The New York Times: Portrait of Tankie Vatnik Publication

They are only pretending to be objective at this point.

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

I've written before about how the mainstream media has been deferential towards Donald Trump. They want to see him reelected so he can provide so much drama that the media can use it to sell more papers or increase viewers.

But The New York Times really takes it to another level. This is the same people whose reputation for journalism excellence has led to people nicknaming it “The Gray Lady” and “The Paper of Record.” This week they sorely risked their own reputation when it published this guest essay with this headline: Trump Can Win on Character.

Character?!? Donald Trump?!? The same guy who has a long history of not paying his contractors?!? The same guy who doesn't pay his expenses he owes for the rallies that he has held across the United States?!? The same guy who has been sued by two former contestants on his The Apprentice reality TV show because they had helped set up Truth Social and they accused Trump of diluting the value of Truth Social's stock shares so they were deprived of hundreds of million dollars in profit?!? The same guy who once openly made fun of a reporter's disability?!? The same guy who has been accused of rape and sexual assault?!? The same guy who has cheated on all three of his wives—with one of his extramarital affairs being a fling with a porn star that happened while wife number three was recuperating from giving birth to their son?!? The same guy who has been convicted of 34 felonies?!? The same guy who might go on trial after all for keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate?!? That guy?!?

Oh yeah, Trump has character alright but it's not the good kind. He has more of a dark and evil character that makes most people with common sense stay away from him.

The earliest story that The New York Times has published about Donald Trump was this 1973 article about how Donald and his father, Fred Trump, were sued by the US government for refusing to rent their properties to people of color. Three years later Donald Trump rehabilitated his racist image to the point where The Times wrote a more favorable feature story about him. Since that time Trump and The New York Times have a very chummy relationship to the point where The Times will take a story that is very damaging to Trump and put a “both sides” spin on it where the story would be more critical of Democrats than Trump himself. In 2019 The Columbia Journalism Review published a scathing article where it used quantified facts based on The Times’ own published issues to show how much preferential treatment Trump has received from that paper.

There were times when Trump has reciprocated in kind. In 1987 he ran a full page ad in The Times criticizing US foreign policy. In 1989 Trump ran another full page ad in The Times calling for the death penalty for a group of five young African American and Latino American boys who were accused of brutally raping a white female jogger in Central Park. Years later it turned out that a different man who was unconnected to that group was the one who really raped that woman. The boys, who became known as the Central Park Five, were exonerated but, to this day, Trump has refused to apologize for running that ad.

But The New York Times isn't just adoring about Donald Trump. On August 13 that paper had published this story about Russian leader Vladimir Putin with this headline: Putin Has Victory in His Grasp.

Putin has victory in his grasp?!? Really?!? This article was published around the same time that Ukraine captured the neighboring Kursk oblast in Russia. It's almost like The New York Times is trying to stay on Donald Trump's good side by being just as deferential to his biggest benefactor, Vladimir Putin.

Sure Putin and Trump are close friends but that doesn't excuse that exaggerated story and headline suggesting that a Russian win is inevitable. This is an incredibly bad take on a dictator like Vladimir Putin but, then again, The New York Times has long had a history of incredibly bad takes on dictators.

In 1922 The New York Times published its first-ever article on the future German dictator Adolf Hitler where it included this bone-headed statement: “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.”

Oh yeah? I'm sure that the six million Jews who ultimately died in concentration camps would've begged to differ.

If you think that The New York Times’ coverage of Hitler was bad, you should see how they covered Joseph Stalin. Walter Duranty, who was the paper's chief correspondent in the Soviet Union, was largely responsible for The Times’ glowing coverage of Stalin, which praised Stalin's collectivization policies while downplaying such deadlier events like the Holodomor and the Great Purge. Duranty actually won a Pulitzer Prize for his glowing reporting from the Soviet Union.

Given that history of being wrong about its coverage of dictators, it's amazing that The New York Times can still maintain its prestigious reputation. In a way, it's not surprising that the so-called “Paper of Record” would be just as glowing towards Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in its coverage. Basically it's history repeating itself.

But should we the people even put up with such deferential and blatant propaganda favoring a man who said the he would rule as a dictator on day one? The good news is that we don't have to. Remember that The New York Times is still reliant on customers for its income. Why fund a newspaper that openly wants a would-be authoritarian dictator to come to power in the hopes of making more money through its ccoverage of that leader? Why fund a newspaper willing to go along with doing away with American democracy just so its already wealthy owners can make even more money in the form of tax cuts?

If you have a subscription, cancel it. If you see copies for sale at a newsstand, don't buy it. If you're addicted to the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle (like my late mother-in-law was), you can always purchase a crossword puzzle magazine at a local grocery store or pharmacy. Or even install a crossword puzzle game app on your phone or mobile device. And if you love to play Wordle, find a new word game to play that is not housed on The New York Times’ servers.

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