Back in February, the feud between the Biden White House and The New York Times was front and center, given that the outlet's publisher actually wanted to cover the 2024 election fairly. This wasn't the start of it, though, and it doesn't look to be going away. On Thursday morning, POLITICO magazine published "The Petty Feud Between the NYT and the White House."
It was a year ago this week that President Joe Biden announced he was running for reelection. In the days before his announcement, The New York Times put out several pieces critical of the president, raising legitimate issues such as voter concerns about his age and how Biden has granted fewer interviews than his modern predecessors. Recently, Axios pointed out, "During his 3+ years in office, Biden has refused to give a single interview to White House reporters for The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal."
But there's plenty more, as POLITICO gets into. The first several paragraphs detailed a specific incident from March last year that escalated. "In response, the White House removed all Times reporters from its 'tier one' email list for background information about various briefings and other materials, a situation that wasn’t resolved for 11 months," the piece mentioned.
As it turns out, the grudge goes back five years:
The seemingly minor incident over sourcing might not have escalated or triggered such emotional responses on both sides if not for tensions between the White House and the Times that had been bubbling beneath the surface for at least the last five years. Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president.
According to interviews with two dozen people on both sides who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives — remains remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust. Complaints that were long kept private are even spilling into public view, with campaign aides in Wilmington going further than their colleagues in the White House and routinely blasting the paper’s coverage in emails, posts on social media and memos.
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Sure enough, the 2024 election comes up in the piece, just as it did regarding the feud between publisher AG Sulzberger and the White House in February.
While Sulzberger is mentioned, the Biden camp's framing of the election is not exactly shocking but no less astounding regarding its sense of entitlement that it can accuse the outlet of.
For instance, here's how the piece quotes a 2020 Biden campaign staffer who went on to work at the White House [emphasis mine]:
The president’s press flacks might bemoan what they see as the entitlement of Times staffers, but they themselves put the newspaper on the highest of pedestals given its history, stature and unparalleled reach. And yet, they see the Times falling short in a make-or-break moment for American democracy, stubbornly refusing to adjust its coverage as it strives for the appearance of impartial neutrality, often blurring the asymmetries between former President Donald Trump and Biden when it comes to their perceived flaws and vastly different commitments to democratic principles.
“Democrats believe in the importance of a free press in upholding our democracy, and the NYT was for generations an important standard bearer for the fourth estate,” said Kate Berner, who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign and then as deputy White House communications director before departing last year. “The frustration with the Times is sometimes so intense because the Times is failing at its important responsibility.”
Biden and his reelection campaign have made it a habit to incessantly bring up how former and potentially future President Donald Trump is supposedly a threat, especially in the context of the president's remarks about the anniversary of January 6, and with the lectures from the campaign about MAGA Republicans. Biden has been going after his political opponents in major speeches for years, and that fearmongering may have helped Democrats perform better than expected for the 2022 midterms.
Not only is the Biden camp demanding coverage it deems acceptable, but it's repeating false narratives and has also gone after Trump with unprecedented indictments against a former president. The trial for the weakest case, about hush money payments, brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg last year, is currently taking place.
There are also federal charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, though. The Biden Department of Justice has been politicized and weaponized to go after the president's enemies, including but not only Trump.
Speaking of The New York Times, back in April 2022, with that story gaining more attention, reporting highlighted how Biden "has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6."
The magazine article also mentions how the Biden White House has punished those with The New York Times who dare to speak unfavorably of the president, including an opinion piece from Maureen Dowd last summer who tried to appeal to the president's humanity when it comes to acknowledging his granddaughter, Navy Joan Lunden, whose father is Hunter Biden.
This is all while the Biden White House is mentioned in the same paragraph over its air of importance regarding the importance of protecting democracy:
Biden aides largely view the election as an existential choice for the country, high stakes that they believe justify tougher tactics toward the Times and the press as a whole. Some Times reporters have found themselves cut off by sources after publishing pieces the Bidens and top aides didn’t like. Columnist Maureen Dowd, for example, complained to colleagues that she stopped hearing from White House officials after a column on Hunter Biden. For many Times veterans, such actions suggest that the Trump era has warped many Democrats’ expectations of journalists.
“They’re not being realistic about what we do for a living,” Bumiller told me. “You can be a force for democracy, liberal democracy. You don’t have to be a force for the Biden White House.”
The lengthy piece later goes on to raise concerns about the outlet daring to cover Biden accurately, including when it comes to reporting its own poll's findings.
As one reporter puts it, The New York Times is just doing its job, and it's still doing so while going after Trump, as many in the mainstream media do:
Although the newspaper, like most mainstream outlets with a heavy White House presence, devoted pages of coverage to the president’s early legislative successes, its unrelenting focus on Biden’s advanced age and his low numbers in the NYT’s approval poll have frustrated the president and top aides to no end. Beyond that, they bemoan the newspaper’s penchant for sweepy comparisons, analytical reporter memos — referred to in the Biden press shop as “opinion pieces” or “diary entries” — and story frames that seem consistently skeptical.
...
Privately, other Times reporters who have engaged with the Biden White House and campaign view the frustration with the paper as a misguided effort to control its coverage. Beyond that, they believe writing about Trump with the stronger language Biden aides seem to want would likely do more to affect the newspaper’s brand, and the public’s trust in it, than Trump’s.
“We haven’t been tough enough on Trump? I mean, give me a break,” [Washington bureau chief Elisabeth] Bumiller responded when I asked about that oft-heard complaint. “Have they read our coverage? I don’t have to go through all the things we have covered on Trump so I just — we just do our jobs.”
Not only is Biden performing poorly in that poll from The New York Times/Siena College, but plenty of others as well. And yet, for all of his and his campaign's focus on democracy, Biden only has a slight edge on the issue regarding who voters surveyed for that specific poll think is "bad for democracy."
A February poll from Harvard CAPS-Harris also shows that 56-44 percent of voters think Trump "is someone who will shake up the country for the better" as opposed to "a danger to democracy and will hopelessly divide the country if elected." Its poll from last December shows that 59 percent of voters agree with the statement that "Democrats are trying to unfairly scare the voters over Donald Trump by labeling him as a dictator."
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