The executive editor of The New York Times said it's not the media's job to stop former President Donald Trump from winning a second term in office.
"It's the job of [President] Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening," Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn told Semafor.
Kahn said the role of a newspaper is to cover the issues that concern voters.
"At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it's not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second," he said. "Should we stop covering those things because they're favorable to Trump and minimize them?"
The New York Times should not be an instrument of the Biden campaign, Kahn said.
"We turn ourselves into Xinhua News Agency or Pravda and put out a stream of stuff that's very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side?" he said.
Some press watchers and some on the left have criticized The New York Times for not being supportive enough of Biden. Kahn noted that the newspaper has covered Biden's legislative achievements, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill.
"So I think you'd get a pretty well-rounded, fair portrait of Biden," Kahn said of his newspaper, which traditionally sets the tone for much of news coverage in the U.S. "Of course, you'd also see some coverage about his frailty and his age."
Kahn said The Times has praised Biden for showing engagement and mastery over some details of foreign policy, on the Ukraine war with Russia, the building or rebuilding of NATO, and "the very, very difficult task of managing Israel and the regional stability connected with the Gaza war."
Kahn said the tumult on campuses all across the country over the Middle East conflict is a "giant story."
"It feels, to me, 1968-ish, in terms of youth culture, campus culture," he said. "The disaffection of young people toward establishment-everything, including establishment media [and] the Biden administration, but school administrators, too. We're still at the early-middle stages of understanding the totality."
Peter Malbin ✉
Peter Malbin, a Newsmax writer, covers news and politics. He has 30 years of news experience, including for the New York Times, New York Post and Newsweek.com.
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