I'm Not Here to Make Friends

Part of freedom of the press should include them being willing to hear criticism of themselves

Earlier this week, the publisher for the New York Times made the statement you see above.

Several NYT journalists really loved it and went further to accuse critics of wanting publications to reflect readers’ views back to them. How incredibly arrogant and tone deaf. I don’t need any media outlet or publication to reflect my views. In fact, I don’t want to hear their views at all, I want information. We simply want honest and accurate reporting. If they want to obsess over President Biden’s age and mental acuity, they should also obsess over Trump’s age and mental acuity in the same way.

Do you know why they don’t? When they cover Biden, they get clicks from his supporters who are upset *AND* clicks from people who want to read negative things about Biden. Trump supporters, on the other hand, won’t click on bad Trump stories – denying reality is kind of their thing – so it doesn’t increase clicks for NYT or any other publication. It truly is all about the clicks.

Maybe it’s hard to offer balanced coverage because one candidate is normal and the other a pathological narcissist who idealizes authoritarians? It’s deeply ironic to me the journalists who refuse to acknowledge this will be among the first to complain when Trump censors/fines/shutters their news organizations for doing exactly what he has told us he is going to do but they only briefly discussed it before being distracted by the newest shiny object in the 24-hour news cycle.

The media landscape is in flux, of that there is no doubt, and many people cannot or do not want to pay for news. A sad reality is reading the news isn’t as popular as it once was, but maybe that has more to do with the competition of short videos and podcasts and less to do with people reading less overall (I hope). For the purposes of this discussion it’s immaterial because the fact remains that fewer people are paying the large publications that still support independent journalism. It makes me sad, but I’m also upset journalists and the publications and companies they work for refuse to acknowledge their role in this.

This week my husband wrote a unique piece on the grave danger posed by Trump’s invitation for Putin to attack NATO. He submitted it for publication to several major outlets, all of whom rejected it. He has a very successful Substack, but was hoping for a wider audience. Yesterday a national security reporter from one of those publications called him and he shared with her many of the things in his piece and she loved the analysis and said she hadn’t heard anyone say it such a succinct and clear way. I’ll leave you to conclude from that what you like…

There are a handful of journalists over the years who have attacked me in DMs. Their criticisms are always some variation of ‘how dare I criticize them’ and at least two have felt the need to point out they defended Alex. Ummmm, okay, thanks? He didn’t do anything wrong so I’m not sure why they felt the need to defend him. Support, on the other hand, is much appreciated but I didn’t realize I would be expected to pledge loyalty in return. Some people are very high on their perceived self-importance.

I have many more screenshots like this 🤣

There are many journalists out there doing great work and calling out lies particularly in on air interviews (Brianna Kielar’s interview with Beth Van Duyne was so good).

A few years ago we attended the Gridiron dinner in D.C. which was a lovely event and a very prominent cable news anchor pointedly didn’t speak to Alex or me. I looked at him and literally laughed out loud that he thinks either of us would care. I will gladly call out anyone who seeks to profit from reporting salacious details about Trump for book deals and viewers and those who cover a convicted liar and fraud as equal to President Biden.

We learned in 2016 that media plays a critical role in shaping voters’ views on candidates and the discussions about them. I am trying to do my part to save democracy and, at the risk of sounding like a contestant on The Bachelor, I didn’t come here to make friends.