Who is Arthur Gregory Sulzberger? The wikipedia article at the link gives his bio. Is he a “Nepo Baby”? From the biography link:
...On December 14, 2017, it was announced that Sulzberger would take over as publisher on January 1, 2018. He is the sixth member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family to serve in the role.[3][31] Though The New York Times Company is public, all voting shares are controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger Family Trust. SEC filings state the trust's "primary objective" is that the Times continues "as an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare".[17] On his first day as publisher, Sulzberger wrote an essay noting that he was taking over in a "period of exciting innovation and growth", but also a "period of profound challenge". He committed to holding the Times "to the highest standards of independence, rigor, and fairness".[32]
As publisher, he oversees the news outlet's journalism and business operations.[33] Sulzberger has been the principal architect of the news outlet's digital transformation and has led its efforts to become a subscriber-first business.[34] He became publisher on January 1, 2018,[35] succeeding his father Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.,[26] although the elder Sulzberger remained chairman of The New York Times Company until the end of 2020.[36] A.G. Sulzberger became the chairman of The New York Times Company on January 1, 2021.
emphasis added
Note the word “independence” in his list of standards. It will be important.
The Abbreviated Pundit Roundup had links to a number of stories, most about the SOTU address, but one particular link caught my eye:
Dan Froomkin at Press Watch has taken a look at recent remarks by Sulzberger, and finds elements in Sulzberger’s conception of what proper journalism should be, and it explains much about the way “the Gray Lady” AKA “The Paper of Record” has been covering Trump and Biden, Republicans and Democrats.
I will make no secret of my perception that there is something wrong at the paper. (See here, here, and here.) Lucian K. Truscott IV at Salon also has some pointed remarks.
Froomkin thinks he has found where the problem is coming from.
...Publisher A.G. Sulzberger — perhaps unintentionally — showed his hand in a speech on Monday at Oxford University on “Journalistic Independence in a Time of Division.” His ostensible goal was to defend the Times against its critics. But the two biggest takeaways, in my view, were as follows:
One: Sounding the alarm, it turns out, is anathema to Sulzberger’s notion of independent journalism. Independent journalism should instead “empower our fellow citizens with the information they need to make decisions for themselves.” There are plenty of other people sounding the alarm, he insisted. “Indeed, the alarm seems so loud and so constant that much of the public has by now put in earplugs.” Furthermore, he said, “journalists don’t serve the public by trying to predict history’s judgments, or to steer society to them.”
And two: According to Sulzberger, independent journalism requires being “willing to take a simple, easy, or comfortable story and complicate it with truths that people don’t want to hear.” He described it as a badge of honor that “independent reporting — the kind that doesn’t fully align with any one perspective — will never win over the partisans.” He expressed contempt for “echo chambers” that “celebrate work that conforms to their narratives and protest anything that challenges them.”
emphasis added
As Froomkin interprets how these two principles play out in practice, it comes down to this:
What does that mean — practically speaking — to the editors and reporters who work for him? In my view, the message is clear:
One: You will earn my displeasure if you warn people too forcefully about the possible end to democracy at the hands of a deranged insurrectionist.
And two: You prove your value to me by trolling our liberal readers.
That explains a lot of the Times’s aberrant behavior, doesn’t it?
Froomkin acknowledges The NY Times has done some excellent reports on the threat coming from the right — but they get lost in the daily repetition of conventional narratives and horserace coverage. Sulzberger doesn’t think it’s the paper’s job to keep sounding the alarm — but how else can you honestly report on the right these days?
Further, you see it in the headlines and the featured stories that constantly play up bad news for Democrats — because that’s ‘telling people what they don’t want to hear’ — while glossing over the atrocities on the right. As Froomkin notes, (paraphrasing), the Times ‘independent coverage” too often:
- reflects conventional wisdom rather than defying it.
- fails to talk to Biden supporters — and few black ones.
- The Washington bureau still thinks there is a moderate rational core in the Republican Party
- There is no humility in the Times approach to uncovering and reporting news.
This is a critique of Sulzberger’s claim that The NY Times practices independent journalism; Froomkin quotes him on what that should look like:
You can think of it as a first-order commitment to open-mindedness. Journalistic independence demands a willingness to follow the facts, even when they lead you away from what you assumed would be true. A willingness to engage at once empathetically and skeptically with a wide variety of people and perspectives. An insistence on reflecting the world as it is, not as you wish it to be. A posture of curiosity rather than conviction, of humility rather than righteousness.
Sulzberger ruefully acknowledges that the Times has failed to meet that standard (the run up to invading Iraq, the advent of AIDS), but he also effectively states that the paper will not be held back by trying to learn from the past.
READ THE WHOLE THING
The question remains: why do we see so much of the same behavior across the media?