Former NYT Editor Comes Clean on the Money Behind Trump Bias

It’s no secret that the Leftist news media is inherently anti-Trump, but for a long time, the New York Times (NYT) was considered one of the more center-leaning outlets. Now, one former NYT editor is speaking out to share her belief that those times have come and gone with the world – especially where Trump is concerned.

Lead journalist and former executive editor Jill Abramson led the NYT for three years between 2011 and 2014, during the Obama administration. In her recently published novel, “Merchants of Truth,” she outlines the problems with current news media and how they defame the President without shame.
Abramson is especially critical of the NYT. She believes their news pages have now become “unmistakably anti-Trump,” yet she also takes the time to praise them for other journalistic qualities.
“Though Baquet said publicly he didn’t want the Times to be the opposition party,” she writes, “his news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump. Some headlines contained raw opinion, as did some of the stories that were labeled as news analysis.”
Abramson also pointed the same accusations at the Washington Post, which has traditionally fallen left of center with decently high factual reporting. Of all the outlets she talks about in the book, these two seem to be the most problematic in recent years.
The former NYT editor lays out a disturbing picture of the consequences and what may be driving the unrest. “The more anti-Trump the Times was perceived to be, the more it was mistrusted for being biased. Ochs’s vow to cover the news without fear or favor sounded like an impossible promise in such a polarized environment.”
As for how all of this happened? A few bad apples apparently spoiled the bunch. “The more ‘woke’ staff thought that urgent times called for urgent measures; the dangers of Trump’s presidency obviated the old standards,” she says.
The President has spoken out about the Times’ slander before, stating that he’s “keeping them in business” by giving writers something to lie about. But is that really true? Yes, at least according to Abramson, who says that digital subscriptions increased by nearly two million subscribers since Trump took office.
Lastly, Abramson also points out why the Times abandoned its morals and ethics: money. “Given its mostly liberal audience, there was an implicit financial reward for the Times in running lots of Trump stories, almost all of them negative: they drove big traffic numbers and, despite the blip of cancellations after the election, inflated subscription orders to levels no one anticipated.”
What does all of this mean for you, the person who just wants the facts? You need to cultivate a sharp mind and an ability to use critical thinking skills to judge what you read. Who does it benefit? How do they benefit? What motivators may be driving them to write the words they do, and why?
We also recommend finding independent news sources. Smaller outlets are often dismissed by journalists, but they serve an important niche: they aren’t driven to lie by shareholders and media conglomerates. The best and most truthful (we’d like to believe United Voice falls in there) write because they really believe in what they’re saying, based on actual facts more than opinions.