Bob Cesca: I've covered politics and worked in the news media for 35 years. The last 3 weeks have been the most
self-destructive, the most damaging to democracy, the most unethical three weeks for the political media I've ever observed. There are exceptions but it's nearly universal.
Link to tweet
= new reply since forum marked as read
What the fuck is that??
How did I miss that??
media is shit on a stick...
https://presswatchers.org/2024/05/new-york-times-editor-joe-kahn-says-defending-democracy-is-a-partisan-act-and-he-wont-do-it/
Joe Kahn, right, and Dean Baquet, in happier times. (NYT photo)
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:
But critics like me aren’t asking the Times to abandon its independence. We’re asking the Times to recognize that it isn’t living up to its own standards of truth-telling and independence when it obfuscates the stakes of the 2024 election, covers up for Trump’s derangement, and goes out of its way to make Biden look weak. Kahn’s position is, not coincidentally, identical to that of his boss, publisher A.G. Sulzberger, who I recently wrote about in my post, “Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that’s what the publisher wants.” 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. “I think we’ve learned from it. I think we found our footing after that,” he said. I translate that to mean that the old guard has reasserted total control over the rabble. But how, exactly, the Times lost its footing, he doesn’t explain. I’d love to see him point to a few articles that he considers went too far. Best I can tell, his real complaint is that the Times under Baquet hired too many young and diverse people who — in his view — don’t understand the rules. “I think there’s a larger number of people who we might at some point have hired, but we’ve asked the kind of questions or looked at the sort of work that they do, and wondered whether they’d be a good fit for us,” Kahn said, making it clear he won’t make that mistake again. His example was hyperbolic and not even vaguely credible:
I’d be willing to bet a large sum that no job candidate at the Times has ever said any such thing.
On Democracy
Here’s what he said:
(Smith had asked Kahn to respond to Pfeiffer, a former Obama official, who recently complained that the editors at the Times “do not see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power.”) That one paragraph, posted on social media by NYU professor Jay Rosen, elicited a storm of critiques. Cartoonist Ruben Bolling was among those upset by Kahn’s dismissal of democracy as a key issue.
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Trump brings in viewers. People who love him want to see him & people who hate him want to know what the fuck he's up to now. I couldn't believe when I read some of Howard Stern's most ardent followers are people who loathe him. Apparently they tune in to see what outrageous thing he'll say next.
On that note, some DUer said Howard did an excellent interview with President Biden, so I think I'll search it out today & compare Howard's interview to Lester Holt's. 
Great post. Rec
Also, how about a boycott of a complicit media...
https://democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=19193414
...
That's why I say I am not shocked at the same players doing the same thing again.
Will Dems ever learn the plays in the RW playbook?
They use the same plays over and over and over - and people are still shocked??
That is truly shocking. Child-like. Like Charlie Brown and Lucy.
love ya DU. 
The media reports what's happening. What about Trump is a secret? If Nancy Pelosi and Obama tell Biden he should step down should the media ignore that? I don't blame the messenger. I think we are in uncharted water here, and Pelosi, the NYT, Obama, other media, Biden, Shiff et al. don't have any better idea how to handle it than any other Joe. Just because we don't get the Trump thing doesn't no one out there does. 
We can do this. Also, keep it kicked. Anyone know if we can post it like the money link so even lurkers see it?
https://democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=19193414