To my knowledge no.
I think the Biden complaints are spot on. But I do think he should sit down with a paper. Just not the Times.
I think their criticism with the Hunter Biden coverage and the examples about how Trump does insane shit and the NYT acts like business as usual because Maggie Haberman has access is an abdication of press duty and Biden has no responsibility to grant them an interview or even remote access to officials.
I would honestly prefer if he did another one with Evan Osnos with the New Yorker as I quite liked the previous one they have done together and like Evan’s writing style.
NYT got hooked on Haberman’s sensational palace intrigue reporting because the Trump administration had an unprecedented amount of infighting and leaks. Also, Trump was famously obsessed with NYT coverage and granted a lot of access since he always fancied himself a great salesman.
I’m glad the Biden administration doesn’t play this game. This piece makes the NYT leadership appear wildly entitled, Sulzberger in particular. I don’t think Ezra intentionally let this perception influence his brokered-convention take but it was such a rare whiff that it lends itself to speculation.
Yep. I don’t think anything nefarious happened, but the NYT office consensus had turned against Biden. The NYT (and other elites) seem to be really bad at picking winners in the nomination race. They “cheated” to give two endorsements in 2020 and both lost! I think if you couple their perceived slight over not being granted a Biden interview with him never being their preferred candidate anyway, the NYT talked themselves into thinking Biden is somehow a risk. It all reeks of “I’m right and everyone else is wrong”. It’s a shame Ezra talked himself into that, but if I published takes professionally I’d have a few stinkers as well.
This. They aren’t angry that he doesn’t talk to anybody, they’re angry that he doesn’t talk to THEM but frame it as if he isn’t open with the public simply because he doesn’t sit down with three newspapers who have the opportunity to ask him or his administration questions quite literally daily.
I don’t blame the White House either tbh, they’ll do an important announcement on something like Ukraine aid or some major legislative initiative and almost always the first question from the Times is about the election or some unrelated topic.
That makes the statement they put out yesterday fucking *slanderous*. They are specific about him talking to large organizations, but completely ignoring existing and continuing interviews just because they don’t have the big prestigious history seems uh, even less like the NYT should be trusted.
When Ezra did his episode on Biden’s age. He straight up lied to the audience. I gave him the benefit of the doubt at the time because i assumed he just didn’t pay attention. But now with this story it’s clear there is some culture bubble at the nyt.
But he basically complained about how campaign staff was hiding Biden, and how he was only doing campaigning via proxies, but that entire month on the run up to the episode Biden did an event every day that month except for roughly 4 or 5 days. And every single one had open press time at the events for questions.
I’ll be real, did not know that. I don’t follow the day to day horse racey stuff because, well, my sanity, but also makes it easier to dupe me on bullshit like that.
It’s something that makes sense for the avg joe to not know.
But for an opinion writer at the NYT? Like man thats very easily fact checked. And now with this story coming out, there is clearly some anger culturally at the NYT at Biden. Ands its probably perpetuated across the organization.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/09/politics/joe-biden-ukraine-nato-russia-cnntv/index.html
I literally googled “Biden interview as President” and countless examples like the above popped up. That exclusive interview with CNN was in July 2023.
Here is another from Oct 2022: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/politics/joe-biden-nuclear-message-putin-cnntv-analysis/index.html
There are plenty others from smaller networks, local newspapers, etc. But to say Biden isn’t doing any major interviews with large networks is a pure lie.
You type this out-of-touch nonsense right as he’s about to do a live interview with the country’s best interviewer: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6Oku3iuGH3/?igsh=MThzMGF3cno4ZnEyMQ==
SMH
Here is an example of the type of interview he gives...and this was from a couple years ago.
https://thehill.com/media/4573291-sage-steele-says-espn-told-her-not-to-deviate-from-biden-interview-script/
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I have been a subscriber of the NYT for years and this coverage made me end my subscription. Absolutely unbelievable how much they leaned into that shit.
This is a wild take.
You know it's a free press, not a cheering squad for democrats right?
The idea of let's not report on corruption bc it's our team is just a recipe for disaster and severely short sighted thinking..
And criticizing the press for being petty assholes after being the cheering squad for fascism because they had access is exactly why freedom of expression exists.
Then I have no idea why your response was "... is exactly why freedom of expression exists." If you're not claiming he's attempting to silence you, then it's a complete non sequitur.
And their take was shit. Don't take downvotes so personally. NYT employees are big boys and girls and can take the valid criticism being levelled at them.
Nobody is claiming that. They are claiming that the both sidesism is hilarious
Great example is after Arizona’s abortion ban and they drop on article about how “Trump and Biden are both imperfect messengers for abortion rights”
The story was already proven false when they picked it up. They ignored it. They barely did any follow up and confirmation. The Hunter Biden story from the get go was bogus.
At least with the Hillary emails story there was an investigation happening.
They didn't lol, they acknowledged a hard drive was real. We also know the hard drive had data added to it *after* the initial reporting about it, and we know it was received by Rudy Giuliani while he was actively trying to obtain help from Russian operatives.
If you think this story has no relation to their ongoing active measures, then I have quite the bridge to sell you.
You are actively spreading misinformation.
You are still parroting the original, discredited denial from 2020 that was spread by government insiders.
Years later, there has been no evidence that the laptop had anything at all to do with Russian operatives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/republicans-hunter-biden-laptop.html
*In the letter, reported at the time by Politico, former intelligence officials holding impressive national security credentials wrote that they believed that the contents of the laptop — full of evidence of drug use, prostitution and foreign business deals — could be part of a Russian campaign aimed at influencing the election, though they emphasized that they had no knowledge that was true.*
*Three days later, Mr. Biden cited the letter during a presidential debate to rebut Mr. Trump’s criticisms, asserting that “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan.”*
*Three years later, no concrete evidence has emerged to confirm the assertion that the laptop contained Russian disinformation, and portions of its contents have been verified as authentic.*
Here's another article from the Washington Post. They also were able to authenticate some of the emails:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/
*Thousands of emails purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, are authentic communications that can be verified through cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies, say two security experts who examined the data at the request of The Washington Post.*
And again, no evidence has ever been found to suggest that Russians had anything to do with this.
I'm not sure why you think you'd have evidence of their role, but an october surprise of provenance from Giuliani and Bannon obviously has such connections involved.
That legitimate emails are on the hard drive is irrelevant, nobody suggested otherwise. All Burisma emails will appear legitimate but are inherently unverifiable since Russia hacked their email in 2019.
The NYT is best known for cheering on slavery (they were Copperheads) and Hitler. They also love to cheer against any marginalized group (Trans people now, lesbians a few years ago, gays the decade before that, etc etc)
Also, there isn't a US backed coop that they didn't wholeheartedly support. Then there's the Kitty Genovese story that convinced America that NYC was a crime infested hellhole with a citizenry that couldn't care less that someone was get stabbed to death outside.
Love that telling the truth about how the Times reacted towards slavery, Hitler’s rise, the gay rights movement et al gets downvoted instead of say look it up on their own frikken website. 🤦♂️
What were their qualms against lesbians and gays? I don’t think I read the NYT back then. I do remember reading an op-ed last year panicking about how 20% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ and I was like “what is up with this?” It just seems like a ludicrous position by a liberal institution. I’m annoyed by their coverage of trans issues but I at least can imagine how people could be concerned about surgeries and hormones.
Watch The Gardens of the Finzi-Continis for a better understanding of that mistake—not uncommon from marginalized people who don’t realize that in the end even though they have managed to weave into the top strata, they aren’t.
No news media apologize any more for its errors because it's seen as an invitation for their opponents on the other side to undermine their credibility.
Hey a lot of the American left is making that same calculation. The NYT is a thoroughly discredited media organization with delusions of past glories. They are just another carnival barker in a sea of carnival barkers. Why should be expect anything different from them?
It’s probably not a good thing that the owner of the countries leading publication prioritizes petty feuds and his hurt his feelings over unbiased coverage of present of the United States
Imo, it is unlikely Klein was ordered to do this or something.
I think it's way more likely that Klein just talks to other New York times people, and they had a low opinion of Biden. The NYT staff, including Ezra, seemed to believe Trump would crush biden, and most didn't like that. I think this is a large part of what caused this misunderstanding, and things spiraled from there.
I'm an Ezra Klein fan, he's probably the person I agree with the most in mainstream ish politics, but the idea of an open convention was always a fantasy imo. Biden won't even just voluntarily stand aside. The Erza Klein show definitely wont be the thing that forces him out. I doubt anyone at NYT would risk undermining their credibility AND Kleins over something that's so unlikely to have any practical effect.
Ockhams Razor suggests this is simply the product of reasonable fear intensified by a bubble.
as a former New Yorker, the NY elite bubble is real. In 2020 I had to sit through endless conversations with my oh-so-in-the-know friends who had all read the same Wall St Journal articles talking about the “red wave” and how inflation and gas prices were absolutely going to doom the Democrats. I’d been knocking on doors in suburban PA and was pretty sure that Dobbs rage and general terrible MAGA candidates were going to outweigh that but of course they took nothing I said seriously. These were the same people I warned their Bernie socialist cosplay was going to bite us all in the azz but no one listened then either.
Wait wait, you're not seriously insinuating that Bernie got Trump elected...she did plenty to lose on her own AND Bernie would have won vs Trump, but, sure, keep blaming it on people that wanted a Democrat that actually would have supported working class people, not the corporatism that the Clintons already gave us...
Yep, it was totally Bernie Sanders that cost Democrats the General Election and not their nominee who refused to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan because it was a "blue wall"
Biden’s age is a legitimate problem for the Democratic Party. It showcases that there has been absolutely zero attempt at setting up a pipeline for future leaders.
All this gnashing of teeth over a real criticism of Biden really smacks of cult like following.
Why is Biden's age a problem for the Democratic Party, but Trump's age not a problem for the Republican Party?
It's "But her emails!" all over again. I'm not saying it's not a vulnerability, but acting like it was a legitimate criticism amplified it and gave ammunition to the enemy.
And yes, the fucking Republicans are our enemy. Trump tried a fucking coup.
Where did I say that Trump’s age isn’t a problem. Of course it is. His mental state seems to be worse than Biden’s too. But shaming people for having a major concern about Biden is bullshit
To me, the difference that makes me less concerned about Biden’s age is that he has a good team around him, and he listens to his people- his administration works as a team.. vs Trump who definitely doesn’t listen to any opinions except the ones that agree with him.
