by Mike Huckabee
The New York Times just showed the world that it is no longer a legitimate media outlet; the “newspaper of record” is now a full-blown mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. It’s why I usually refer to them as “The New York Slimes.”
On Monday night, the Times produced a factual headline for the lead story of Tuesday’s print edition. “Trump urges unity vs. racism,” the headline stated, accurately reflecting the substance of what President Trump expressed in his Monday morning remarks responding to the Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas shootings.
After an intense liberal backlash, however, The New York Times quickly changed its tune, rewriting the headline to make it more palatable to Democrats and their liberal talking points.
Democrat Presidential candidates, media pundits, and liberal activists all chimed in to slam the initial headline. Senator Kristen Gillibrand, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, Sen. Cory Booker and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all sent tweets vociferously complaining about the headline. AOC went as far as to tweet that the headline shows “how white supremacy is aided by – and often relies upon – the cowardice of mainstream institutions.”
The Times almost immediately demonstrated just how deep its “cowardice” runs. The subsequent edition of the morning paper ran a completely different — and much more politicized — headline: “Assailing hate but not guns.”
That’s not reporting; it’s political lobbying.
The fact that the editors of The New York Times were willing to rewrite the headline in response to the manufactured outrage of high-profile Democrats should lay to rest any doubts about the extent of liberal bias in the mainstream media. Legacy outlets such as The New York Times play both defense and offense for the Democratic Party. As a result, they’ve given up their role as journalists and become little more than extensions of the Democratic National Committee. They are practically indistinguishable from Party press officials.
It’s an affront to journalism, not to mention a vindication of President Trump’s crusade against Fake News, that any newspaper — much less one that purports to contain “all the news that’s fit to print” — would change its reporting based on the reaction of public officials. It’s a shocking derogation of duty by the so-called “guardians of truth,” and deprives American citizens of the information they need to govern themselves.
This egregious editorializing, meant to express moral condemnation rather than convey factual information, should be limited to the opinion pages. In the age of Trump, unfortunately, mainstream media outlets have blurred the line between “news” and “opinion” beyond all recognition.
The only real surprise, in fact, is that the Times offered a neutral headline in the first place. The newspaper’s other coverage of the El Paso shooting and the President’s remarks was far more consistent with the reflexive anti-Trumpism we’ve come to expect from the Times.
White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman and Michael Crowley, for instance, began their report about the President’s remarks with the words, “President Trump warned of ‘the perils of the internet and social media,’ but offered no recognition of his own use of those platforms to promote his brand of divisive politics.” In a separate piece of “News Analysis,” the Times ran with the headline, “El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language.”
That’s not news coverage, or even real opinion journalism. It’s just an ad hominem attack masquerading as insight.
Americans depend on objective reporting from the news media, and partisan shills such as The New York Times do the entire country a deep disservice by letting one political party dictate their coverage of critical news events as well as day to day news that affects everyone in America.
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Mike Huckabee was the 44th governor of Arkansas and a 2016 Republican candidate for president. He is currently host of “Huckabee” on TBN.
Photo “Mike Huckabee” by Mike Huckabee.
