Thursday, November 17, 2016

The NY Times Edits Out Fairness

The New York Times is a little less fair today, according to The NY Post.

Last week the newspaper’s executive editor and publisher famously penned a post-election letter to their readers that promised to “rededicate ourselves” to good journalism — while insisting the Times “reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign.”

The Post reports the “fairly” line stood out because many readers felt news stories in the newspaper run by Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. were decidedly favorable to Hillary Clinton and biased against Donald Trump.

Well, that sentence — “We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign.” — has been scrubbed from the current “To Our Readers” letter on the Times’ website.

It appears to be the only line edited from the 240-word letter.



A Times spokeswoman said the paper made the decision to run the letter on the homepage because “we thought an honest dialogue on the issues raised by this election with all of our readers was important.”

“Given how broad the audience for the letter would be in that context,” she noted, “we removed the line to avoid it being interpreted as defensive.”

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