Letters to the Editor: Is the backlash to Trump coverage too much?
There is plenty of commentary about the “anti-Trump” coverage in The New York Times, which is, of course, true. The Times, however, has also been criticized for not investigating more thoroughly the role of Russian government and other foreign agencies in undermining the 2016 election, and for its reluctance to question, even when doing so would have been justified (as in the case of Christopher Steele) or expedient (as in the case of the Times’s reporting on James Comey’s firing).
While I am not a “Trump hater,” I think it is essential that the Times examine its own past mistakes — not just regarding the Trump presidency but also regarding its coverage of President Obama’s first year in office. That is the subject of my latest article, “The Times’s anti-Trump crusade,” which appeared in the Washington Post on Oct. 13.
I will briefly summarize the points I believe most need to be addressed about The Times’s handling of its “Trump coverage,” then make a few comments on the matter itself.
1. The Times published two articles about Trump before he was even elected and just announced his candidacy.
I was writing about a Politico story that said the Times had been “under siege from Trump critics,” when “Trump news” started, because of some comments I had written for the New York Observer. However, I had already written an article that described my own experience as an editor, “The Trouble With Trump,” which was published in the October issue of The Hill, the official magazine of the U.S. Congress. The two pieces were linked on the Web (and were picked up by Politico and other media outlets), but neither appeared in the Post, which ran a two-page correction about the original Politico piece on Oct. 8.
In the two days that have transpired since, I have heard from readers who had read both my articles, and many more readers have tweeted at me about it, saying they agree with me completely. Many also have