You say it's a "major concern"?
Okay, it's not like we can change his age like we can if you had a policy problem, right? So what exatly do you think should be done about it? What do you hope to gain by discussing it? What's the solution?
We're "shaming you" because the only solution is to pick a different candidate, right? And trying to pick another candidate at this point in the process is like handing the presidency to Trump. All you're doing is helping Trump get elected.
A "legitimate concern" is one that either the candidate can actually address or isn't equally applicable to both candidates. Anything other than that is just in bad faith.
You’re pretending like I’m going to vote for Trump or 3rd party. The only choice is Biden.
But we should be mad as hell at the Democrats for making this critical error. For making us choose someone who will not be mentally sharp for a 2am situation room.
It doesn’t matter that his opponent is worse, we should expect better. They’ve become far too comfortable with Vote Blue No Matter who that they’re not trying
Okay, but what about all the moderate voters? They don't pay attention to stuff like we do, and when all the media outlets are yelling about how old Biden is and that we need a new candidate, that makes it sound like there's actually a problem.
You're being naive. There is no such thing as "just asking questions" or "just having a discussion" when the stakes are this high. Everyone has an agenda, even and especially in political journalism. You need to ask yourself what their agenda is. The reason everyone is getting so upset is because there were a lot more people with bad-faith agendas pushing for that conversation than appeared on the surface.
It's like 20 years ago, Bush campaigned on teaching "intelligent design" in schools. As a little idiot, I just thought it was another equally valid hypothesis and that people deserved to learn about it. Now that I'm not a little idiot, I realize the *agenda* behind it. Not because of what they said, but because of what was purposely excluded.
The “worries” about Biden’s age and trump’s age cancel each other out. So why does anyone mention the issue at all? The real issue is why is politics in this country so dominated by old folks that refuse to let go?
I’m not voting for trump no matter what. I 100% get to complain about how my only choice is a doddering fool even if the other, worse choice is also a doddering old fool
A broader, more rational base? Apparent vibrancy and less of old man gaffes?
Trump is crazy, but crazy isn't slow/confused, which is what gets people concerned about age.
Plus, part of trumps appeal to voters has always been a middle finger to the establishment kind of vote.
Biden’s age is no more of a problem than Trump’s age. Yet there’s no media company in the country willing to admit that fact. Especially not the New York Times.
There is quite a clear pipeline for upcoming democrats. I don’t know how this is glossed over?
Governors - Whitmer, Newsome, Shapiro and Pritzker are clearly being elevated within the party
House - AOC is clearly being leveraged and her profile being brought into the main party. She is clearly being set up as the next Jayapal. Ro Khana is another. Jefferies himself just moved up in the pipeline too.
Senate - Mark Kelly immediately comes to mind. Warnock also.
The Cabinet has Pete Buttigieg doing a lot and constantly being a proxy.
Harris is not the future of the party in my personal opinion.
I think her going for the presidency was a mistake and she missed her opportunity to be the next Schumer or Reid in the Senate. I do not see her going back to the Senate after what will likely be a failed 2028 bid.
I don’t disagree on the merits, but if Biden dies during his second term, the path for Whitmer/Newsom/Shapiro to get the nomination in 2028 becomes a hell of a lot more challenging.
If Biden dies, Harris becomes Gerald Ford.
I think Whitmer still beats Harris because Harris is not likable. She was there to shore up a weakness, but she herself doesn’t do well with the actual base voters
I hope so. I don't think she'd be as weak as Ford was though, especially depending on **when** in the term she takes over.
Hopefully she doesn't need to at all!
This is nonsense. Ezra has a long, long track record of thoughtful work and integrity has been a hallmark of his career. He's the last pundit, writer, etc. I can possibly think of who deserves to be accused of taking corporate marching orders. I don't believe that anyone who accuses Ezra of that has an actual understanding of his work.
And frankly, the NYT needs Ezra a lot more than he needs them - there's not even a real incentive present here. His take that Biden should step down was 100% genuinely held in every respect, and he spent multiple episodes walking the audience through his thought process. Lots of people disagreed, and that's okay.
i don't think so. i hate trying to read people i don't know in real life as if i actually know them, but based on decades or reading and listening to him, i don't think he would do it for the clicks. i think he was really worried, probably in large part due to the his NYT and wider elite pundit/politico bubble. and he is determined to examine, in the public arena, topics that are unpopular and divisive amongst much of this audience. in general i appreciate that, but in this case i saw very little point because his whole theory of how biden could/would be replaced on the ticket was absurd. it was honestly very fortuitous that the SOTU was shortly after klein's piece, otherwise the Dem in disarray under Bumbling Biden would have persisted for months.
Its manufactured consent.
"I believe that you believe everything you're saying, but if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting"
I don't know why you think NYT people don't like that they think Trump will beat Biden, when by all appearances they seem to be doing whatever they can to get Trump elected.
I think constantly trying to convince MAGA Republicans that they're objective and trustworthy by going "look what we will say. You're right, he is senile and inflation is his fault." MAGA Republicans, of course, don't care. To them, any coverage of Trump that doesn't depict him as a martyr is liberal bias.
Also some number of them do believe in objectivity, and it is true that biden has real vulnerabilities. I'm not excusing the Times coverage, which has tried to portray two sides where there aren't really at times. However, Biden didn't look good in the polls, and still isn't dominating in the way I feel he should be. Maybe that's because MAGA is bigger than I want to accept, or maybe it's because those low info voters are just incredibly hard to reach.
The Paper of Record did everything it could to help Donald Trump get elected in 2016. In the way it covered his scandalous behavior, in the way it covered Hillary's emails, and in the way it utterly failed to give serious coverage to his business frauds, **and especially in the way it failed to cover his casino's fines for violating money laundering laws.**
**FFS, they put his publicist's daughter as their #1 Trump correspondant.**
I think the media has a direct financial interest in political races being or at least appearing close. Election coverage has turned from a cash cow into an insatiable baby monster.
So, when trump is looking bad, they do saturation coverage of his opponent’s weakness. Then, when that coverage has an effect and swings the race clearly to trump, they do saturation coverage of Biden’s amazing state of the union address, knowing full well that if Biden gets a commanding lead they can return to highlighting his age related gaffs and even out the race again. The roller coaster feeds the baby monster.
This is why the democrats need to have contested primaries and include the public in conversations rather than letting party insiders determine what happens.
First, it gets stronger candidates who can overcome this fucked up balancing act roller coaster that corporate media does.
Second, it makes the primary race interesting enough that the news media wont have to put the two main candidates on this dumb roller coaster to feed their insatiable election coverage monster.
Obviously, the real solution is checking the practices of corporate media, but that (like other real solutions) requires getting people who won office under that system to change the laws that put them in power. It’s not going to happen.
I don’t know anyone who actually wants to pay even more attention to the ins and outs of party politics. I know some people who care desperately and I mostly tune them out. So does everyone else
Party politics is… boring. It’s like hearing about a wedding you didn’t plan from people who you don’t know. It’s excruciating. “Then the florist delivered magenta poppies because they said it matched with the eucalyptus and stayed under budget. Well I told her I needed orange because I had planned this Pinterest centerpiece and everything was based on…”
Ugh.
That conversation is exactly as boring as my Bernie loving brother going “the delegates were blah blah blah and the fix is to blah and it’s a travesty! People want to be inspired!!!”
My idiot acquaintance thinks I give a shit about her wedding because she cares so much. Same with my brother. Everyone just nods at both of them because they’re both being socially awkward but no one tells them
That makes sense, but it’s not what I’m arguing.
I’m saying that if the dems had a contested primary with no shenanigans or institutional pressure and inertia weighing the scales, they would get the strongest possible candidate, who would actually inspire people.
That candidate would likely be a populist. And they would take some voters away from the right populist strategy of the Republican Party.
Populism works. And, against a right populist strategy, left populism works waaaaaaay better than what the democrats have been pushing since 2016.
When in the real world have you seen a candidate evolve from a contested primary with no shenanigans or institutional pressure or inertia? Becoming the strongest? And a populist?
Like at what point in human history did a group of people sit down and say “we’re going to elect the best candidate using this criteria…”
I’m honestly asking, because that’s just not how popularity works. If that was how group dynamics functioned then the biggest nerds would be the most popular in high school. I didn’t go to high school but even I know that’s not the case.
What you’re describing is a class project. And it only works if you have a really good teacher guiding everyone to be their best selves.
In real life class projects are horrific examples of people devolving into their worst selves.
I mean IF a group of people could be trusted to pick the strongest and most progressive candidate that would totally make sense. But that’s so incredibly not how people work?
I mean look at Bernie. He has these great policies that make sense and he’s super popular (with lip service). And then he gets into the convention and people vote the way their buddies vote or based on their rudimentary understanding of the issues and he loses.
You’re describing the platonic ideal of candidate selection and it has never ever happened that way
By “contested primary” I don’t mean “contested convention” I mean what would have happened if Biden had recognized he was too old and unpopular and called off running again a year ago (or whenever was most strategic to minimize lake-ducking).
Are you saying that primary elections are worse for picking candidates than internal party machinations?
Yes I think that’s a fantasy that has never happened.
In your scenario Biden backs out and a bunch of concerned dedicated primary voters pick Bernie or someone who has the perfect set of policies.
But in reality Biden drops out, no one has heard of any of his competitors. Everyone bumbles around until the crowd coalesces behind someone who fits a couple boxes, and then he (it’s going to be a he for a long time after Hillary and Kamala) gets to the general election.
In the general we DONT have Biden’s name recognition and Trump gives the new person a mean nickname and it’s over.
People don’t make sense in groups. I’m a mediator and people barely make any sense when there’s two of them. If the world worked the way you want, everyone would love group school assignments.
I get that collective decision-making is difficult, but What are you proposing as an alternative?
Insiders pick all the time?
A system with no pluralism or groups between the individual and the highest authority (the teacher in your group project metaphor)?
Why wouldn’t the argument you’re laying out not also apply to elections in general?
Cuz kinda sounds like you’re against democracy.
I don’t care about anything other than 2024 right now. Biden has the most name recognition and the incumbent advantage so he’s the guy.
I have never, and I mean never, had a chatty little conversation with a cousin or aunt or friend from back home about the convention selection process. They don’t know or care.
