Access isn't everything unless you are the New York Times. For well over two years many of us have seen the lengths the so called Grey Lady will go to in order to keep its access to Trump open and to keep critics at bay. Whether its arguing what a lie is and its shameful refusal to far often neglect to use that word or its columnists taking aim at readers on twitter or getting rid of its public editor, the NYT has been mostly a disgrace during and before there was a thing as the Trump administration and most tellingly after a Trump administration came to be.
The papers most recent and baffling decision to give in to the corrupt regime in Washington is its refusal to release audio it planned to play on its podcast, 'The Daily' of the White House senior adviser Stephen Miller. What's more is the paper's refusal to release so much as transcript of the interview.
The interview in its entirity was on the record, as the paper has stated. So what gives? Oh...the White House objected to its use on a podcast after the fact. Yes, you read that correctly, after the on the record interview was given the White House didn't want any portion of the interviews audio aired and yes the NYT said 'okey dokey'.
Would the NYT's have done this for a Democractic administration? Has it? Historical record on the NYT's and it's willingness to go to bat for Republican administrations before Trump is already clear, one only needs to look at the Iraq War coverage to see that and the papers refusal to clearly take stock at its dismal performance on the issue.
For the New York Times it's all about keeping the channels of access open even in these deeply troubling times.
As the news broke that the NYT's laid down for the administration once again, Truthdig reported yesterday:
On Tuesday, approximately an hour after President Trump took to Twitter to compare immigrants entering the United States to vermin, The New York Times issued a confounding statement.
“We conducted an extensive White House interview with Stephen Miller for a weekend story about the Trump administration’s border policy,” it read. “Miller was quoted, on the record, in that story. After the original story was published, producers of ‘The Daily’ [podcast] planned to … use audio excerpts from the Miller interview. White House officials objected, saying they had not agreed to a podcast interview. While Miller’s comments were on the record, we realized that the ground rules for the original interview were not clear, and so we made a decision not to run the audio.”
The weekend story in question traces the genesis of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance,” specifically how the president came to adopt the separation of immigrant children from their parents as policy. Written by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear, the piece quotes extensively from White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who emerges as the most dogged champion of the practice.
Why are so many at the NYT’s willing to be mere stenographers for Trump? While it’s been clear for sometime that its editor Dean Baquet certainly relishes his role as giving in to this administration whenever he can, even dismissing its sorely needed public editor, a role created after a major plagiarism scandal rocked to Times. Why did the Times dismiss its public editor at all? Was it because of the dismal role the paper played in the lead up to Trump and the editors critique about some of the arguments the paper played? All signs point to yes.
If you haven’t already cancel your subscription to the NYT’s.