He didn’t pound on any desks
I thought the Times interview displayed Trump in all his shameful vanity and idiocy, but I guess I took the bait, because wise observers say they simply normalized him.
Just listened to this whole thing. https://t.co/2nVp0E2WzQ To me it was fascinating. But not in the way the participants find it so. From my POV it's… Normalization: live! From theirs: a very serious interview with the President of the United States.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) February 1, 2019
I agree, this interview should not have been normalized at all. If anything, Trump offered a view of the role of the press that is at best unhinged and at worst alarming: https://t.co/Jd3OzDAgCy https://t.co/f5oH8Y4oGi
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) February 1, 2019
More than three years after Donald Trump rode the down escalator inside Trump Tower to announce his radical campaign for president, more than three years after Trump began waging a vicious war on the free press in the United States and around the world, and years after Trump adopted dictator rhetoric and began smearing hardworking journalists as “Enemies of the people,” the New York Times still doesn’t have the collective spine to stand up to the Oval Office bully.
Signaling once again that the paper cherishes access above all, Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger on Thursday joined TimesWhite House reporters Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker for an on-the-record interview with Trump. Sulzberger was present ostensibly to press Trump on his use of “fake news” and his dangerous, unprecedented, and relentless attacks on the news media.
But, Boehlert says, it was just toothless, and Trump got to lie and ramble and lie with no consequences. Sulzberger should have pounded the desk and talked about Khashoggi for twenty minutes, but instead he just uttered some gentlemanly rebukes and left it at that.
He didn’t pound on any desks, and he didn’t raise his voice. In fact, Khashoggi was barely mentioned. Instead, the publisher basically pleaded with Trump, as if logic and nice words work with this tyrant.
The sad reality is that the Times is just another powerful media institution that has utterly failed to stand up to this radical president.
Doubly fearful of a brutal economic environment that puts all media players at risk and afraid to offend, while already being historically nervous about getting dubbed as part of the “liberal media,” the Times like so many other media outlets has opted for a get-along strategy with Trump. The paper is choosing to cling to its role as insider White House chronicler.
I suppose, but I think there’s an argument that its (mild) criticisms have more bite coming from the very establishment respectable paperofrecord yadda yadda Times. Maybe that’s just naïve though.
I don’t know if this kind of sit down does any good, but I don’t think pounding desks helps much either–that just plays into the whole “the liberal media’s against us” idea.
Maybe they need to bring a foam hammer and hit him over the head every time he lies. Though the risk of repetitive stress injury would probably be too high.
I dunno; they already think the supposed “liberal media” (which is a pretty bloody conservative institution) is against them plus none of them read the Times so what does it really matter?
A foam hammer? Now there’s a wasted opportunity. For all we know he might be into foam hammers.I’d suggest something slightly more ferrous. Maybe a nine iron? It might help accelerate the learning process, or at least provide the preceptor a deeper and more satisfying catharsis.
And again with a single paper in front of him on the desk. Real people doing real work don’t have single papers placed neatly in front of them. They have file folders…envelopes…piles…or, in the modern world, a computer.
Our ‘paper of record’ is The National Enquirer.