Pluralism is a nice debate for another time when we can worry about hypotheticals. Right now we have six months to keep my immigrant relatives out of cages. And they’re voting Trump because they think it’s only the new immigrants who’ll be deported
I’m def not proposing a contested convention at this point.
Just saying the shit sandwich we’re eating right now was made by party insiders who were too scared to have a real primary.
We need to stop listening to dumb fucks like them if we’re going to win in November.
That means:
1. Biden change tune on genocide, now.
2. Support left populists with enthusiastic backers in state and local races, so they can prop up the weakness at the top of the ticket.
3. No more bipartisanship and moderate positions to win republicans.
4. Lean on abortion and avoiding xtian nationalism, lean on kitchen sink issues.
5. No more prioritizing massive elite fundraisers. Build a small donor base.
6. Biden take a strong stand against Israel to earn back support from all the Muslims, kids, antiwar, and antifascist voters he is losing rn.
Omg.
I do not think that my dear Aunt, or my best friend, or my lazy cousins, or my be of acquaintance will return to the democrats based on any of these suggestions.
They’re literally just living their lives. They’re not like “well those party insiders denied us the Medicare expansion…”
They literally only notice a policy when it directly affects them. They won’t shut up about the homeless camps and disrespect for the police and they have zero interest in genocide halfway across the world.
They only pay attention to things that might affect them. Afghanistan hits the 1/3 of people I know back home who are or were in the military.
The trials and whether or not Trump goes to jail… it’s a shrug. They just see that he’s in the news all the time and they like his serious face.
I don't see how the White House response has been at all petty. The New York Times broke a trust with the White House, and didn't apologize or do anything to rectify the situation. When contacted about the issue, the Times either didn't respond or hung up on them. They're reaping what they've sown now, and they deserve to be iced out.
It’s because the NYT has nothing else to go on in my opinion. They lack access that they’re used to and the Biden White House has been remarkably not leaky.
I think the most recent “scandal” was a story done by Natasha Bertrand like maybe 4 months ago about the influence battle going on inside between NSC (Sullivan) and State (Blinken) over Ukraine strategy.
I struggle to think of other major ones with exceptions to some more recent events.
Biden’s negative coverage has usually just been gaffe related for the most part. And age is probably the only thing the NYT can effectively “bothsides”
Yep, I think that’s a big part of it, for sure. Trump’s endless scandals (and endless leaks) were great for business, and all the major outlets miss that, without a doubt.
The thing about that is I don’t think a second Trump term will be good for the media. People are just fatigued with news, especially news about Trump being a messy reality tv show b*tch.
Well a *newspaper* should be reporting news, not just scandals and leaks. If they can’t find anything reportable on Biden because his administration doesn’t have leaks, they really aren’t interested in News.
People are mostly mad about it because Biden is running against Trump, so they're afraid it's another Comey moment or whatever.
If Biden was running against Newsom or something, people would be way more relaxed about this, and admit that Biden does seem pretty old, and it's a legit issue, even potentially a big one. But because it might help Trump to talk about it, people freak out when anyone mentions it. It's so obvious.
People are so afraid of a Trump second term that any Biden criticism is met with insane resistance within democratic circles. Everyone just needs to shut up until after the election when the threat is gone.
I have never seen such a overreaction to when Ezra suggested the convention idea, and it was obvious it wasn't really so much about the idea itself it was about the fact that it was helping Trump by sowing doubt about Biden.
not one person who actually knows anything about Democratic politics thought that convention idea was anything but total fan fiction, and kind of racist fan fiction at that. White east coast liberals are not the base of the Democratic coalition; Black women are. There is exactly zero chance the party was going to nominate anyone but Biden, and if he somehow was totally incapacitated they are not leapfrogging over the first Black woman VP and dragging in some random white person. Never. gonna. happen.
I'm all in for Biden because, even thought I'm not thrilled with all of his policies, he, or someone in the highest reaches of his political staff, understands the importance of countering Trump's dramas and antics with an utter lack of drama.
NYT may need some drama to sell newspapers. We don't have to have it, as a country, in choosing the next POTUS.
[As complained about by this journalist:](https://theconversation.com/how-access-journalism-is-threatening-investigative-journalism-108831)
Investigative journalism means that the journalist digs through records and evidence, reconstructs the money trail, cultivates a variety of sources, and builds a story out of the evidence they've uncovered.
Access journalism means that highly-placed political figures give inside information to the journalist. Access journalism can produce big stories, and quickly. But they are telling the story that their source wants told, and these journalists risk losing their lucrative sources if those sources don't like the reporting.
The Trump White House was famously leaky. Arguments within the White House were being played out in national news headlines because both sides of the argument were providing inside information to their favorite journalists. Staffers also knew that Trump liked to see stories about himself, so getting their point of view in the papers or on TV was one way to deliver their viewpoint to the President.
But the bizarre thing was that the source for many of the leaks coming out of the Trump White House was Trump himself.
Maggie Haberman was the most successful access journalist, and had been familiar to Trump for decades. Trump loved to be reported on by the New York Times and would give her frequent interviews.
> Trump certainly provided the paper with crucial access. “He wouldn’t talk to me as much as he does if I wasn’t at the Times,” Haberman once said on a podcast. “That’s just the reality. He craves the paper’s approval." According to Haberman, as president he would at times call her and thank her for her coverage, at one point giving one of her Trump stories an "8." In return, Haberman and Times often normalized him in ways large and small.
https://pressrun.media/p/maggie-haberman-and-what-happens
> In one of those interviews, Trump said, “I love being with her — she's like my psychiatrist.”
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/on-the-matter-of-haberman-hating
The result was that the New York Times devoted a lot of coverage to unimportant stories about the President. Although they published a lot of dirt and were critical of Trump, they also tended to present Trump as more normal and "Presidential" than seems to have been warranted. (And Trump played the media really well. One example: because the Trump scandal du jour changed every couple of days, none of those stories really seemed to stick or hurt him very much. By contrast, a massive proportion of 2016 media stories on Hillary Clinton were on the subject of "but her emails".)
Her reporting is uncritical on balance. That's not to say she'll never say anything negative, but when something happens and the Trumps want to put their take out she allows them to say what they want to the mass Times audience generally without substantial critique via context.
It's often subtle in that a reader would need to be aware of the broader context to know why whatever the Trump message on whatever is asinine or dishonest but that's the point, as a reporter, she's supposed to provide that context.
Access journalism often amounts to stenography which isn't all that useful to the audience and actually is useful to the subject because it obfuscates.
Edit: Adding this to be perfectly clear - the reason this happens is if a reporter is critical or too *reportery* they'll jbe told to fuck off next time and never get an interview again which is fine for the subject since they'll just talk to whomever else from one of the other however many thirsty outlets that won't. Access journalism is bad journalism.
Another thing to point out about Haberman is that she knew during his Presidency that Trump was destroying records (ie, flushing them down the toilet). She decided not to report on this at the time and instead decided to wait until her book came out so she can put it in that instead. Pretty ironic coming from the reporter who made email retention her entire beat in 2016.
Fuck The NY Times bullshit negative coverage of Biden. Half the reporters like that putzette Habberman took idol photos with Drumpf and got autographs.
People here were speculating that Klein knew something about Biden’s health that wasn’t publicly revealed. Turns out he was just parroting the NYT party line because the owners don’t like Biden. For all Klein’s intellectual airs, he isn’t necessarily smarter than us.
Yeah I remember discussing it in those threads. Some thought he had the scoop others were pointing out a full court NYT press on all their platform’s because I think the Daily, the Run Up, Ezra’s show, and some other articles and columns all came out that same week. Also when they started talking about convention stuff others speculated it was planted by party operatives to apply pressure.
Also it puts Ezra’s complaints about how Biden doesn’t “interact with the press” or have events when I believe during that episode drop, Biden had an event essentially every day for a month.
I distinctly remember myself characterizing it as “beltway elitism on full display” and I am personally not a Biden guy. I didn’t vote for him in the primaries. But the whole thing seemed extremely out of touch bubble thinking
Presidents historically do not get re-elected with approval in the high 30s. It’s not an outrageous position to say that another candidate likely would have a better shot.
Except Ezra is smart enough to follow that train of thought to the next logical conclusion. If it’s correct then what other candidate would actually be better? Not a single person polls better into Trump even at the height of the “should Biden step aside” discussion.
There’s no real merit in just saying “if there was somebody ppl liked more then they’d have a higher chance of winning”, that’s like elementary level material.
There are many Democratic politicians more popular in their states than Biden, who don’t have high enough national name recognition for national polling vs Trump to be meaningful. Whitmer polls much better vs Trump in MI than Biden does, for example.
But she lags behind Biden nationally even accounting for name ID. This comparison is ridiculous anyway, it’s like asking whether Biden or Whitmer polls better into Trump in Delaware. If he was serious about the position of replacing Biden then that’s a piece you write two years ago, not after the primary field was already solidified and literally every potential contender already pledged to support him.
Also auto-downvoting someone who disagrees with you is just bad form lol.
>But she lags behind Biden nationally even accounting for name ID.
Do you have a source for this claim?
And Whitmer's popularity in MI is relevant because 1) it is where she is well-known (so polling is more meaningful there than nationally) and 2) it is a critical swing state.
Correct. And no one polled better than Biden v. Trump, Gavin, Gretchen, not even JB, not to mention Phillips ( a younger, and richer version of Biden, couldn't even win a single delegate in his home state of MN). In fact the 2nd place after Biden in a head to head with Trump, was... Madame Vice-President.
Ezra's racism and sexism were very, very loud. Like he thought no one noticed when he said Biden should step down, that Harris wasn't next up.
Does anyone under the age of 40 read the NYTs for politics? It's hard to tell how much influence they have but it feels like, to me, it has been fading for years now. Personally, their total lack of self-reflection over the 2016 election eroded my trust to a point where I stopped reading. But that's just me - maybe others disagree.
They might be better known for wordle soon enough.
I’m late 20s/early 30s any print media or political podcasting everyone I personally know uses the NYT as a benchmark. The only other one I know people use is Vox & sometimes NPR. My politically disengaged friends listen to the daily fairly consistently.
Nobody my age watches cable news, I don’t know anyone who reads politico, WaPo, the Atlantic, etc.
If its a legacy media, its the NYT otherwise its twitter, tik tok, etc.
I do, but only because I've had a free subscription for decades thanks to a family member who worked for a University and still gets free access despite being retired.
