The Patriot Post® · NYT Pivots Anti-Trump Coverage From Collusion to Racism
New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet made one thing clear in his leaked message to staff at an internal “crisis townhall meeting” last week: The paper will shift its anti-Trump coverage strategy. Baquet acknowledged that the vacuous Trump/Russia collusion story, which the Times had covered “better than anybody else,” didn’t bring about the desired result — President Donald Trump removed from office. So, Baquet noted, it’s time to change the paper’s coverage of Trump to be more focused on him being a racist who is dividing the country.
Of course, to our readers and the majority of conservatives, this news is not surprising at all. It has been evident for decades that the Times has a severe leftist bias, though that reality has certainly become even more pronounced since Trump’s election. However, what is incredible about Baquet’s comments is that he essentially argues the Times’s job is to be the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.
What transpired to bring about this “crisis” in-house meeting, according to Baquet, were several “significant missteps” in the paper’s reporting on Trump. For example, there was the paper’s headline change on its coverage of Trump’s speech following the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton — a change that came after the Times received a mass of complaints from its leftist readers for being too favorable toward Trump. The original headline read “Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism” but was changed to “Assailing Hate But Not Guns.”
The first headline was the least biased and most accurate representation of what Trump said, but that was a bridge too far for the Times readers who have been conditioned to believe Trump is the second coming of Adolf Hitler. Never mind the fact that Trump has consistently repudiated racism, as he did unequivocally once again in his speech: “In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America.”
Baquet’s instructions would be funny if they weren’t so deceitful and dangerous. While acknowledging that the Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Trump/Russia collusion story collapsed because there was nothing there, he pivoted to push another delusional and fact-free narrative of Trump being a racist who is seeking to divide America. Nothing could be further from the truth. But at the Times, it’s all about propping up the leftist anti-Trump narrative, not simply reporting the news.