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New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it (presswatchers.org)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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This is from May 7th, but I hadn’t seen it.

Joe Kahn, after two years in charge of the New York Times newsroom, has learned nothing.

He had an extraordinary opportunity, upon taking over from Dean Baquet, to right the ship: to recognize that the Times was not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy presented by a second Trump presidency.

But to Kahn, democracy is a partisan issue and he’s not taking sides. He made that clear in an interview with obsequious former employee Ben Smith, now the editor of Semafor.

Kahn accused those of us asking the Times to do better of wanting it to be a house organ of the Democratic party

. . . And to the extent that Kahn has changed anything in the Times newsroom since Baquet left, it’s to double down on a form of objectivity that favors the comfortable-white-male perspective and considers anything else little more than hysteria.

Throwing Baquet under the bus, Kahn called the summer of the Black Lives Matter protests “an extreme moment” during which the Times lost its way.

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[–] Blackbeard@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Some responses to Kahn's lunacy:

What most people want is for the media to spend less time on the horserace and more time on the stakes of this election; and to specifically call out the threat that is a second Trump presidency. There have been a lot of very good stories, but there could always be more. In general — and this is a complaint I have had about the New York Times that is two decades old — I wish they would take good faith criticism from the Left with as much seriousness as they take bad faith criticism from the Right.

Kahn seems to think that polls about what people see as the most important issue should, at least in part, guide the paper’s decisions about what to cover. As a snapshot in time that sounds appropriate; if Americans care deeply about health care access, the Times should make sure to cover the issue of health care access. The problem comes in which way the causal arrow runs. Most of the time, news media don’t cover particular topics because the public thinks they’re important. The public thinks particular topics are important because the media are covering them.1 This is called “agenda setting,” known by communication scholars as one of the most important effects news media produce. As political scientist Bernard Cohen wrote in 1963, the press “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”

That's a lot to unpack — probably too much to do so in the limited space we have here. But, suffice to say, Kahn's answer feels overtly disingenuous. It is, of course, entirely feasible to express concerns about Trump's anti-democratic rhetoric and acknowledge them in a real way without morphing into a "propaganda arm" for President Joe Biden. In fact, I am not aware of anyone who has called for The NYT to treat Biden like Fox News treats Trump (an aside, but has Kahn's outlet yet worked up the courage to label Fox News "propaganda" or is that only a term that gets thrown around when smacking down straw men?). As Hunter Walker posted on Threads, "If we agree that democracy is an objective good then, we must also grapple with what it means that Trump has tried to stay in power a different way. We need to be clear about authoritarian and even fascistic tendencies. This can, in fact, be objective." To be fair to Kahn, he is not the only news chief dodging the uncomfortable math before him. I'm not aware of any major newsroom leader who has discussed its complexities openly in public. But it is worth asking: If newsrooms are pro-democracy, and if their reporting indicates one candidate is opposed to democratic values, how can they feign ignorance on the 2024 race?

No one is asking you to join the Biden campaign, stop covering the flaws and foibles of Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, or to run a bunch of puff pieces about those candidates. But we are asking you to make it clearer — in coverage, and in emphasis and framing, and, yes, in your public statements — that your news organization is aware of the threats to democracy on the ballot in November. And that it is a core part of your mission to stand for democratic principles and to have news coverage reflect that consistently.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Kahn seems to think that polls about what people see as the most important issue should, at least in part, guide the paper’s decisions about what to cover. As a snapshot in time that sounds appropriate;

If that time is 1975. Looking at polls to drive the narrative is the dumbest thing to do in 2024. Polls are complete garbage.