disproportionate. The UPENN case study spells out the number of Times articles that are simply rehashes of the same headlines from the previous day–over and over.
There’s a really great article in the Columbia Journalism Review by Duncan Watts and David Rothschild titled: “Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media.” Written in 2017, it’s a reflection on the media’s failures of 2015-2016.
The second paragraph is particularly painful to read because it feels as though we’re right back in 2016 except this time it feels much, much worse.
Alarmed by these threats to their legitimacy, and energized by the election of a president hostile to their very existence, the mainstream media has vigorously shouldered the mantle of truth-tellers. The Washington Post changed its motto to “Democracy Dies in Darkness” one month into the Trump presidency, and The New York Times launched a major ad campaign reflecting the nuanced and multifaceted nature of truth during the Oscars broadcast in February. Headline writers now explicitly spell out falsehoods rather than leaving it to the ensuing text. And journalists are quick to call out false equivalence, as when President Trump compared Antifa protesters to Nazis and heavily armed white supremacists following the violence in Charlottesville.
Columbia Journalism Review – Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media.
Trump is no longer an unknown entity. Benefit of the doubt has bitten us on the ass more times than one would think possible. Being charitable has cost us actual rights. We now know Trump, and he is far worse this than before.
Before, Trump and his cohorts hid behind the veneer of plausible deniability but that’s no longer the case. It’s open. It’s brazen. It’s proudly exclaimed. From his racism and misogyny to his authoritarian aspirations, he’s screaming it out every single rally and interview but the mainstream media seem to be purposefully “sane-washing”, to borrow a term from Aaron Rupar of Twitter fame, Trump’s increasingly erratic and deranged behavior.
Media Matters for America published on June 24 a similar paper to the UPENN study. Media Matters, over five months, tracked articles on The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today that “focused on either or both Biden’s and Trump’s ages or mental acuities from January 15, when the Iowa caucuses were held as the first contest in the 2024 presidential election cycle, though June 17.” The results are wild:
We considered an article to be “focused on” a candidate’s age or mental acuity when it mentioned the candidate’s age or mental acuity in the headline or lead paragraphs; some articles mentioned both the candidates’ ages or mental acuities in the headline or lead paragraphs.
We found 144 articles focused on either or both Biden’s and Trump’s ages or mental acuities in the period studied, with 67% focused just on Biden’s age or mental acuity and only 7% on just Trump’s.
Media Matters for America – Study: Top newspapers fixate on Biden’s age
Media Matters has previously documented the press’s fixation on Biden’s age versus Trump’s:
| PUBL. DATE | HEADLINE |
|---|---|
| June 22, 2023 | Cable news networks obsessed over Biden’s age while overwhelmingly ignoring Trump’s |
| Sept. 29, 2023 | Cable news mentioned Biden’s age or health nearly 4 times as often as Trump’s |
| Oct. 20, 2023 | Top newspapers mention Biden’s age more than twice as often as Trump’s |
To put a finer point on all of this–Media Matters published these articles long before the Biden/Trump debate on June 27 of this year where the concerns became very real in a very visceral way.
CONCLUSION
I focused the vast majority of my ire at A.G. Sulzberger because, well, he’s far more open and prolific than other publishers and editors while also publishing one of the most respected “papers of record” in the U.S. The NYT is not the only culprit.
The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO, Axios, and Semafor are all complicit in the sanitizing of Trump.
Stephen Robinson at the independent outfit, Public Notice, published on Aug. 30 an interesting piece asking, “What’s wrong with the fact-checkers?” detailing the pretzels these orgs are twisting themselves into in an effort to seem objective. The fact-checking around the DNC was widely mocked for its absurdity, but this masterclass by The Washington Post’s Amy Gardner is absolute perfection:
Beautiful.