NY Times Publisher Reveals White House ‘Extremely Upset’ With Their Coverage of ‘Historically Unpopular’ Biden
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, said on Monday that the Biden White House is “extremely upset” with the paper’s coverage of President Joe Biden’s age. Sulzberger defended the paper’s coverage in an interview with The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and vowed to “continue to report fully and fairly.”
Sulzberger told Reuters in a lengthy interview that focused on the state of the news industry that “there are a disproportionate number of conservative voters who will not trust any news source that says that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, and we can’t try to win those folks over and hedge our language.”
“We are just stating the truth fully and plainly, but we are also doing that in a way that is unemotional. We are not anyone’s opposition and we’re not anyone’s lap dog,” he continued, adding:
We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden. He is a historically unpopular incumbent and the oldest man to ever hold this office. We’ve reported on both of those realities extensively, and the White House has been extremely upset about it.
Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, wrote a letter to the White House Correspondents’ Association last week and blasted the recent coverage of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report into Biden’s retention of classified documents. Sams charged that “many outlets have reported striking inaccuracies that misrepresent the report’s conclusion about the President, and reporters in the White House Briefing Room have asked questions that include false content or are based on false premises.” Sams also slammed the media for focusing on Hur’s “false and inappropriate personal comments,” referring to claims regarding Biden’s age and poor memory.
Sams went on to list specific headlines and examples of news stories he found to be inaccurate, including one from the Times.
The White House press corps hit back at Sams on Friday and called the letter addressed to its members “inappropriate.” “As a non-profit organization that advocates for its members in their efforts to cover the presidency, the WHCA does not, cannot and will not serve as a repository for the government’s views of what’s in the news,” wrote Kelly O’Donnell, the president of the WHCA.
