The executive editor of The New York Times is saying it’s not up to the news organization he runs, or any other, to stop former President Trump from winning a second term in office this fall.
“So there are people out there in the world who may decide, based on their democratic rights, to elect Donald Trump as president. It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It’s the job of [President] Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening,” Times executive editor Joe Kahn told Semafor during an interview that published over the weekend. “It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them.”
Kahn predicted “Trump could win this election in a popular vote” and argued the Times should not shy away from covering issues that polling shows are favorable to Trump over Biden, such as immigration.
“We become an instrument of the Biden campaign? We turn ourselves into Xinhua News Agency or Pravda and put out a stream of stuff that’s very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side?” he asked. “And that would accomplish — what?”
The comments from the newspaper’s top editor come just days after reports that some aides in Biden’s White House are growing frustrated with the Times’s reporting on the administration.
Kahn argued the average Times reader gets “a pretty well-rounded, fair portrait of Biden” and his legislative accomplishments.
“Of course, you’d also see some coverage about his frailty and his age,” he added.