Via aggregator Daily Newsbin, some deliciousness:
After months of negative stories about 2016 frontrunner Hillary Clinton which were almost bizarrely inaccurate and had to be repeatedly retracted, the New York Times has finally taken definitive action within its organizational structure to put a stop to the strange editorial agenda. Carolyn Ryan is now officially out as Washington Bureau Chief, and while the newspaper isn’t referring to it as a firing, the move was made after less than two years on the job.
The NY Times had been pushing various strange and false storylines regarding Hillary Clinton and her campaign. An article depicting doom and gloom for Clinton based on her standard-issue use of private email as Secretary of State was deemed so factually inaccurate that even after a comprehensive retraction was published, so much additional false information was found within the story that an unprecedented second retraction had to be issued. The article was deemed to be such a work of fiction that even the Times’ own Public Editor criticized the hatchet job.
To
quote Margaret Sullivan – the Public Editor in question – herself,
Arlene Williams, a longtime subscriber, wrote and objected to “what I see as jaded coverage concerning Hillary Clinton.” News articles and opinion columns are “just consistently negative,” she said. And Ben Lieberman of Acton, Mass., said The Times seemed to be “on a mission to cut her down to size.”
These readers aren’t alone. The press critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen wrote on Twitter: “I have resisted this conclusion over the years, but after today’s events it’s fair to say the Times has a problem covering Hillary Clinton.” Rachel Maddow said last week on MSNBC that the attitude of the national press corps, including The Times, is, “Everything Hillary Clinton does is a scandal.” And James Fallows of The Atlantic called what he sees as a Times “Clinton vendetta” a “serious lapse,” linking to a letter the Clinton campaign wrote in response to the Times story. [...]
To that end, [executive editor Dean Baquet] told me that he has urged reporters and editors to focus anew on issues stories. And he pledged fairness. “I’m happy to make a promise that she’ll be treated fairly,” he said, though he added, “If you look at our body of work, I don’t believe we have been unfair.” One testament to that, he said, was an investigative piece written by David Kirkpatrick shortly after the 2012 Benghazi attacks, with conclusions seen as favorable for Mrs. Clinton, who was then secretary of state. It came under heavy attack from the right.
But the Times’s “screw-up,” as Mr. Baquet called it, reinforces the need for reporters and their editors to be “doubly vigilant and doubly cautious.”
Opinions vary – of course – as to whether or not The New York Times is indeed the "best newspaper in the world", but one thing is clear: as the broadly accepted paper of record, what The Times writes and how carries great weight in setting the national discourse.
So this is not merely a matter of scoring points in the context of a primary election. The paper has after all also been criticized for its coverage (or lack thereof) of Senator Sanders.
What this move represents rather is this: a net plus for fair coverage of all Democrats in the nation's lead prestige medium, the one that sets the agenda for the remainder of the news industry. And that, I'd think, we can all get behind.
[UPDATE]: There is some controversy in the comments as to whether Ms. Ryan's reassignment from Washington to New York is in fact a rebuke for the coverage she oversaw, given that in her continuing role with the newspaper, she will still be in the politics department as senior editor.
My original headline, "NYT D.C. bureau chief out over failed Clinton coverage", implied causality. Media Matters, here, does the same.
The New York Times announced that current Washington Bureau Chief Carolyn Ryan was stepping down to become a political editor, and would be replaced by Washington Editor Elisabeth Bumiller. Ryan was bureau chief for less than two years, and during that time the paper published a series of flimsy and often inaccurate reports about presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, causing other media figures and their own public editor to heavily criticize the paper.
However, given the arguments raised in comments, some of which I concede are valid – there is some ambiguity in the situation – the headline now reads 'NYT D.C. bureau chief out
after failed Clinton coverage', which I believe is more accurate.