The panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” took The New York Times to task over its main headline on Thursday after Donald Trump’s historic victory.
Co-host Joe Scarborough was in disbelief over the patently biased title of the article which read: "Democrats, Students and Foreign Allies Face the Reality of a Trump Presidency."
"This is staggering, it really is," Scarborough said. "This shows that the editors of The New York Times — I have the greatest respect for them — don't get it. This is a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch. You went to a cocktail party the night before and you decided to write this."
Panelist Mark Halperin was in agreement.
“This is the day after a surprising, underdog, sweeping victory, and their headline is not, ‘Disaffected Americans Have a Champion Going to the White House,’ or ‘The Country Votes for Fundamental Change,'” Halperin said. “The headline’s about how disappointed the friends of the people who run The New York Times are about what’s happened. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to me that this is the headline of The New York Times.”
Had a Democrat pulled off what Trump did the headline would be quite different, Halperin noted.
“If a Democratic candidate who was thought to have a 10 percent chance of winning by The New York Times that ended up winning, and winning red states as Trump won blue states, I don’t think that would have been the headline,” Halperin said. “And I’ll just say again, the responsibility of journalists is to not report on their biases. It’s to go out and understand the country through the prism of the election and say, ‘Why are people feeling the way they’re feeling?'”