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US President Joe Biden holds the New York Times in his hand as he leaves for Delaware from the White House in Washington, US, May 15, 2021./Reuters
On the 26th of last month, US President Joe Biden visited a media outlet in Manhattan, New York and gave an interview for about an hour. Most of it was a revamp of content that had already been included in the autobiography, including the story of his wife and his first daughter who were lost in a car accident, his eldest son who was lost to cancer, and his days of despair.
Said Biden, “The Republican Party is no longer the Republican Party that your father’s generation knew. ‘Because Trump will attack.'” He also said, “I’m ready to negotiate with Trump.” But there was no news.
However, the media he visited was not the New York Times (NYT). This was the ‘Howard Stern Show’, a radio and online talk show that had invited celebrities for decades without hesitation to make provocative and vulgar comments. The main audience is economically affluent white men, and the number of subscribed listeners reaches 34 million across the United States.
Host of The Howard Stern Radio Show/Facebook The Howard Stern Show
Howard Stern was once close to Trump, but as he has gone increasingly left, he now often mocks Trump on air. Trump calls him a “broken weirdo.”
Last March, Biden sat down for a long interview with the traditional magazine The New Yorker. However, although it is true that his leftist tendencies have increased, he has never had an interview with the New York Times, one of America’s representative media and known as the ‘newspaper of record’. AG Sulzberger (43), NYT publisher and chairman, and senior editorial officers requested a direct interview with the White House several times, but the White House refused.
In relation to this, Politico, an American political media outlet, recently presented the background to the discord between the two sides, saying, “The conflict and misunderstanding between the NYT and the White House goes back five years.” According to Politico, Biden aides accuse the Times of being “arrogant, thinking they were naturally qualified (for the interview), and unfairly reporting Biden.”
On the other hand, the Times reporters said, “The White House doesn’t understand our job. “Why should they like our reports?” he said.
◇ When the NYT refused a White House official’s request for ‘anonymity’…
It was an article published on Sunday, March 26th last year that exploded the conflict that had been building up for years. It was an article about the candidate for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator nominated by Biden voluntarily resigning over opposition from the Republican Party, which said he “didn’t have enough aviation history.”
The NYT Washington bureau reporter who wrote this article asked the White House press office for comment on the candidate’s withdrawal late Saturday night. Abdullah Hassan, assistant White House press secretary, provided the view: “Unfortunately, due to unfounded attacks by Republicans, the nomination process in Washington has been delayed and blocked by unnecessary procedural obstacles in the Senate .”
However, this reporter, who was not part of the NYT White House reporting team, broke the convention of ‘anonymity’ and put Hassan’s name in the article. Deputy White House Spokesperson Emily Simmons saw the article online and asked the NYT’s Washington bureau chief, whom she contacted after making inquiries, to omit Hassan’s name and write it as “an unnamed White House official”.
NYT bureau chief Elizabeth Bumiller, who was spending the holidays with her family, was outraged by the request to edit the article 12 hours after it was published online. Just as Deputy Press Secretary Simmons was about to raise another issue regarding the Times coverage to the White House, Deputy Miller stopped her.
The next day, White House Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton sent an email to Boo Miller asking him to follow the practice of citing White House sources as ‘unnamed officials’ like other media outlets. Bumiller did not answer.
Now it was the turn of the White House to ‘react’. The White House later removed all NYT reporters from the list of “tier one” reporters who provide all background information and information. This measure was in force for 11 months and was only recently lifted.
The NYT bureau in Washington believed that this ‘retaliatory move’ exposed the White House’s media policy of controlling reporting about the president. In the eyes of American conservatives, the lack of trust and dissatisfaction between the NYT, an ‘icon of progress’, and the Democratic President came to the surface in this way.
◇ NYT was indifferent to Biden’s presidential run five years ago
Biden was very close to NYT reporters and editorial executives during his 50 years in politics. But there were no NYT reporters at the informal event in early 2019, when he announced his third bid for the White House and made his first appearance at a pizzeria. Reporters from two other media were notified. The explanation from Biden’s public affairs team at the time was that, unlike other media outlets, the NYT had not invested in building a reporting team familiar with Biden, so there were no reporters they knew.
In fact, at the time, the NYT considered Biden a ‘retiree’ who could not get along with more progressive and younger Democratic voters. In the Democratic Party primary, he also publicly supported two US senators, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, rather than Biden.