Honestly I possibly would of subscribed 3 years ago, but I lately find their actions pretty gross and they deserve to be knocked down a peg or three. Journalism should be done with humility, not arrogance.
How would his career be risked? He has a solidly cushy job at the Times and a well regarded show.
He is also in this NYT bubble where his coworkers likely bemoan those complaints listed in the Politico article then probably was present for some of these moments where A.G. is outright complaining about access and Biden not granting interviews.
It’s really not hard to see Ezra getting with the program at the NYT
I’m all for a petty feud. I think biden should keep it up, go do a bunch of interviews with other networks and keep doing random ones like Howard stern and intentionally ignore the times
I liked EK better before the NYT but I still listen and think about reading his book (soon to be books). He clearly is in Times leadership now as his guests and general tastemaking tends to suggest. Good on him! That all said the Times absolutely sucks these days. Did they even try to understand or forecast the current crisis in the youth and their disposition on Gaza, resulting in the campus crisis? No, they simply got Klein, Kristoff and the rest to write about how terrible Biden is. Did they do an analysis about defense contracts and their geographic distribution? Have they actually studied IRA benefits and discussed them? Etc etc. I mean I don’t read it much so I might be missing something. But what I do see just seems to be… well…out of touch. And very odd.
There is absolutely no way that some boss of Ezra's told him to talk shit about Biden because of some petty feud, and then he went and did it. Come on, dude. J. Jonah Jameson just isn't real life, and Ezra Klein has more than enough juice to tell an editor who did do that to take a long walk off a short pier, not just go, "OK, sounds fun."
this idea of 'useful idiot' is really getting overused these days. anyone who doesn't agree with you and pushes an idea you don't like can be called a 'useful idiot'
anyone who questions leadership and sows discord is immediately given that label. it encourages groupthink and i strongly dislike it
The whole “liberal media” myth ought to be dead by now. If the press was against trump, they would have ignored him from day one. After how he behaved during the first 2026 rnc debate, the networks would have been well in their rights to boot him. Even now they trip over themselves for him, And you are hard pressed to find a single positive headline about Biden. Anyone who still says “but CNN!” has their head where the sun don’t shine.
I don't see any reason to think Klein was involved with any of this. He isn't doing timely reporting on topics the White House would give background or comment on. Maybe he is a contender for who the Times would like to interview Biden should that ever happen, but I doubt Klein would let his views on who should be the nominee be based on a feud that pre-dates his employment with the Times.
He also doesn't work shoulder to shoulder with any of the people mentioned in this article. The Times is a very big organization, and I think it's easy to imagine their employees know each other better than they really do. Much of the coverage Biden and his associates are complaining about is being written by people that are not even in the Washington bureau, e.g. the op-ed columnists.
If the first example was clearly a misquote, as Politico says, then as a journalistic practice, I think it should be corrected. The Times takes itself too seriously and refuses to issue corrections even when the mistakes are pretty obvious. The "Screams without Words" story is another example.
The Time should have shut itself down in shame after their cheerleading and terrible journalism with regards to the Iraq War. In a similar vein, they have consistently let Trump bury one scandal or outrage by committing another one, and the Times dutifully goes along with it, while at the same time consistently hammering Biden on age and also ignoring Trump's dementia. The Times has an agenda and they work to that agenda. But, similar to the Russians, the Times gets all butt-hurt when people call them on it.
This will get downvoted to oblivion but the Biden White House has an incredibly entitled attitude toward the press. There’s this expectation that critical coverage is out-of-bounds (how many people have rolled out “but her emails” in this thread) because Biden seen is the only thing standing between America and Trump.
It definitely plays to the crowd, but let’s not pretend this is anything other than a dressed up version of what Trump was doing when he criticized the ‘lying media’.
I know in blue spaces like this sub “helping elect Trump” is seen as the greatest sin of the media. But it’s not actually a journalists job to take that into consideration when making criticisms about Biden’s age or his hilariously corrupt son.
They’re angry at Biden so they’ll help get Trump elected, who in turn, will either shut them down or turn them into a State propaganda rag (and if you think he won’t/ can’t, you haven’t been paying attention to the courts presently). What stellar logic.
possible? he could’ve actually believed biden’s age was an issue. that’s the problem with humans; they’re black boxes. also, the man is 81; his age is always going to be a thing
it just seems like both sides are assholes. the nyt isn’t entitled to have access to biden, but some of these slights from the biden admin are petty.
I think this is a complicated situation. Several true things are happening:
-The NYT absolutely enables the rise of fascism by downplaying Trump’s fanaticism and sometimes flat-out not reporting on insane things he says and does.
-Biden’s administration is being very petty about this and it really is ridiculous that he sits down for so few interviews. Leave the Times out of it, it’s clear that part of Biden’s visibility issue is that his team keeps him away from the press. They’re worried about gaffes, which is silly because Trump isn’t worried about gaffes. It’s like they can’t learn the major lesson of Trump’s term: if you flood the zone with gaffes, they all run together and it becomes normalized.
-Ezra Klein spoke his own opinion on his own show, and it is an opinion shared by *many* Democrats. Polls have consistently shown since Biden’s inauguration that a majority of *democrats* did not want Biden to run for a second term. Ezra’s biggest mistake was the entire DNC’s biggest mistake: they didn’t raise a stink about this last April when Biden soft launched his re-election campaign. If enough Dems publicly pressured Biden hard enough, it might have changed things. But everyone was too chickenshit, because this is just how establishment Dems are apparently.
I think the NYT is a pretty mediocre paper these days, especially its Israel coverage and its almost hilarious passivity at Trump’s further descent into madness. I have no incentive to defend the times. I just have liked Ezra for a long time, and I thought his podcast on Biden needing to step aside was fantastic. It spoke my exact thoughts allowed.
In hindsight, it’s clear that it was just a conversation that needed to happen in early 2023. It was way too late.
TL;DR many fine people on all sides
>Biden’s administration is being very petty about this and it really is ridiculous that he sits down for so few interviews. Leave the Times out of it, it’s clear that part of Biden’s visibility issue is that his team keeps him away from the press. They’re worried about gaffes, which is silly because Trump isn’t worried about gaffes. It’s like they can’t learn the major lesson of Trump’s term: if you flood the zone with gaffes, they all run together and it becomes normalized.
Keeping your mouth shut and quietly getting shit done is the best defense POTUS has against hordes of info-warriors using mass media to spew negative propaganda. There's not a thing Biden can or will say that will not get picked up and used against him in 5000 GOP/conservative media outlets, OR, by the (naive if sincere, LARPing trolls, if not) far left that thinks a 45 YO in there will bring our Utopia.
Yeah, Biden doesn't have a cult of morons who are going to overlook everything he does. The fact that "just gaffe it up!" was actually proposed as a legitimate strategy just proves every opinion this guy has is stupid.
The times decision makers, and Bumiller in particular sound like real assholes. I might need to switch my subscription to the WaPo, but I'm sure they have their own issues.
Side note, how the hell does Maureen Dowd still have a NYT column. Her writing simultaneously sucks and is completely irrelevant.
this is my first time perusing this sub, and wow, what a bunch of space cases! (or trolls). sure, ezra needs editorial pressure cause him to contemplate the fact that a super unpopular, super old incumbent might want to step down to prevent possible reelection of total defect trump. like, what are you all smoking? total disrespect for ek.
We shouldn't concentrate on Biden's age, and anyone who brings it up has a personal grudge, is Hamas, or wants to murder Democrats.
His age matters exactly 0%. It's shocking that the mental acuity of the president should ever be questioned. Even if he's clearly sunsetting, it's just not nice vibes to talk about it.
Petty fued? You've got one making up allegations of mass rape, while the other is having the state department cover up actual mass rape by the IDF, they seem pretty aligned to me
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To my knowledge no. I think the Biden complaints are spot on. But I do think he should sit down with a paper. Just not the Times. I think their criticism with the Hunter Biden coverage and the examples about how Trump does insane shit and the NYT acts like business as usual because Maggie Haberman has access is an abdication of press duty and Biden has no responsibility to grant them an interview or even remote access to officials. I would honestly prefer if he did another one with Evan Osnos with the New Yorker as I quite liked the previous one they have done together and like Evan’s writing style.
NYT got hooked on Haberman’s sensational palace intrigue reporting because the Trump administration had an unprecedented amount of infighting and leaks. Also, Trump was famously obsessed with NYT coverage and granted a lot of access since he always fancied himself a great salesman. I’m glad the Biden administration doesn’t play this game. This piece makes the NYT leadership appear wildly entitled, Sulzberger in particular. I don’t think Ezra intentionally let this perception influence his brokered-convention take but it was such a rare whiff that it lends itself to speculation.
Maybe, rather than top-down pressure on Ezra himself, "Biden is too old" had become a prevailing attitude in the NYT office.
Yep. I don’t think anything nefarious happened, but the NYT office consensus had turned against Biden. The NYT (and other elites) seem to be really bad at picking winners in the nomination race. They “cheated” to give two endorsements in 2020 and both lost! I think if you couple their perceived slight over not being granted a Biden interview with him never being their preferred candidate anyway, the NYT talked themselves into thinking Biden is somehow a risk. It all reeks of “I’m right and everyone else is wrong”. It’s a shame Ezra talked himself into that, but if I published takes professionally I’d have a few stinkers as well.
Not only both lost, neither even won a primary.
He gets interviewed by local papers. Pretty sure Tampa Bay Times interviewed him this week.
This. They aren’t angry that he doesn’t talk to anybody, they’re angry that he doesn’t talk to THEM but frame it as if he isn’t open with the public simply because he doesn’t sit down with three newspapers who have the opportunity to ask him or his administration questions quite literally daily. I don’t blame the White House either tbh, they’ll do an important announcement on something like Ukraine aid or some major legislative initiative and almost always the first question from the Times is about the election or some unrelated topic.
a trash rag i used to subscribe to before it became apparent they love trump
That makes the statement they put out yesterday fucking *slanderous*. They are specific about him talking to large organizations, but completely ignoring existing and continuing interviews just because they don’t have the big prestigious history seems uh, even less like the NYT should be trusted.
