erik lundegaard

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Monday October 14, 2024

Times, Times, Times, Look What's Become of Them - II

Saw this on social media over the weekend:

100%. Everything he says. The absolute dereliction of duty by our most respected news sources during the most dangerous time in my American lifetime is something that will not be forgiven. 

Here's the referenced NPR interview with Joe Kahn. Blather. Sure, the Times generally doesn't have to portray that “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our society,” but it should report what he says, without buffing it up, without dragging it toward the sensical; they should give it the same treatment and placement if Kamala or Biden had said something similar. Instead, it feels like there's a very low, almost nonexistent bar for Trump in Times coverage. On the stump, he could state the most atrocious things, and does, and is doing, and it rates nothing. 

This has been making the rounds as well. Kamala is called on ... what exactly? Bobbing and weaving? Because she's not as forthright as the Times demands? Because she focuses on what she wants to focus on? Meanwhile, Trump is not being called on ... what exactly? Overt racism? 

“Long-held fascination” is so awful there. “Yeah, it's just a hobby of his. Like stamp collecting.”

Margaret Sullivan has a SubStack post, “About Those New York Times Headlines,” and writes, of the “long-held fascination” headline:

The article itself got to the heart of the matter — but not until its 11th paragraph.

Trump, it noted, “has a pattern of using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly referred to immigrants who commit crimes as 'animals.'”

And later still, it noted that Trump's insistence that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” evokes “the ideology of eugenics promulgated by Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States.”

This is vile stuff. Cleaning it up so it sounds like an academic white paper is really not a responsible way to present what's happening.

I'd call it an absolute dereliction of duty. I don't know if anyone in the Trump era has disappointed me as much as The New York Times. They should be better. And they are utterly failing us.

Posted at 04:18 PM on Monday October 14, 2024 in category Media