In Biden’s opinion, this tone was a worldview that was far removed from that of ‘real’ voters. When he became the Democratic presidential candidate and visited NYT headquarters for a NYT-sponsored interview, Biden took a commemorative photo with a grinning NYT security guard in the elevator.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who visited the headquarters in Manhattan, New York City in 2019 to interview the editors of the New York Times, talks to NYT security guard Jacqueline (31). Jacqueline told Biden, “I like you,” and Biden said, “Me too,” and took a picture of them together with a smartphone camera.
For Biden, these security officers were the ‘real’ voters. Biden, who prides himself on being from the American working class, was angry that the Times, subscribed to by the progressive elite, did not recognize him.
◇ White House angry: “Democracy is in crisis, but we are treated equally with Trump.”
Biden’s public affairs team is displeased that the NYT often tries to be neutral and does not take sides at a time when it is considered a ‘life or death moment for American democracy.’ Although Trump and Biden have different views on democracy, the NYT blurs these differences with neutral reporting.
For example, the NYT compared Biden’s 81-year-old age and low approval rating to Trump’s call for more defense spending by NATO countries, which he said would “tell Russia to do whatever it wants” if they don’t comply. The point is to highlight and report it. Even in early March, the NYT published an article saying, “The majority of voters who voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election think he’s too old to work effectively.”
Kate Berner, who was the White House’s deputy communications director until last year, said, “Democrats believe in the importance of a free press to maintain our democracy and that the NYT, as the Fourth Division, has been an important standard for generations that have failed with fulfilling his important responsibilities,” he said on social media.
◇NYT “Why should the White House like our reporting?”
Of course, NYT reporters think differently. Washington center head Bumiller countered to POLITICO, saying, “We are a force of liberal democracy, not a force in the Biden White House.”
He said, “What and how to write is the prerogative of the newspaper. Neither has liked our reports, but I don’t see why they should. “Our job is to hold those in power accountable,” he said.
◇ If you criticize Biden, reporters will be cut off
NYT reporters have often experienced being cut off from the White House and administration sources when they write stories that Biden or the White House don’t like. NYT columnist Maureen Dowd has reportedly cut ties with White House officials after writing a scathing column about President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
NYT reporters interpret that what traditional American mainstream media experienced during the Trump era ultimately distorted the Democratic Party’s view of the media.
“Every White House in the past has complained about our reporting,” Peter Baker, a senior reporter on the NYT’s White House reporting team, told POLITICO. Of course we think so too. “But when people thought that because of their relationship with Trump, the NYT would now side with Biden, we didn’t.”
NYT reporters say the White House’s displeasure and frustration is a “misguided attempt” to control the direction of reporting. Also, if Trump is criticized more strongly, as the Biden White House wants, it will have a more negative impact on the NYT’s reputation and people’s trust in the paper than on Trump.
◇ NYT Publisher: “To prove the 81-year-old can serve as president, he must interview us.”
However, it is also true that the NYT desperately wanted an interview with Biden. The NYT has conducted lengthy interviews with every US president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Even when Vice President Kamala Harris visited NYT headquarters in New York last May, Chairman Sulzberger repeatedly asked, “Why isn’t the president interviewing us?” Later, Harris reportedly complained to an aide that she had wasted valuable time with the ‘presidential interview.’
Sulzberger is said to have often told editorial staff and senior White House officials privately, “Only an interview with a newspaper like the New York Times can prove that 81-year-old Biden can still serve as president.”
Even Donald Trump gave a long interview to the New York Times in March 2019 while he was still president, calling it “fake news.” Sulzberger says, if Trump can do it, why can’t Biden (interview)?
In relation to this, a NYT reporter told Politico, “Sulzberger himself is angry about Biden’s refusal to be interviewed, so he secretly encourages continuous reporting on Biden’s age.”
◇ White House, interviewing the president is NYT’s natural right?
The NYT believes interviewing the president is its “birthright,” but the Biden White House disagrees.
The White House public affairs team actually shares information with the Pitchbolt team on Social Media Biden, as if the NYT wanted him to listen, said, “I like that guy. “I have to interview that person,” he jokes.
In early January, Biden’s re-election camp invited reporters from the largest media in the United States to the camp’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, and held a meeting. Reporters from NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Reuters, and Bloomberg were invited. The White House later told the media that the meeting was “concrete and productive, with the exception of the NYT.”
Given this discord and the accumulated misunderstandings between the two sides, some say it is understandable that Biden refuses to be interviewed by the NYT. Biden’s public affairs team also needs to use new media beyond traditional print media. Among the print media, only the Associated Press and the New Yorker magazine interviewed Biden.
However, the New Republic, a progressive media outlet, said, “Biden should not avoid the NYT when dreaming of a second term. “Answering the constant questions of reporters is an opportunity to allay concerns about whether he is fit for the presidency,” he said.
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