Does Time magazine matter anymore? It still has a circulation of over one million, but that is one-third of what it was in 2012. Does anything it reports still resonate, or is it like a tree that collapses unheard in the solitude of the woods?
Time just secured an interview with President Joe Biden, when Biden has granted very few interviews to print news outlets. Time gained access to Donald Trump in April, and the first thing you notice when you compare the two interviews is the length. At the top of the transcripts, Time claims the Biden transcript is a "28-minute read," while Trump's is listed as 83 minutes. Time's "fact check" of the Trump interviews ("21-minute read") is almost as long as the Biden interview.
Another noticeable tilt is the agenda of questions. Biden's questions were overwhelmingly about foreign policy. There are three on inflation, three on immigration, and three on Biden's age. There were zero questions on Hunter Biden and the Biden scandals. There were zero questions on the Trump trial or the Trump prosecutions.
Did Team Biden put any conditions on which questions could be asked? It's a fair question, considering how selective they've been in handing out interviews.
By contrast, by my count, Time asked Trump 11 questions about the Trump prosecutions (and "revenge" for them), five questions about Jan. 6, two about potential political violence in 2025, four on fighting the "deep state," three on his "dictator for a day" joke, and four on whether he'd seek to overturn the 22nd Amendment and seek a third term.
On top of that, Trump drew 14 questions on abortion policy and six on crime. It's obvious from the Time transcripts that they consider Trump's opinions on domestic issues to be much more controversial -- and even extremist -- than anything Biden advocates. The rest of the media picked up on Trump's abortion answers, and Biden didn't have to provide any abortion answers.
Even the age questions to Biden were timid softballs, and Biden's answer -- suggesting he could take his interviewer Massimo Calabresi in a fight -- was taken as a joke. Calabresi told CNN's Jake Tapper it was "light-hearted" and "quite funny." Biden responded to a follow-up about voter concerns with his usual spin: "Watch me." Calabresi confessed it might be a "stock answer." So why not push through it? Why not ask, "Everyone's been watching you, that's your problem"?
Time could have asked Biden why his team refuses to release audio of his interview with stolen-documents special counsel Robert Hur, with the fear Republicans will exploit the audio in advertising. But Time pretends Robert Hur is a nobody and Biden's stolen documents should be forgotten. Hur refused to prosecute Biden, and Jack Smith just keeps prosecuting Trump. It looks a bit rigged.
By contrast, Trump's interviewer Eric Cortellessa lectured him: "I just want to say for the record, there's no evidence that President Biden directed this prosecution against you." Trump rejected that: "I always hate the way a reporter will make those statements. They know it's so wrong." Time, like other slavishly pro-Biden outlets, refuses to acknowledge that Biden's No. 3 Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo resigning to join Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's team of Trump prosecutors shreds the "no evidence" lie.
The Democrats' running Time is hyperbolically raising fear that a president using the Justice Department might go after his political opponents, while somehow being blind and deaf enough to ignore that Biden is using the Justice Department to go after his political opponents. They can't believe anyone would object to their shamelessness.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.