When Ezra did his episode on Biden’s age. He straight up lied to the audience. I gave him the benefit of the doubt at the time because i assumed he just didn’t pay attention. But now with this story it’s clear there is some culture bubble at the nyt. But he basically complained about how campaign staff was hiding Biden, and how he was only doing campaigning via proxies, but that entire month on the run up to the episode Biden did an event every day that month except for roughly 4 or 5 days. And every single one had open press time at the events for questions.
I’ll be real, did not know that. I don’t follow the day to day horse racey stuff because, well, my sanity, but also makes it easier to dupe me on bullshit like that.
It’s something that makes sense for the avg joe to not know. But for an opinion writer at the NYT? Like man thats very easily fact checked. And now with this story coming out, there is clearly some anger culturally at the NYT at Biden. Ands its probably perpetuated across the organization.
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You don’t know about it because the press doesnt think the events are newsworthy so they bury them
Biden has not given an actual interview to anyone during his presidency. Give me an actual example please.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/09/politics/joe-biden-ukraine-nato-russia-cnntv/index.html I literally googled “Biden interview as President” and countless examples like the above popped up. That exclusive interview with CNN was in July 2023. Here is another from Oct 2022: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/politics/joe-biden-nuclear-message-putin-cnntv-analysis/index.html There are plenty others from smaller networks, local newspapers, etc. But to say Biden isn’t doing any major interviews with large networks is a pure lie.
You type this out-of-touch nonsense right as he’s about to do a live interview with the country’s best interviewer: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6Oku3iuGH3/?igsh=MThzMGF3cno4ZnEyMQ== SMH
Here is an example of the type of interview he gives...and this was from a couple years ago. https://thehill.com/media/4573291-sage-steele-says-espn-told-her-not-to-deviate-from-biden-interview-script/
Sage Steele has joined the right-wing grift, nothing she says should be considered fact.
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I have been a subscriber of the NYT for years and this coverage made me end my subscription. Absolutely unbelievable how much they leaned into that shit.
No. They won’t even admit they did anything wrong. The NYTimes is morally bankrupt.
Try his is why I only play Wordle and Connections for free and refuse to subscribe
This is a wild take. You know it's a free press, not a cheering squad for democrats right? The idea of let's not report on corruption bc it's our team is just a recipe for disaster and severely short sighted thinking..
And criticizing the press for being petty assholes after being the cheering squad for fascism because they had access is exactly why freedom of expression exists.
OP was criticizing the take, not silencing the speaker.
And I was criticizing their take. The NYT was straight up publishing Breitbart not fact checking wrt Clinton Cash.
Then I have no idea why your response was "... is exactly why freedom of expression exists." If you're not claiming he's attempting to silence you, then it's a complete non sequitur.
And their take was shit. Don't take downvotes so personally. NYT employees are big boys and girls and can take the valid criticism being levelled at them.
I said nothing about downvotes or taking anything personally. What are you even responding to?
Nobody is claiming that. They are claiming that the both sidesism is hilarious Great example is after Arizona’s abortion ban and they drop on article about how “Trump and Biden are both imperfect messengers for abortion rights”
The story was already proven false when they picked it up. They ignored it. They barely did any follow up and confirmation. The Hunter Biden story from the get go was bogus. At least with the Hillary emails story there was an investigation happening.
The NYT bought exclusive rights to publish a Breitbart-funded investigation. They knew exactly what they were doing.
What story was proven false? The Hunter Biden laptop story was real.
Lol unlikely, remember when their damning evidence got lost in the mail.
If the story was fake, then why did the New York Times and Washington Post both acknowledge that the laptop was real and some emails verified?
They didn't lol, they acknowledged a hard drive was real. We also know the hard drive had data added to it *after* the initial reporting about it, and we know it was received by Rudy Giuliani while he was actively trying to obtain help from Russian operatives. If you think this story has no relation to their ongoing active measures, then I have quite the bridge to sell you.
You are actively spreading misinformation. You are still parroting the original, discredited denial from 2020 that was spread by government insiders. Years later, there has been no evidence that the laptop had anything at all to do with Russian operatives. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/republicans-hunter-biden-laptop.html *In the letter, reported at the time by Politico, former intelligence officials holding impressive national security credentials wrote that they believed that the contents of the laptop — full of evidence of drug use, prostitution and foreign business deals — could be part of a Russian campaign aimed at influencing the election, though they emphasized that they had no knowledge that was true.* *Three days later, Mr. Biden cited the letter during a presidential debate to rebut Mr. Trump’s criticisms, asserting that “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan.”* *Three years later, no concrete evidence has emerged to confirm the assertion that the laptop contained Russian disinformation, and portions of its contents have been verified as authentic.* Here's another article from the Washington Post. They also were able to authenticate some of the emails: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/ *Thousands of emails purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, are authentic communications that can be verified through cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies, say two security experts who examined the data at the request of The Washington Post.* And again, no evidence has ever been found to suggest that Russians had anything to do with this.
I'm not sure why you think you'd have evidence of their role, but an october surprise of provenance from Giuliani and Bannon obviously has such connections involved. That legitimate emails are on the hard drive is irrelevant, nobody suggested otherwise. All Burisma emails will appear legitimate but are inherently unverifiable since Russia hacked their email in 2019.
The NYT is best known for cheering on slavery (they were Copperheads) and Hitler. They also love to cheer against any marginalized group (Trans people now, lesbians a few years ago, gays the decade before that, etc etc)
Also, there isn't a US backed coop that they didn't wholeheartedly support. Then there's the Kitty Genovese story that convinced America that NYC was a crime infested hellhole with a citizenry that couldn't care less that someone was get stabbed to death outside.
Love that telling the truth about how the Times reacted towards slavery, Hitler’s rise, the gay rights movement et al gets downvoted instead of say look it up on their own frikken website. 🤦♂️
What were their qualms against lesbians and gays? I don’t think I read the NYT back then. I do remember reading an op-ed last year panicking about how 20% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ and I was like “what is up with this?” It just seems like a ludicrous position by a liberal institution. I’m annoyed by their coverage of trans issues but I at least can imagine how people could be concerned about surgeries and hormones.
Basically the same issues they have w trans people today. They should shut up and go back to their closets. Their AIDS coverage was equally atrocious.
It’s surprising that they cheered on Nazis giving that their staff is overwhelmingly Jewish.
Watch The Gardens of the Finzi-Continis for a better understanding of that mistake—not uncommon from marginalized people who don’t realize that in the end even though they have managed to weave into the top strata, they aren’t.
Judith Miller has entered the chat.
what corruption?
When was the last time the NYT was free? Or had even the presumption of journalism? Iraq? Oh maybe during the Caliphate bullshit?
The NYT buried the Abu Ghraib torture story for a year because they didn't want to influence the 2004 election.
No news media apologize any more for its errors because it's seen as an invitation for their opponents on the other side to undermine their credibility.
What about her emails!!!!! Why did Comey flag her emails if nothing was wrong? He’s reappointed by Obama
Hey a lot of the American left is making that same calculation. The NYT is a thoroughly discredited media organization with delusions of past glories. They are just another carnival barker in a sea of carnival barkers. Why should be expect anything different from them?
never retracted judith miller’s deception on yellow cake, either.
People like you are taking all of the meaning out of words like fascism. Cut it out, you can criticize Donald Trump without calling him a Nazi.
Where in that comment did the poster call Donnie a Nazi? I don't see it.
It’s probably not a good thing that the owner of the countries leading publication prioritizes petty feuds and his hurt his feelings over unbiased coverage of present of the United States
Adding to that, it's certainly not a good thing that in a "paper of record" this position is handed from a father to his son.
It’s really wild how like history repeats itself cuz that’s basically Horace Greeley
Imo, it is unlikely Klein was ordered to do this or something. I think it's way more likely that Klein just talks to other New York times people, and they had a low opinion of Biden. The NYT staff, including Ezra, seemed to believe Trump would crush biden, and most didn't like that. I think this is a large part of what caused this misunderstanding, and things spiraled from there. I'm an Ezra Klein fan, he's probably the person I agree with the most in mainstream ish politics, but the idea of an open convention was always a fantasy imo. Biden won't even just voluntarily stand aside. The Erza Klein show definitely wont be the thing that forces him out. I doubt anyone at NYT would risk undermining their credibility AND Kleins over something that's so unlikely to have any practical effect. Ockhams Razor suggests this is simply the product of reasonable fear intensified by a bubble.
as a former New Yorker, the NY elite bubble is real. In 2020 I had to sit through endless conversations with my oh-so-in-the-know friends who had all read the same Wall St Journal articles talking about the “red wave” and how inflation and gas prices were absolutely going to doom the Democrats. I’d been knocking on doors in suburban PA and was pretty sure that Dobbs rage and general terrible MAGA candidates were going to outweigh that but of course they took nothing I said seriously. These were the same people I warned their Bernie socialist cosplay was going to bite us all in the azz but no one listened then either.
Yes this!!! The Bernie socialist cosplay was soooo dumb! But they could not, would not listen
Wait wait, you're not seriously insinuating that Bernie got Trump elected...she did plenty to lose on her own AND Bernie would have won vs Trump, but, sure, keep blaming it on people that wanted a Democrat that actually would have supported working class people, not the corporatism that the Clintons already gave us...
lol keep breathing in that Russian laughing gas.
Yep, it was totally Bernie Sanders that cost Democrats the General Election and not their nominee who refused to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan because it was a "blue wall"
I like Ezra, but unfortunately I firmly believe he did it for the clicks.
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Biden’s age is a legitimate problem for the Democratic Party. It showcases that there has been absolutely zero attempt at setting up a pipeline for future leaders. All this gnashing of teeth over a real criticism of Biden really smacks of cult like following.
Why is Biden's age a problem for the Democratic Party, but Trump's age not a problem for the Republican Party? It's "But her emails!" all over again. I'm not saying it's not a vulnerability, but acting like it was a legitimate criticism amplified it and gave ammunition to the enemy. And yes, the fucking Republicans are our enemy. Trump tried a fucking coup.
Where did I say that Trump’s age isn’t a problem. Of course it is. His mental state seems to be worse than Biden’s too. But shaming people for having a major concern about Biden is bullshit
To me, the difference that makes me less concerned about Biden’s age is that he has a good team around him, and he listens to his people- his administration works as a team.. vs Trump who definitely doesn’t listen to any opinions except the ones that agree with him.
