Politico Offers Rare Peek Behind the NYT Curtain
A story in Politico about tensions between the Biden administration and the New York Times contains intriguing hints about A. G. Sulzberger’s role in shaping coverage of Biden and, perhaps, transgender issues.
Opinion, by Evan Urquhart
On its face, a new story in Politico about tensions between the Biden White House and the New York Times by White House correspondent Eli Stokols has little to do with trans issues. It’s lengthy piece on petty grievances held by very powerful people in politics and journalism, and about their tit-for-tat reprisals. The Biden Administration feels the NYT has focused excessively on stories about the president’s age, the NYT feels that Joe Biden should do an interview with them. Who’s to say who’s right and who’s wrong in the byzantine world of high journalistic protocol governing White House press corps relations?
However, as many astute people have pointed out on Twitter (h/t to Sydney Bauer, specifically), deep in the body of the longform article lurk hints about how things really function at the paper. These hints may not allow us to conclude anything definitively about the NYT coverage of the trans community, but they are, shall we say, highly suggestive.
For the uninitiated, a primer on the arcane ways of the White House press corps: This storied band of political reporters serves the vital role in our democracy of attending White House press briefings, publishing official statements from the administration, buddying up to White House staffers, and attending fancy dinners. Sometimes they even get scoops, for example when someone within the current administration wants to make one of their colleagues look bad. White House correspondents are particularly known for writing tedious nonfiction books after an administration has come and gone, when all the news is over. For this they are considered some of the most prestigious members of the journalistic profession.
Tensions between these august journalists and the presidents they cover date back to George Washington, probably. (This is a joke. The modern White House press corps dates back to the early 1900s.) The Politico piece is typical of the reporting that tends to come out of these tensions. It hinges on tedious questions like “Did the New York Times treat Biden with adequate respect during the 2020 primary?” and “Does the fact that every president since FDR has done an interview with the New York Times mean the paper is currently entitled to an interview with Biden?” If your response to reading these questions is “Who cares! None of this actually matters!” this means that you remain connected to the real world in a way neither the Biden White House nor representatives of journalism’s elite show any sign of being.
Potentially weightier are questions raised in the Politico story about whether a free press has a responsibility to American democracy. In the wake of an attempt by the most recent former president to illegally overturn election’s results that didn’t go his way, including by inciting mob violence against the U. S. Congress, many have argued that they do, However, exactly what this responsibility is and how to discharge it is highly contested because it’s wrapped up so tightly in partisan politics. (Part of why it’s become so partisan is due to the choices of journalists in covering it, but this is, again, just underscores why it’s all such a complicated question in the industry.)
That’s the main thrust of the story, but it’s not the juicy stuff, at least not for those interested in why and how the New York Times came to be deeply biased in their coverage of the trans community. For that, you need to scroll down about 3/4ths of the way to the end of the article to find this very revealing quote by an unnamed NYT reporter.
screenshot from Politico
Interesting, isn’t it? A NYT journalist, anonymously but on the record, told Politico that the entire tone and focus of the NYT’s coverage of the White House is all being shaped by the grievances of “A. G.” Whatever could this mean?
A. G. refers to A. G. Sulzberger, the NYT’s publisher, son of the wealthy Sulzberger family that has managed the NYT since the late 1800s. “A. G.” is angry that Biden won’t give him an interview, and gets back at him by ensuring that the most influential newspaper in the United States writes a lot of stories about how old he is.
This picture of the single man at the top infusing the coverage of the paper with personal biases and vendettas is a familiar one to trans people who have heard whispers, unconfirmed, that something like this dynamic may explain the NYT’s one-sided coverage of trans issues. While the Politico story does nothing to confirm these rumors, this single on-the-record quote from a NYT journalist provides, at long last, a clear glimpse into the way that this dynamic might be operating, with Sulzberger using his great power and influence to ensure the NYT narratives are always what he wants them to be, even for reasons as personal and petty as wanting an interview with Biden.
Another illuminating paragraph follows. This references what many people who have interacted with the New York Times says is a resistance to correcting errors, if they’re small enough, and if the NYT thinks they can get away with not correcting them.
Correcting errors is foundational to journalistic ethics.
screenshot in the New York Times
At issue here isn’t whether the New York Times corrects errors at all (they absolutely do), but if they go too far in trying to avoid a correction when one is warranted. Assigned Media has documented things that could be called misleading (such as the assertion that Jamie Reed’s allegations were “partially confirmed” when none of her allegations of wrongdoing have ever been substantiated), but we’ve also caught what appear to be minor errors in the NYT’s coverage, such as a false characterization of studies that looked at detransition rates as having found a range of “2 to 30 percent” when the study actually found a range of below one percent to 30 percent. A request from Assigned Media that the NYT correct this error yielded no response at the time the story was published. The error remains in the story.
The question of whether the NYT is compromised is particularly important at a time when massive layoffs and bankruptcies mean that there are fewer journalists than ever, giving the NYT an even more outsized presence in the overall industry. Questions about the paper’s coverage of transgender issues join questions about its coverage of Israel’s treatment of civilians in Gaza and it’s obsession with stories about how old Joe Biden is, but it’s unclear if there will ever be answers, or accountability, for the paper of record.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media and an incoming member of the 2024-2025 Knight Science Journalism fellowship class at MIT.