Earlier this month, in proceedings reportedly leaked from an internal meeting of The New York Times top staffers with Executive Editor Dean Baquet (they leak there, too), Mr. Baquet matter-of-factly observed that “We built our newsroom to cover one story, and we did it truly well.” But things didn’t work out as planned, “Now have to regroup, and shift resources and emphasis to take on a different story.”
The new story for which he’s rebuilding his newsroom to cover is race, with emphasis on proving our president is a racist (hard to imagine The New York Times trying any harder at that). The old story dominating their coverage for the past two years has consisted of trying to prove that our president had “untoward relations with the Russians” and had committed obstruction of justice in the process. (They’ll not give up on the latter.)
But when Robert Mueller “walked off that witness stand,” the whole “collusion” thing fell apart. What that tells us about contemporary journalism and the man who oversees its practice at what is still considered one of the world’s great newspapers is problematic, to say the least. Nor is it just a matter of social and political bias at work here.
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