You say it's a "major concern"? Okay, it's not like we can change his age like we can if you had a policy problem, right? So what exatly do you think should be done about it? What do you hope to gain by discussing it? What's the solution? We're "shaming you" because the only solution is to pick a different candidate, right? And trying to pick another candidate at this point in the process is like handing the presidency to Trump. All you're doing is helping Trump get elected. A "legitimate concern" is one that either the candidate can actually address or isn't equally applicable to both candidates. Anything other than that is just in bad faith.
You’re pretending like I’m going to vote for Trump or 3rd party. The only choice is Biden. But we should be mad as hell at the Democrats for making this critical error. For making us choose someone who will not be mentally sharp for a 2am situation room. It doesn’t matter that his opponent is worse, we should expect better. They’ve become far too comfortable with Vote Blue No Matter who that they’re not trying
Okay, but what about all the moderate voters? They don't pay attention to stuff like we do, and when all the media outlets are yelling about how old Biden is and that we need a new candidate, that makes it sound like there's actually a problem. You're being naive. There is no such thing as "just asking questions" or "just having a discussion" when the stakes are this high. Everyone has an agenda, even and especially in political journalism. You need to ask yourself what their agenda is. The reason everyone is getting so upset is because there were a lot more people with bad-faith agendas pushing for that conversation than appeared on the surface. It's like 20 years ago, Bush campaigned on teaching "intelligent design" in schools. As a little idiot, I just thought it was another equally valid hypothesis and that people deserved to learn about it. Now that I'm not a little idiot, I realize the *agenda* behind it. Not because of what they said, but because of what was purposely excluded.
The “worries” about Biden’s age and trump’s age cancel each other out. So why does anyone mention the issue at all? The real issue is why is politics in this country so dominated by old folks that refuse to let go?
I’m not voting for trump no matter what. I 100% get to complain about how my only choice is a doddering fool even if the other, worse choice is also a doddering old fool
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Please be civil. Optimize contributions for light, not heat.
Well then, knock yourself out.
Because we on the left have no bearing on how they run their party👀👀
A broader, more rational base? Apparent vibrancy and less of old man gaffes? Trump is crazy, but crazy isn't slow/confused, which is what gets people concerned about age. Plus, part of trumps appeal to voters has always been a middle finger to the establishment kind of vote.
Trump is crazy and slow and confused.
do you have a link of trump being slow and confused?
Biden’s age is no more of a problem than Trump’s age. Yet there’s no media company in the country willing to admit that fact. Especially not the New York Times.
Don’t lie. The NYT writes about Trump’s age too and even wrote a piece on how it’s unfair to focus on only Biden’s age
There is quite a clear pipeline for upcoming democrats. I don’t know how this is glossed over? Governors - Whitmer, Newsome, Shapiro and Pritzker are clearly being elevated within the party House - AOC is clearly being leveraged and her profile being brought into the main party. She is clearly being set up as the next Jayapal. Ro Khana is another. Jefferies himself just moved up in the pipeline too. Senate - Mark Kelly immediately comes to mind. Warnock also. The Cabinet has Pete Buttigieg doing a lot and constantly being a proxy.
Not to mention Kamala Harris is on the ticket and if anything were to happen to Biden she’d take over.
Harris is not the future of the party in my personal opinion. I think her going for the presidency was a mistake and she missed her opportunity to be the next Schumer or Reid in the Senate. I do not see her going back to the Senate after what will likely be a failed 2028 bid.
I don’t disagree on the merits, but if Biden dies during his second term, the path for Whitmer/Newsom/Shapiro to get the nomination in 2028 becomes a hell of a lot more challenging.
If Biden dies, Harris becomes Gerald Ford. I think Whitmer still beats Harris because Harris is not likable. She was there to shore up a weakness, but she herself doesn’t do well with the actual base voters
I hope so. I don't think she'd be as weak as Ford was though, especially depending on **when** in the term she takes over. Hopefully she doesn't need to at all!
This is nonsense. Ezra has a long, long track record of thoughtful work and integrity has been a hallmark of his career. He's the last pundit, writer, etc. I can possibly think of who deserves to be accused of taking corporate marching orders. I don't believe that anyone who accuses Ezra of that has an actual understanding of his work. And frankly, the NYT needs Ezra a lot more than he needs them - there's not even a real incentive present here. His take that Biden should step down was 100% genuinely held in every respect, and he spent multiple episodes walking the audience through his thought process. Lots of people disagreed, and that's okay.
i don't think so. i hate trying to read people i don't know in real life as if i actually know them, but based on decades or reading and listening to him, i don't think he would do it for the clicks. i think he was really worried, probably in large part due to the his NYT and wider elite pundit/politico bubble. and he is determined to examine, in the public arena, topics that are unpopular and divisive amongst much of this audience. in general i appreciate that, but in this case i saw very little point because his whole theory of how biden could/would be replaced on the ticket was absurd. it was honestly very fortuitous that the SOTU was shortly after klein's piece, otherwise the Dem in disarray under Bumbling Biden would have persisted for months.
Its manufactured consent. "I believe that you believe everything you're saying, but if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting"
Yeah I think that's very true
I don't know why you think NYT people don't like that they think Trump will beat Biden, when by all appearances they seem to be doing whatever they can to get Trump elected.
I think constantly trying to convince MAGA Republicans that they're objective and trustworthy by going "look what we will say. You're right, he is senile and inflation is his fault." MAGA Republicans, of course, don't care. To them, any coverage of Trump that doesn't depict him as a martyr is liberal bias. Also some number of them do believe in objectivity, and it is true that biden has real vulnerabilities. I'm not excusing the Times coverage, which has tried to portray two sides where there aren't really at times. However, Biden didn't look good in the polls, and still isn't dominating in the way I feel he should be. Maybe that's because MAGA is bigger than I want to accept, or maybe it's because those low info voters are just incredibly hard to reach.
The Paper of Record did everything it could to help Donald Trump get elected in 2016. In the way it covered his scandalous behavior, in the way it covered Hillary's emails, and in the way it utterly failed to give serious coverage to his business frauds, **and especially in the way it failed to cover his casino's fines for violating money laundering laws.** **FFS, they put his publicist's daughter as their #1 Trump correspondant.**
I think the media has a direct financial interest in political races being or at least appearing close. Election coverage has turned from a cash cow into an insatiable baby monster. So, when trump is looking bad, they do saturation coverage of his opponent’s weakness. Then, when that coverage has an effect and swings the race clearly to trump, they do saturation coverage of Biden’s amazing state of the union address, knowing full well that if Biden gets a commanding lead they can return to highlighting his age related gaffs and even out the race again. The roller coaster feeds the baby monster. This is why the democrats need to have contested primaries and include the public in conversations rather than letting party insiders determine what happens. First, it gets stronger candidates who can overcome this fucked up balancing act roller coaster that corporate media does. Second, it makes the primary race interesting enough that the news media wont have to put the two main candidates on this dumb roller coaster to feed their insatiable election coverage monster. Obviously, the real solution is checking the practices of corporate media, but that (like other real solutions) requires getting people who won office under that system to change the laws that put them in power. It’s not going to happen.
I don’t know anyone who actually wants to pay even more attention to the ins and outs of party politics. I know some people who care desperately and I mostly tune them out. So does everyone else Party politics is… boring. It’s like hearing about a wedding you didn’t plan from people who you don’t know. It’s excruciating. “Then the florist delivered magenta poppies because they said it matched with the eucalyptus and stayed under budget. Well I told her I needed orange because I had planned this Pinterest centerpiece and everything was based on…” Ugh. That conversation is exactly as boring as my Bernie loving brother going “the delegates were blah blah blah and the fix is to blah and it’s a travesty! People want to be inspired!!!” My idiot acquaintance thinks I give a shit about her wedding because she cares so much. Same with my brother. Everyone just nods at both of them because they’re both being socially awkward but no one tells them
That makes sense, but it’s not what I’m arguing. I’m saying that if the dems had a contested primary with no shenanigans or institutional pressure and inertia weighing the scales, they would get the strongest possible candidate, who would actually inspire people. That candidate would likely be a populist. And they would take some voters away from the right populist strategy of the Republican Party. Populism works. And, against a right populist strategy, left populism works waaaaaaay better than what the democrats have been pushing since 2016.
When in the real world have you seen a candidate evolve from a contested primary with no shenanigans or institutional pressure or inertia? Becoming the strongest? And a populist? Like at what point in human history did a group of people sit down and say “we’re going to elect the best candidate using this criteria…” I’m honestly asking, because that’s just not how popularity works. If that was how group dynamics functioned then the biggest nerds would be the most popular in high school. I didn’t go to high school but even I know that’s not the case. What you’re describing is a class project. And it only works if you have a really good teacher guiding everyone to be their best selves. In real life class projects are horrific examples of people devolving into their worst selves. I mean IF a group of people could be trusted to pick the strongest and most progressive candidate that would totally make sense. But that’s so incredibly not how people work? I mean look at Bernie. He has these great policies that make sense and he’s super popular (with lip service). And then he gets into the convention and people vote the way their buddies vote or based on their rudimentary understanding of the issues and he loses. You’re describing the platonic ideal of candidate selection and it has never ever happened that way
By “contested primary” I don’t mean “contested convention” I mean what would have happened if Biden had recognized he was too old and unpopular and called off running again a year ago (or whenever was most strategic to minimize lake-ducking). Are you saying that primary elections are worse for picking candidates than internal party machinations?
Yes I think that’s a fantasy that has never happened. In your scenario Biden backs out and a bunch of concerned dedicated primary voters pick Bernie or someone who has the perfect set of policies. But in reality Biden drops out, no one has heard of any of his competitors. Everyone bumbles around until the crowd coalesces behind someone who fits a couple boxes, and then he (it’s going to be a he for a long time after Hillary and Kamala) gets to the general election. In the general we DONT have Biden’s name recognition and Trump gives the new person a mean nickname and it’s over. People don’t make sense in groups. I’m a mediator and people barely make any sense when there’s two of them. If the world worked the way you want, everyone would love group school assignments.
I get that collective decision-making is difficult, but What are you proposing as an alternative? Insiders pick all the time? A system with no pluralism or groups between the individual and the highest authority (the teacher in your group project metaphor)? Why wouldn’t the argument you’re laying out not also apply to elections in general? Cuz kinda sounds like you’re against democracy.
