Just a few weeks ago, I was complaining bitterly about how the New York Times routinely resorts to weasel words, euphemisms and third-party critiques to avoid speaking the truth about Donald Trump.
But in the last 10 days or so, several Times articles have been considerably more straightforward – and honest – about the way Trump lies and spreads division.
This leads to the question: Is something changing over there?
Is newsroom leadership directly or indirectly loosening the reins on reporters who until now have been under orders to remain “above the fray” and not use language that appears to favor one party’s views over the other’s?
And could it have anything to do with the outrageous and provocative lawsuit Trump filed on Sept. 15, accusing the Times and four of its reporters of defamation and asking for damages of at least $15 billion?
A federal judge threw out the lawsuit a few days later, calling it “tendentious” and “tedious,” but not before the Times issued a positively crackling statement:
This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.
A Red-Letter Day
As it happens, I actually see signs that the Times’s leaders might have reached their limit just before the lawsuit was filed.
I date the beginning of a cavalcade of unusually ferocious articles about Trump to Sept. 14. On that day, the Times published an article by Peter Baker headlined: “In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump’s Mission; President Trump does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all Americans.”
This was particularly significant because Baker was one of the great normalizers of Trump’s first term and is a favorite of top management. He serves as a de facto in-house barometer for the Times’s political reportage.
And here, Baker eschewed his normal reliance on euphemisms and third parties to describe Trump’s conduct. He wrote unflinchingly, and in his own voice:
Mr. Trump has long made clear that coming together is not the mission of his presidency. In an era of deep polarization in American society, he rarely talks about healing. While other presidents have typically tried to lower the temperature in moments of national crisis, Mr. Trump turns up the flames. He does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all the people. He acts as president of red America and the people who agree with him, while those who do not are portrayed as enemies and traitors deserving payback.
Baker continued:
He sees a country riven into two ideological and political camps: one that supports him and one that does not. He governs accordingly. In recent days, he has vowed to order troops into cities run by Democrats, while sending money in the form of disaster relief to states run by Republicans.
Baker concluded by noting that no prior presidents “practiced the politics of division as ferociously and consistently as Mr. Trump, for whom it has been the defining characteristic of his time on the national stage.”
Baker Returns for More
Then, on Sept. 21, the Times published another Baker article headlined “In Assault on Free Speech, Trump Targets Speech He Hates; The president’s complaints about negative coverage undermine the rationales offered by his own officials.”
Again, Baker was blunt writing that Trump’s threats to media institutions are “not about hate speech, but about speech that he hates — namely, speech that is critical of him and his administration.”
Baker wrote, without any hems or haws:
He has suggested that a clutch of protesters who yelled at him in a restaurant be prosecuted under laws targeting mobsters. He demanded that multiple late-night comics who mocked him be taken off air. He threatened to shutter television broadcasters that he deemed unfair to him. He sued The New York Times for allegedly damaging his reputation. And that was just last week.
Trump, Baker wrote, was “strikingly transparent” about wanting to use the powers of the state to punish critical journalists.
More Today
And consider today’s coverage. The Times was quick out of the gate with a story correctly describing Trump’s unhinged address to the United Nations.
“Trump Uses U.N. Speech to Make False Claims and Lecture Representatives,” the Times declared in its headline, with a subhead noting that the speech was “filled with grievances.”
The Washington Post and the Associated Press, by contrast, ran headlines that were stenographic and namby-pamby.
And earlier in the day, the Times had published a genuinely bold, truth-telling article headlined “’I Hate My Opponent’: Trump’s Remarks at Kirk Memorial Distill His Politics; President Trump has been fueled by grievance and animosity over the course of his political and public life”
White House reporter Tyler Pager wrote about Trump’s “seemingly unscripted remark that summed up the retribution campaign that has come to define his second term.”
And he asserted, with no caveats:
Mr. Trump has used the full might of his political and executive power to express that mind-set in myriad ways, sparing no facet of American life.
Trump Playing Doctor
The Times was also brutally honest about Trump’s insane comments about autism and Tylenol on Monday.
Its liveblog was headlined: “Trump Ignores Science by Linking Autism to Vaccines and a Common Painkiller” and included some blistering posts from its health beat reporters.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, for instance, wrote:
The president is taking the extraordinary step of giving Americans, and in particular expectant mothers, direct medical advice. Trump asserted, incorrectly, that babies get as many as 80 vaccines at once. Trump has long expressed the view, refuted by mountains of scientific evidence, that vaccines are linked to autism. “They pump so much stuff into babies, it’s a disgrace.” He also instructed pregnant women not to take Tylenol. Trump has no medical background, and there is no evidence to support his remarks.
The main news story, by Azeen Ghorayshi, noted:
The briefing at the White House featured often unsubstantiated medical advice from Mr. Trump, reminiscent of his first term, when he encouraged Americans to try unproven treatments for Covid.
The Washington Post, by contrast, reported that Trump “ventured into uncertain scientific territory.” Politico did almost pure stenography.
Seeing Through the Spin
As recently as Sept. 12, the Times was still an easy mark, falling for Republican framing of the campaign against critics of Charlie Kirk.
In an article that day headlined “Right-Wing Activists Urge Followers to Expose Those Celebrating Kirk Killing,” reporters Alan Feuer, Ken Bensinger, and Pooja Salhotra allowed those activists to conflate those “celebrating” Kirk’s killing with those simply criticizing his legacy.
The fact is that, from the beginning, the right wing has been targeting anyone remotely critical of Kirk, not the tiny subset of people who actively expressed pleasure about Kirk’s murder.
Ten days later, a Sept. 22 article by Stephanie Saul accurately contextualized the censorship of liberals as a long-time goal of the far right.
Focusing on the plight of educators who spoke out critically about Kirk, Saul wrote that it reflects “a growing clampdown on campus speech that had been gaining steam since the onset of pro-Palestinian campus protests.”
Indeed, as Saul noted, Kirk’s own organization was heavily involved in such efforts:
Turning Point’s efforts to target professors it sees as radical date back nearly a decade, to 2016, when it began asking students to report professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Some of the educators whose names were put on the group’s “watch list” have said they became the targets of merciless harassment on social media.
Am I Being Too Optimistic?
Am I imagining this? Am I making a false extrapolation based on an insufficient number of data points? Is it wishful thinking?
Or is the Times slowly making a course correction? Will it keep moving in the direction of truth-telling?
And will it have downstream effects? The Times is by far the most influential news organization in America. Other organizations follow its lead.
The proof of the pudding will be if Times reporters start being as blunt about Trump ruling as a dictator as they have been lately about him lying and hating. So the jury is still out.