‘Defiant’ NYT Leadership Accused of ‘Sanewashing’ Trump in 90-Minute Internal Meeting, Semafor Reports

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Semafor’s Max Tani reported exclusively on Sunday that the editorial leadership of the New York Times was questioned repeatedly during an off-the-record internal meeting on “sanewashing” Donald Trump and whether a perceived shift in the last few weeks was a reaction to internal criticism.

Tani reported that Semafor was able to obtain a recording of the nearly 90-minute, off-the-record, in-person meeting in New York that took place two weeks ago on October 24.

Among the topics covered in the “frank’ discussion with Executive Editor Joe Kahn, managing editor Carolyn Ryan, and other editors was coverage of Trump, and criticism from outsides sources on how the publication has handled him.

Tani reported:

Moderators Astead Herndon and Jodi Kantor and other newsroom questioners repeatedly pressed Kahn and managing editor Carolyn Ryan about whether the paper’s coverage of Trump adequately reflected his authoritarian impulses, and whether the paper had deliberately grown more aggressive in the final weeks of the campaign.

“The paper’s leaders strongly defended themselves from suggestions that the Times had alienated some of its liberal readers, and dismissed those outside critics as politically-motivated actors hoping to push the Times to the left,” Tani wrote. “Without singling out one political camp or the other, the paper’s top editor argued that staff should tune out most of the online outrage, which he said was driven by people hoping to skew the Times’ coverage of politics and even its polling operation.”

Semafor quoted Kahn saying:

“What they’re interested in is having us be a mouthpiece for their already predetermined point of view. That’s what the most vocal critics are asking for. They’re asking us to do a better job projecting their point of view to more people. That of course is not our rule, that is actually the opposite of independent journalism. That’s agenda-driven partisan journalism. They want to see the New York Times reaffirming their own priors. They’re not really interested in fact-based reporting — or frankly, independent polling — that doesn’t line up with their priors.”

Tani describes Kahn and other editors as “defiant”, and also describes how Ryan dealt with complaints about their coverage of President Joe Biden’s age-related issues.

Criticism was not the sole focus of the meeting, however, as the editors discussed the Times “girding itself for potential legal challenges or threats to itself as an institution” if Trump and Republicans win on Tuesday.

Read more on those issues and other information from Semafor’s scoop via Max Tani here.