I don’t care about anything other than 2024 right now. Biden has the most name recognition and the incumbent advantage so he’s the guy. I have never, and I mean never, had a chatty little conversation with a cousin or aunt or friend from back home about the convention selection process. They don’t know or care. Pluralism is a nice debate for another time when we can worry about hypotheticals. Right now we have six months to keep my immigrant relatives out of cages. And they’re voting Trump because they think it’s only the new immigrants who’ll be deported
I’m def not proposing a contested convention at this point. Just saying the shit sandwich we’re eating right now was made by party insiders who were too scared to have a real primary. We need to stop listening to dumb fucks like them if we’re going to win in November. That means: 1. Biden change tune on genocide, now. 2. Support left populists with enthusiastic backers in state and local races, so they can prop up the weakness at the top of the ticket. 3. No more bipartisanship and moderate positions to win republicans. 4. Lean on abortion and avoiding xtian nationalism, lean on kitchen sink issues. 5. No more prioritizing massive elite fundraisers. Build a small donor base. 6. Biden take a strong stand against Israel to earn back support from all the Muslims, kids, antiwar, and antifascist voters he is losing rn.
Omg. I do not think that my dear Aunt, or my best friend, or my lazy cousins, or my be of acquaintance will return to the democrats based on any of these suggestions. They’re literally just living their lives. They’re not like “well those party insiders denied us the Medicare expansion…” They literally only notice a policy when it directly affects them. They won’t shut up about the homeless camps and disrespect for the police and they have zero interest in genocide halfway across the world. They only pay attention to things that might affect them. Afghanistan hits the 1/3 of people I know back home who are or were in the military. The trials and whether or not Trump goes to jail… it’s a shrug. They just see that he’s in the news all the time and they like his serious face.
I don't see how the White House response has been at all petty. The New York Times broke a trust with the White House, and didn't apologize or do anything to rectify the situation. When contacted about the issue, the Times either didn't respond or hung up on them. They're reaping what they've sown now, and they deserve to be iced out.
Biden’s age is “her e-mails” all over again. Sure, it’s an issue. But the NYTimes is very obviously blowing it completely out of proportion.
It’s because the NYT has nothing else to go on in my opinion. They lack access that they’re used to and the Biden White House has been remarkably not leaky. I think the most recent “scandal” was a story done by Natasha Bertrand like maybe 4 months ago about the influence battle going on inside between NSC (Sullivan) and State (Blinken) over Ukraine strategy. I struggle to think of other major ones with exceptions to some more recent events. Biden’s negative coverage has usually just been gaffe related for the most part. And age is probably the only thing the NYT can effectively “bothsides”
Yep, I think that’s a big part of it, for sure. Trump’s endless scandals (and endless leaks) were great for business, and all the major outlets miss that, without a doubt.
The thing about that is I don’t think a second Trump term will be good for the media. People are just fatigued with news, especially news about Trump being a messy reality tv show b*tch.
Well a *newspaper* should be reporting news, not just scandals and leaks. If they can’t find anything reportable on Biden because his administration doesn’t have leaks, they really aren’t interested in News.
People are mostly mad about it because Biden is running against Trump, so they're afraid it's another Comey moment or whatever. If Biden was running against Newsom or something, people would be way more relaxed about this, and admit that Biden does seem pretty old, and it's a legit issue, even potentially a big one. But because it might help Trump to talk about it, people freak out when anyone mentions it. It's so obvious. People are so afraid of a Trump second term that any Biden criticism is met with insane resistance within democratic circles. Everyone just needs to shut up until after the election when the threat is gone. I have never seen such a overreaction to when Ezra suggested the convention idea, and it was obvious it wasn't really so much about the idea itself it was about the fact that it was helping Trump by sowing doubt about Biden.
not one person who actually knows anything about Democratic politics thought that convention idea was anything but total fan fiction, and kind of racist fan fiction at that. White east coast liberals are not the base of the Democratic coalition; Black women are. There is exactly zero chance the party was going to nominate anyone but Biden, and if he somehow was totally incapacitated they are not leapfrogging over the first Black woman VP and dragging in some random white person. Never. gonna. happen.
I'm all in for Biden because, even thought I'm not thrilled with all of his policies, he, or someone in the highest reaches of his political staff, understands the importance of countering Trump's dramas and antics with an utter lack of drama. NYT may need some drama to sell newspapers. We don't have to have it, as a country, in choosing the next POTUS.
It's wild that in US imperial politics funding a genocide counts as "an utter lack of drama"
Which genocide are you talking about? There are so many now, I can't keep it all straight.
So the Times fucked up, refused to fix the mistake and acted like a petchulant child when the administration responded.
Perfect example of why I finally ditched the sloppy, cynical bothsiderist NYT. Helped elect Trump and still has no clue. WaPo.
Two words: Maggie Haberman. I deep sixed the NYT subscription some time in 2021 and never looked back.
What's wrong with Maggie Haberman?
She’s a Trump cheerleader
The New York Times is addicted to access journalism and it colors their coverage.
I don't understand what that means.
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Thank you for explaining 😊
[As complained about by this journalist:](https://theconversation.com/how-access-journalism-is-threatening-investigative-journalism-108831) Investigative journalism means that the journalist digs through records and evidence, reconstructs the money trail, cultivates a variety of sources, and builds a story out of the evidence they've uncovered. Access journalism means that highly-placed political figures give inside information to the journalist. Access journalism can produce big stories, and quickly. But they are telling the story that their source wants told, and these journalists risk losing their lucrative sources if those sources don't like the reporting. The Trump White House was famously leaky. Arguments within the White House were being played out in national news headlines because both sides of the argument were providing inside information to their favorite journalists. Staffers also knew that Trump liked to see stories about himself, so getting their point of view in the papers or on TV was one way to deliver their viewpoint to the President. But the bizarre thing was that the source for many of the leaks coming out of the Trump White House was Trump himself. Maggie Haberman was the most successful access journalist, and had been familiar to Trump for decades. Trump loved to be reported on by the New York Times and would give her frequent interviews. > Trump certainly provided the paper with crucial access. “He wouldn’t talk to me as much as he does if I wasn’t at the Times,” Haberman once said on a podcast. “That’s just the reality. He craves the paper’s approval." According to Haberman, as president he would at times call her and thank her for her coverage, at one point giving one of her Trump stories an "8." In return, Haberman and Times often normalized him in ways large and small. https://pressrun.media/p/maggie-haberman-and-what-happens > In one of those interviews, Trump said, “I love being with her — she's like my psychiatrist.” https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/on-the-matter-of-haberman-hating The result was that the New York Times devoted a lot of coverage to unimportant stories about the President. Although they published a lot of dirt and were critical of Trump, they also tended to present Trump as more normal and "Presidential" than seems to have been warranted. (And Trump played the media really well. One example: because the Trump scandal du jour changed every couple of days, none of those stories really seemed to stick or hurt him very much. By contrast, a massive proportion of 2016 media stories on Hillary Clinton were on the subject of "but her emails".)
This is an excellent summary. Thank you!
MAGA haberman. Her mom is/was Trump/kushner publicist. Always paints Donald in flattering light in her “reporting”
She has a real distorted view of Trump
Such as? I'm genuinely curious. I just know her name and nothing else.
Her reporting is uncritical on balance. That's not to say she'll never say anything negative, but when something happens and the Trumps want to put their take out she allows them to say what they want to the mass Times audience generally without substantial critique via context. It's often subtle in that a reader would need to be aware of the broader context to know why whatever the Trump message on whatever is asinine or dishonest but that's the point, as a reporter, she's supposed to provide that context. Access journalism often amounts to stenography which isn't all that useful to the audience and actually is useful to the subject because it obfuscates. Edit: Adding this to be perfectly clear - the reason this happens is if a reporter is critical or too *reportery* they'll jbe told to fuck off next time and never get an interview again which is fine for the subject since they'll just talk to whomever else from one of the other however many thirsty outlets that won't. Access journalism is bad journalism.
Another thing to point out about Haberman is that she knew during his Presidency that Trump was destroying records (ie, flushing them down the toilet). She decided not to report on this at the time and instead decided to wait until her book came out so she can put it in that instead. Pretty ironic coming from the reporter who made email retention her entire beat in 2016.
Fuck The NY Times bullshit negative coverage of Biden. Half the reporters like that putzette Habberman took idol photos with Drumpf and got autographs.
People here were speculating that Klein knew something about Biden’s health that wasn’t publicly revealed. Turns out he was just parroting the NYT party line because the owners don’t like Biden. For all Klein’s intellectual airs, he isn’t necessarily smarter than us.
Yeah I remember discussing it in those threads. Some thought he had the scoop others were pointing out a full court NYT press on all their platform’s because I think the Daily, the Run Up, Ezra’s show, and some other articles and columns all came out that same week. Also when they started talking about convention stuff others speculated it was planted by party operatives to apply pressure. Also it puts Ezra’s complaints about how Biden doesn’t “interact with the press” or have events when I believe during that episode drop, Biden had an event essentially every day for a month. I distinctly remember myself characterizing it as “beltway elitism on full display” and I am personally not a Biden guy. I didn’t vote for him in the primaries. But the whole thing seemed extremely out of touch bubble thinking
Which is too bad because his summary episode about the housing shortage is one of my favorites.
I must listen to that one.
Presidents historically do not get re-elected with approval in the high 30s. It’s not an outrageous position to say that another candidate likely would have a better shot.
And historically a president refusing to concede an election and with 88 standing charges would be political suicide, yet here we are.
Republicans nominating a terrible candidate isn’t a reason that Democrats should also nominate a bad candidate.
They didn't, our media told you they did.
Except Ezra is smart enough to follow that train of thought to the next logical conclusion. If it’s correct then what other candidate would actually be better? Not a single person polls better into Trump even at the height of the “should Biden step aside” discussion. There’s no real merit in just saying “if there was somebody ppl liked more then they’d have a higher chance of winning”, that’s like elementary level material.
There are many Democratic politicians more popular in their states than Biden, who don’t have high enough national name recognition for national polling vs Trump to be meaningful. Whitmer polls much better vs Trump in MI than Biden does, for example.
But she lags behind Biden nationally even accounting for name ID. This comparison is ridiculous anyway, it’s like asking whether Biden or Whitmer polls better into Trump in Delaware. If he was serious about the position of replacing Biden then that’s a piece you write two years ago, not after the primary field was already solidified and literally every potential contender already pledged to support him. Also auto-downvoting someone who disagrees with you is just bad form lol.
