Marty Baron Regrets the Washington Post’s Reluctance to Call Out Trump’s ‘Lies’ From ‘Very Beginning’

In a wide ranging interview, retiring Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron discussed the world-wide embrace of conspiracy theories over facts, the resulting threat to media and democracy, and the mistakes his newspaper made in its coverage of former President Donald Trump.

In a conversation with German newspaper Der Spiegel, Baron offered some frank responses to blunt questions from Marc Pitzke and Roland Nelles, but he ducked when his interlocutor singled out one cable TV network after his answer about the modern news diet is polluted by outlets that peddle self-fulfilling prophecies and deranged conspiracies.

“That’s the business model of some media outlets: to provide so-called ‘news, so-called ‘information’ that tells them that their feelings are right, that their instincts are right, that there are people just like them who think exactly like them,” Baron said. “If people have suspicions, those media outlets try to reinforce those suspicions. They have no fidelity to the facts or to truth.”

“We assume you’re talking about Fox News, among others,” the pair replied.

“I’m not going to get into names,” Baron said, demurring.

Moments later, Baron was asked to reflect on his own newspaper’s coverage of Trump and his lies.

“He was president of the United States, the most powerful position in the world,” Baron said. “He had a tremendous impact on what happened here in the U.S. and what was happening around the world. It was our obligation to cover that.”

Any regrets or mistakes?

“We had to be much more forthright about Trump’s mendacity, his lies over the course of the administration,” Baron conceded. “We needed to call them that from the very beginning. We were very much operating on good principle; and let’s be fair, he was president, he was duly elected. But he was exploiting that. He was exploiting our principles. That said, I don’t think it would have made any great difference.”

Baron then added that the Post was intent on giving him the benefit of the doubt about accusations he had “authoritarian instincts.”

“For the longest time, we didn’t actually have hard evidence of these authoritarian instincts,” he said. “Now we do. So, I don’t think that people underestimated him.”

Baron then pointed to Trump’s repeated use of the slur “enemy of the people” to attack the press as a “shocking” example. ” It’s a phrase that has obviously been used in other contexts in the worst possible way …”

“During the Third Reich, for example, Hitler’s regime used that term to persecute political enemies,” the Spiegel interviewers pointed out.

“You’re making an analogy there to what ultimately transpired in Germany, but I’m not ready to go that far just yet,” Baron responded. “It was clear that he was going to go to the extreme to demonize us. He endeavored to portray us as garbage, as scoundrels. And he has done, I have to say, a very effective job of turning people against us. That was the objective, to get his followers to ignore whatever we wrote and to view whatever we wrote as a product of the opposition.”

The Post editor then revealed that his paper has been forced to take “additional security measures” in response to Trump’s non-stop media demonization.

“And that continues. It has gotten worse and worse and worse,” Baron acknowledged. “It’s unfortunate that in this country we are having to do that. Newspapers traditionally wanted to be open to the public, to invite people to come in, we wanted to be as transparent as possible, give tours, all that sort of thing. We don’t do that anymore.”