New York Times reporters have rejected Executive Editor Joe Kahn’s claims the staff lack journalistic integrity and capacity for robust debate. Kahn last week said he refuses to allow the once reputable paper to become an “instrument of the President Joe Biden campaign” and emphasized the role of news reporters is supposed to be to serve the American people — not political candidates. The NYT is no longer a “safe space,” the paper’s top editor told Semafor during a discussion on what Kahn referred to as a suggestion NYT should be “propaganda arm” due to former President Donald Trump being perceived as a so-called “threat to democracy.” Kahn in an April 12 interview with the Wall Street Journal discussed challenges surrounding the hiring of young journalists straight out of college due ideology being taught on campuses. According to Kahn, “independent journalism” is a rarity in the last several years. These fresh graduates are not “fully prepared for what we are asking our people to do, which is to commit themselves to the idea of independent journalism,” said Kahn.“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about may have been the case in the past.”While Kahn’s comments instigated a debate on the integrity of the media as the 2024 election approaches, Times reporters hit back at their boss for questioning their ability to consider multiple points of view in their reporting. "Your staff is not full of activists trying to impose their views on the report," staff wrote in a draft statement addressed to their editor. "Rather than tribalism or ideology, those who voice concerns do so in the interest of accuracy and fairness — to make the New York Times into the best version of itself.""Instead of engaging in robust exchange, we are increasingly discouraged from speaking up at all. We are told that it is only appropriate to express concerns or even earnest questions in one-on-one conversations with people who outrank us.""Far from open mindedness, this policy communicates the opposite: an unwillingness to tolerate dissent,” wrote staff, calling Kahn’s criticisms "broad generalizations that reflect a poor understanding of the people who make up your newsroom." Legacy media pundits have responded to the NYT feud from varying perspectives. Liberal CNN reporter Oliver Darcy said media outlets should take a position if they are “opposed to authoritarianism.”If a candidate, like Trump, who has a “blatant disregard for democratic norms,” then reporters should indicate that in their reporting, Darcy asserted. “If one does the math, the NYT as an institution should by default oppose what Trump's candidacy embodies,” he said. “It is worth asking: If newsrooms are pro-democracy, and if their reporting indicates one candidate is opposed to democratic values, how can they feign ignorance on the 2024 race?"Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall rejects Darcy’s position. She said there should be a boundary between editorializing and reporting — and the Times should focus on reporting. "That's pretty much how it should be if you are running a journalistic outlet with integrity, right? So the New York Times shouldn't be nicer to Joe Biden because he's a Democrat and they're viewed as a left-leaning newspaper," said Marshall. Former NYT columnist Ben Smith, who convinced Kahn to do the interviews, told MSNBC Democrats are pushing for the "media (to be) in their corner" as the potential for Trump’s second term looms. "What’s happening inside the New York Times is a sense that, during particularly the summer of 2020, they aligned themselves too much with particularly the progressive wing of the Democratic Party," said Smith.“On account of their staff, on account of cultural forces. I think Kahn sees his job as pulling the institution back from what he called ‘excesses’ in the moment. Kind of an inconvenient time perhaps for Joe Biden for the Times to be symbolically focused on dragging itself back from that brink."