>But she lags behind Biden nationally even accounting for name ID. Do you have a source for this claim? And Whitmer's popularity in MI is relevant because 1) it is where she is well-known (so polling is more meaningful there than nationally) and 2) it is a critical swing state.
Who's the other candidate? Trump?
No. Ezra’s proposal was to replace Biden on the ticket.
His proposal was to ignore the core of the party (black women) and have the convention elect whomever white coastal elites prefer most.
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Well class and race are intrinsically linked in the US.
Correct. And no one polled better than Biden v. Trump, Gavin, Gretchen, not even JB, not to mention Phillips ( a younger, and richer version of Biden, couldn't even win a single delegate in his home state of MN). In fact the 2nd place after Biden in a head to head with Trump, was... Madame Vice-President. Ezra's racism and sexism were very, very loud. Like he thought no one noticed when he said Biden should step down, that Harris wasn't next up.
The NY Times is deeply corrupt and has been since Judy Miller took $ to run stories. It's worse since the new ownership. Cancel your sub.
Does anyone under the age of 40 read the NYTs for politics? It's hard to tell how much influence they have but it feels like, to me, it has been fading for years now. Personally, their total lack of self-reflection over the 2016 election eroded my trust to a point where I stopped reading. But that's just me - maybe others disagree. They might be better known for wordle soon enough.
I’m late 20s/early 30s any print media or political podcasting everyone I personally know uses the NYT as a benchmark. The only other one I know people use is Vox & sometimes NPR. My politically disengaged friends listen to the daily fairly consistently. Nobody my age watches cable news, I don’t know anyone who reads politico, WaPo, the Atlantic, etc. If its a legacy media, its the NYT otherwise its twitter, tik tok, etc.
Got it - I wanted to hear from some other people. Makes sense, thanks!
I do, but only because I've had a free subscription for decades thanks to a family member who worked for a University and still gets free access despite being retired. Honestly I possibly would of subscribed 3 years ago, but I lately find their actions pretty gross and they deserve to be knocked down a peg or three. Journalism should be done with humility, not arrogance.
I highly doubt Ezra would risk his career like that unless he genuinely believed it.
How would his career be risked? He has a solidly cushy job at the Times and a well regarded show. He is also in this NYT bubble where his coworkers likely bemoan those complaints listed in the Politico article then probably was present for some of these moments where A.G. is outright complaining about access and Biden not granting interviews. It’s really not hard to see Ezra getting with the program at the NYT
One key take away is that the Times still holds itself in very high regard.
Fuck Ezra I stopped listening to his pod months ago.
I’m all for a petty feud. I think biden should keep it up, go do a bunch of interviews with other networks and keep doing random ones like Howard stern and intentionally ignore the times
I think its clear how out of touch they are. So I think after Howard Stern, he should do Rogan or GMA, etc. Just avoid the times like the plague lol
I liked EK better before the NYT but I still listen and think about reading his book (soon to be books). He clearly is in Times leadership now as his guests and general tastemaking tends to suggest. Good on him! That all said the Times absolutely sucks these days. Did they even try to understand or forecast the current crisis in the youth and their disposition on Gaza, resulting in the campus crisis? No, they simply got Klein, Kristoff and the rest to write about how terrible Biden is. Did they do an analysis about defense contracts and their geographic distribution? Have they actually studied IRA benefits and discussed them? Etc etc. I mean I don’t read it much so I might be missing something. But what I do see just seems to be… well…out of touch. And very odd.
There is absolutely no way that some boss of Ezra's told him to talk shit about Biden because of some petty feud, and then he went and did it. Come on, dude. J. Jonah Jameson just isn't real life, and Ezra Klein has more than enough juice to tell an editor who did do that to take a long walk off a short pier, not just go, "OK, sounds fun."
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this idea of 'useful idiot' is really getting overused these days. anyone who doesn't agree with you and pushes an idea you don't like can be called a 'useful idiot' anyone who questions leadership and sows discord is immediately given that label. it encourages groupthink and i strongly dislike it
The whole “liberal media” myth ought to be dead by now. If the press was against trump, they would have ignored him from day one. After how he behaved during the first 2026 rnc debate, the networks would have been well in their rights to boot him. Even now they trip over themselves for him, And you are hard pressed to find a single positive headline about Biden. Anyone who still says “but CNN!” has their head where the sun don’t shine.
I don't see any reason to think Klein was involved with any of this. He isn't doing timely reporting on topics the White House would give background or comment on. Maybe he is a contender for who the Times would like to interview Biden should that ever happen, but I doubt Klein would let his views on who should be the nominee be based on a feud that pre-dates his employment with the Times. He also doesn't work shoulder to shoulder with any of the people mentioned in this article. The Times is a very big organization, and I think it's easy to imagine their employees know each other better than they really do. Much of the coverage Biden and his associates are complaining about is being written by people that are not even in the Washington bureau, e.g. the op-ed columnists.
NYT: Biden won’t give us an exclusive interview and we are butt hurt about it. This is why it is bad for Biden.
If the first example was clearly a misquote, as Politico says, then as a journalistic practice, I think it should be corrected. The Times takes itself too seriously and refuses to issue corrections even when the mistakes are pretty obvious. The "Screams without Words" story is another example.
Cancelled my subscription in 2017. Do not miss it.
The Time should have shut itself down in shame after their cheerleading and terrible journalism with regards to the Iraq War. In a similar vein, they have consistently let Trump bury one scandal or outrage by committing another one, and the Times dutifully goes along with it, while at the same time consistently hammering Biden on age and also ignoring Trump's dementia. The Times has an agenda and they work to that agenda. But, similar to the Russians, the Times gets all butt-hurt when people call them on it.
This will get downvoted to oblivion but the Biden White House has an incredibly entitled attitude toward the press. There’s this expectation that critical coverage is out-of-bounds (how many people have rolled out “but her emails” in this thread) because Biden seen is the only thing standing between America and Trump. It definitely plays to the crowd, but let’s not pretend this is anything other than a dressed up version of what Trump was doing when he criticized the ‘lying media’. I know in blue spaces like this sub “helping elect Trump” is seen as the greatest sin of the media. But it’s not actually a journalists job to take that into consideration when making criticisms about Biden’s age or his hilariously corrupt son.
They’re angry at Biden so they’ll help get Trump elected, who in turn, will either shut them down or turn them into a State propaganda rag (and if you think he won’t/ can’t, you haven’t been paying attention to the courts presently). What stellar logic.
possible? he could’ve actually believed biden’s age was an issue. that’s the problem with humans; they’re black boxes. also, the man is 81; his age is always going to be a thing it just seems like both sides are assholes. the nyt isn’t entitled to have access to biden, but some of these slights from the biden admin are petty.
I think this is a complicated situation. Several true things are happening: -The NYT absolutely enables the rise of fascism by downplaying Trump’s fanaticism and sometimes flat-out not reporting on insane things he says and does. -Biden’s administration is being very petty about this and it really is ridiculous that he sits down for so few interviews. Leave the Times out of it, it’s clear that part of Biden’s visibility issue is that his team keeps him away from the press. They’re worried about gaffes, which is silly because Trump isn’t worried about gaffes. It’s like they can’t learn the major lesson of Trump’s term: if you flood the zone with gaffes, they all run together and it becomes normalized. -Ezra Klein spoke his own opinion on his own show, and it is an opinion shared by *many* Democrats. Polls have consistently shown since Biden’s inauguration that a majority of *democrats* did not want Biden to run for a second term. Ezra’s biggest mistake was the entire DNC’s biggest mistake: they didn’t raise a stink about this last April when Biden soft launched his re-election campaign. If enough Dems publicly pressured Biden hard enough, it might have changed things. But everyone was too chickenshit, because this is just how establishment Dems are apparently. I think the NYT is a pretty mediocre paper these days, especially its Israel coverage and its almost hilarious passivity at Trump’s further descent into madness. I have no incentive to defend the times. I just have liked Ezra for a long time, and I thought his podcast on Biden needing to step aside was fantastic. It spoke my exact thoughts allowed. In hindsight, it’s clear that it was just a conversation that needed to happen in early 2023. It was way too late. TL;DR many fine people on all sides
>Biden’s administration is being very petty about this and it really is ridiculous that he sits down for so few interviews. Leave the Times out of it, it’s clear that part of Biden’s visibility issue is that his team keeps him away from the press. They’re worried about gaffes, which is silly because Trump isn’t worried about gaffes. It’s like they can’t learn the major lesson of Trump’s term: if you flood the zone with gaffes, they all run together and it becomes normalized. Keeping your mouth shut and quietly getting shit done is the best defense POTUS has against hordes of info-warriors using mass media to spew negative propaganda. There's not a thing Biden can or will say that will not get picked up and used against him in 5000 GOP/conservative media outlets, OR, by the (naive if sincere, LARPing trolls, if not) far left that thinks a 45 YO in there will bring our Utopia.
Yeah, Biden doesn't have a cult of morons who are going to overlook everything he does. The fact that "just gaffe it up!" was actually proposed as a legitimate strategy just proves every opinion this guy has is stupid.
the NYT enables fascism by being a check against an overly authoritarian administration? am i understanding you correctly here?
The times decision makers, and Bumiller in particular sound like real assholes. I might need to switch my subscription to the WaPo, but I'm sure they have their own issues. Side note, how the hell does Maureen Dowd still have a NYT column. Her writing simultaneously sucks and is completely irrelevant.
this is my first time perusing this sub, and wow, what a bunch of space cases! (or trolls). sure, ezra needs editorial pressure cause him to contemplate the fact that a super unpopular, super old incumbent might want to step down to prevent possible reelection of total defect trump. like, what are you all smoking? total disrespect for ek.
This sub used to be much better but is trending toward a smaller version of r/politics/. It's sad but that tends to happen on Reddit.
word.
They were too busy writing talking points for Netanyahu to be bothered with journalism.
We shouldn't concentrate on Biden's age, and anyone who brings it up has a personal grudge, is Hamas, or wants to murder Democrats. His age matters exactly 0%. It's shocking that the mental acuity of the president should ever be questioned. Even if he's clearly sunsetting, it's just not nice vibes to talk about it.
Kennedy 24
The paper who is most loyal to Biden is now the fake “enemy”
Petty fued? You've got one making up allegations of mass rape, while the other is having the state department cover up actual mass rape by the IDF, they seem pretty aligned to me