Bloomberg News’s Mark Halperin compared The New York Times to the satirical news site The Onion on Thursday morning, accusing the paper of record of “amazing” bias.
“I love The New York Times. I think it’s a great institution,” Halperin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” as he held up the newspaper’s front page with the headline “Democrats, Students And Foreign Allies Face The Reality Of A Trump Presidency.”
{mosads}“This is the day after a surprising underdog sweeping victory,” explained the co-host of the political affairs program “With All Due Respect” on Bloomberg TV.
“Their headline is not ‘Disaffected Americans Have A Champion Going To The White House’ or ‘The Country Votes For Fundamental Change,’ ” Halperin noted.
“The headline is about how disappointed the friends of the people who run The New York Times are about what happened.”
As “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough piled on with criticism of the angle of the Times’s front-page story Thursday, Halperin added: “It’s a great example. … It’s The Onion.”
“The responsibility of journalists is not to report on their biases,” he added.
Halperin was jabbed last week by MSNBC’s Brian Williams and others in the media, who accused the author and commentator of showing favoritism to President-elect Donald Trump.
“Mark Halperin, to you, I say this with charity in my heart as an every evening and weekly viewer,” Williams prefaced. “When Donald Trump complains that he is not getting favorable coverage in the [mainstream media], he has not been listening to you this cycle.”
“I think you’ve gone out of your way to find the path, argue for the path, forge the path for him in an argumentative way with your co-host [John Heilemann] to the nomination,” Williams continued.
“Tonight I thought you were interestingly optimistic,” Williams added, before asking: “Where are you getting the path of positivity you laid out on your broadcast tonight?”
Halperin traveled the country and spoke to voters on the ground throughout the campaign for his Showtime series, “The Circus,” and often reported back that he felt Trump’s chances of winning were better than most were predicting.