The New York Times has covered Trump well?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

On balance, we don't agree: We have a lot of respect for Maggie Haberman. We think she's plenty sharp.

In a recent appearance of Fresh Air, Haberman said the New York Times has done a good job covering Donald J. Trump. 

We agree with a lot of the specific things she said. On balance, though, we're inclined to disagree with her major point. 

What the heck did Haberman say? At Mediaite, Tommy Christopher presented transcript and tape of the relevant passage as she spoke with Dave Davies:

DAVIES (9/19/24): I’m interested in how you respond when people say that The Times and the media have given Trump credibility by treating things he says as if they should be taken seriously when they don’t deserve that treatment, or when he gives a garbled answer about, you know, say, child care, and it’s rewritten to sound clear and credible. 

In general, I mean, is there a point here?

HABERMAN: I think that the media does a very good job covering Trump. There are always going to be specific stories that could have been better, should have been better, that are written on deadline, and people are not being as precise as they should be. I think there is an industry, bluntly, Dave, that is dedicated toward attacking the media, especially as it relates to covering Donald Trump and all coverage of Trump. And I think that Trump is a really difficult figure to cover because he challenges news media process every day, has for years. The systems are just fundamentally—they were not built to deal with somebody who says things that are not true as often as he does or speaks as incoherently as he often does. 

I think the media has actually done a very good job showing people who he is, what he says, what he does. I think most of the information that the public has about Trump is because of reporting by the media. And I guess I don’t really understand how this industry that literally exists to attack the press broadly—and the media is not a monolith. It’s not a league. But this industry that exists to do that—I don’t see how they think they are a solution by undermining faith in what we do. That’s been very confusing to me.

DAVIES: Yeah. Well, I mean, part of the attacks are, clearly are partisan. I mean, Republicans and Trump supporters are going to attack.

HABERMAN: I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about criticism on the left. I’m talking about a lot of—

[The fact] that Trump has used the language of despots to undermine the press is very well established, and it’s very dangerous. And I’ve talked about that. The publisher of The New York Times has been incredibly clear about that. He published an op-ed recently in The Washington Post actually talking about that. So I don’t think that anybody is in—at The New York Times is trying to sanitize Trump’s language. 

Do I think that there are occasional pieces at my paper, at other papers that probably should have been done differently? That’s absolutely true. And that’s—but that—what happens with this industry on the left that attacks the press is that it gets described as a grand conspiracy to try to help Trump somehow, as opposed to people doing their job on daily deadlines and not always hitting the mark because we are humans. And we are doing our best under a very challenging set of circumstances. But I actually think the media has done a very good job of covering Trump.

I think that what is frustrating to those people making those claims is that there is not the result they want to see, which is Trump melts or Trump no longer has, you know popularity. I mean, you were saying—I think your question was treat him with credibility. He’s the Republican nominee. So there’s a substantial voting bloc in this country—almost half—that take seriously what he’s saying. And it’s not because The New York Times wrote a certain story. And so to not understand that, I think, is problematic for folks leveling the charge.

For the full transcript and tape from Fresh Air, you can just click this.

We agree with a lot of the specific things Haberman said in the posted passage:

We agree that Trump is a [deeply challenging] figure to cover because of the volume of misstatements he emits. 

In the modern era, there has never been a major political figure who trafficked in flagrant misstatements in the way he does. For that reason, the basic systems of the mainstream press haven't been created to deal with such a figure.

We also agree with something Haberman may seem to imply: 

It isn't the job of a major newspaper to produce a certain political result, in which the public turns against Trump. 

It isn't the job of a major newspaper to produce a specific outcome! It's the job of a major newspaper to report and discuss major news events—and that's why we would suggest that the Times, and other news orgs, haven't done a bang-up job reporting on Donald J. Trump.

Again and again and again and again, Donald J. Trump makes crazy statements or publishes crazy Truth Social posts which go unrecorded by the paper of record. Here's a recent example captured by Mediaite:

Trump Reposts Fake Image Connecting Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs to Kamala Harris

Donald Trump on Friday reposted a fake image connect Vice President Kamala Harris and Sean “Diddy” Combs amid the entertainer’s federal sex trafficking case.

Last week, Combs was arrested at a hotel in New York City after being indicted for sex trafficking. According to the indictment, the 54-year-old “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him” for decades. He was charged with racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution...

You can continue reading from there. You'll be reading about the kind of garbage can conduct now associated with the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! program, another high-profile entity from which the Times averts its gaze.

It's bad enough when a "cable news" incel does it. But in this case, the conduct was performed by a major party nominee to be president of the United States.

Again, Haberman expressed a key point in her statement on Fresh Air. The mainstream press has never encountered a major figure like Donald J. Trump before. 

For that reason, they have no muscle memory telling them what to do in the face of conduct like his. There is no established procedure.

Our view? Conduct like that is front-page news when it comes from such an important political figure. You have to report that he did it again—and again and again and again.

"Something we were withholding made us weak." So said Robert Frost, speaking about this continent's British colonials before some among them decided to break away from Mothership England.

The fuller passage reads exactly like this:

The Gift Outright

[...]

Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

"Such as we were we gave ourselves outright," the poem says as it continues, while also noting this:

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

It's hard—it feels strange—to break away from established norms, to decide to do something entirely new, and major orgs like the New York Times have never had to deal with someone like Trump before.

In theory, they should have to deal with the reality of the present day. They should be reporting the reality found each night on the Fox News Channel, and they should stop withholding themselves it comes to the repetitive conduct of Candidate Trump.

It's actually news when he does these things. For that reason, major news orgs should figure out how to report it.

Existing systems weren't built to deal with Trump? We completely agree! But for that very reason, major orgs like the New York Times need to create new systems.

They need to devise the new way to report the news, create the language with which to perform that task. In our view, the person who appeared on Fresh Air is smart enough to do it.