I don’t read the New York Times. Reading the Washington Post is sacrifice enough in the service of blogging.
However, a friend who does read the Times occasionally alerts me to that paper’s coverage of key developments. Today, he sent me the following message which I have edited slightly:
The New York Times has turned against Joe Biden on Afghanistan. For the last two days, it has covered for him. With only brief, passing mentions, the Times has suppressed the issue of American citizens trapped in Afghanistan.
Today, that is all changed. Not only is the issue of getting Americans out mentioned, the headline article in the print edition is: “Despair in Kabul Undercuts Biden on Rescue Effort: President Goes on Defensive as Criticism of U.S. Evacuation Grows Louder.”
Lower down on the front page is a devastating news analysis article by Peter Baker, reposted here
The analysis itself is unsurprising in content, although it adds pointed criticisms from Leon Pannetta and David Axelrod, which is extraordinary. For the most part, however, the Times just points out the various lies/contradictions constantly highlighted by Fox News.
The extraordinary thing is that the NYT is doing this, rather than suppressing it. It runs a fact check article exposing and disputing Biden’s various lies and misrepresentations.
When you’ve lost the New York Times. . . .
Why has Biden lost the Times? Is it because his Afghanistan withdrawal is too botched and too ugly for even the Times to defend? Because Biden’s lies about this insult their reporters’ intelligence? Or because the Times’ sources in the intelligence community and other key agencies have turned on the president, either due to policy differences, a desire to dissociate themselves from this fiasco, or Biden’s implicit (and quite possibly unfair) criticism of the intelligence he received?
I’m not cynical enough to discount the first two possibilities, and not naive enough entirely to discount the third.
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