Not the Headlines Extra: NYT publisher can't read the room

Reflections on a speech given recently at Notre Dame by the publisher of the New York Times.

Transcript

Well, talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy. The publisher of the New York Times is blaming Donald Trump for stifling free speech all over the world with his anti-media rhetoric. A.G. Sulzberger, during a speech at Notre Dame for students of international studies, said the press is under direct attack, both in the United States and in other countries as well, and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.

I’m not making this about Donald Trump. The publisher of the New York Times is making this about Donald Trump. And he’s blaming Donald Trump for enabling other countries to subdue their media. As if Donald Trump somehow has control over the constitution of other countries. Does the publisher of the NYT know that other countries don’t have the same constitution as we have here?

I just had a woman on this program not too long ago, Season 10, Episode 13 who lives in Canada and had her book published in the United States because she was afraid of being prosecuted for the content if it was published in Canada. Canada. But the NYT boss claims Donald Trump is working from some imaginary “anti-press” playbook seen in countries like Hungary and others. Oh, we’re headed toward being like Hungary. Where have we heard that before? Oh, yea. On the last episode of the Listening Tube! But it was because that was also the example used to describe how far so-called political scientists felt we were heading toward authoritarianism. Talk about taking something out of a playbook. Someone put the word out that the left is supposed to start comparing our future to the present Hungary as a way to sow more division.

Sulzberger went on to say in the speech that now the methods from the anti-pess playbook that spread to other countries has come home again now that Donald Trump is back in the White House.

Sulzberger also suggested the existence of an anti-press playbook in an opinion piece published by the Washington Post in September of last year, warning that Trump might use said playbook, using tax laws and the FCC and federal subsidies to punish the progressive press. Did I mention that the opinion piece written by the publisher of the New York Times was published not in the NYT, but in the Washington Post? Did the publisher of the NYT think that not enough people would see it if he published it in the NYT? Or just not the right people? One could conclude that the NYT and the Washington Post are using the same playbook now that Trump’s back in the saddle. Well, they are, and that playbook is the Associated Press Style Guide.

So, we didn’t hear any complaining from the NYT when Joe Biden was in office. Joe rarely called out the media, and when he did, it was because they weren’t singing his tune loudly enough. Biden’s press secretary got in front of the press several times a week and lied right to their faces and nobody said a word. You could always tell when she was lying because her eyelids would beat like a hummingbird’s wings. The Biden administration coerced social media companies into silencing conservative voices, and they went along with it for awhile. 

Sulzberger compares Donald Trump to these communist dictators when all the while the legacy media like the NYT and Washington Post and NBC, ABC CBS and CNN, MSNBC and NPR were about as close as you could get to state-controlled media. Most of our mainstream media was, under the last administration, a mouthpiece for the government. That’s why nobody was ever held accountable for anything during the Biden administration. There was barely any fourth estate to speak of when it came to not just asking tough questions, but follow-up questions, too. Far too often I saw the press just accept some cockamamie answer to a good question, clearly side-stepping the question, and nobody ever said something like, “But that didn’t answer my question.” or “Seriously, are you kidding me?” Where the press wasn’t already in cahoots with the Biden administration, the government badgered it into compliance. Remember the Disinformation Commission that lasted about a day and a half? That was clearly a way to grab more power over the press.

Now that we have a new administration, the press can’t take being called out for their follies. What’s more is Donald Trump makes himself available to the press more than any president in modern history. Joe Biden hid from the press and wasn’t allowed to answer questions without knowing them in advance and having note cards with what he should say. But Sulzberger thinks Trump is the threat to press freedom. Not just here in the United States, but in countries around the world.

There is a lot of fake news out there, and Donald Trump likes to remind us of that. And maybe the news in the NYT isn’t fake, but it’s certainly not the whole story. It’s not told in an unbiased way. The stories they choose to pursue and write, how and by whom they’re written, and the headline they’re given are all manipulated in a way that is meant to do more than simply inform us. 

When Donald Trump says the NYT is the enemy of the people, he’s at least half right. The NYT often displays its disdain for middle Americans and conservative values. 

But to blame Donald Trump for violence against journalists in other countries is pretty far fetched. Maybe the publisher of the NYT should ask how many journalists would still be alive today if we had a president who stopped wars instead of letting them start? How many journalists were killed or injured covering the chaos triggered around the world because the American press didn’t hold the Biden administration accountable for their poor diplomacy and lack of will to keep rogue governments in check? How many people no longer trust the media because of the obvious bias and manipulation from liberal outlets like the NYT? A liberal media, not Donald Trump, is the most dangerous thing that could happen to a journalist.

For all the investigative journalists at the NYT, they can’t figure out why their reputation is in the tank. The publisher of the NYT is trying to convince us that he’s some kind of canary in a coal mine when it comes to world-wide consequences when he can’t even read the room.

https://mail.yahoo.com/n/list/folders=1&listFilter=ALL_INBOX/messages/ABHJOoBRsfNuaCUDHwkIgC9l1hE?.src=ym&reason=novation

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nyt-publisher-blasts-trump-for-anti-media-rhetoric-says-free-press-is-under-direct-attack/ar-AA1ELTNa

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/new-york-times-publisher-says-we-re-not-the-resistance-hits-trump-for-anti-press-rhetoric/ar-AA1EM5g8