NY Times Banning Reporters from Some CNN, MSNBC Shows Because They're Too Partisan - Report
A new report claims The New York Times is blocking its reporters from appearing on certain cable TV shows in what is represented as an attempt to prevent the appearance of bias.
According to a report in Vanity Fair that relies extensively on sources whose identities are not revealed, Times finance editor David Enrich was recently banned from a guest appearance on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC talk show.
Maddow is not the only target, according to the article. The Times has blocked reporters from appearing on the MSNBC show hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell, as well as the CNN program hosted by Don Lemon, the Vanity Fair report said.
Neither The Times nor its reporters would speak to Vanity Fair on the record about the article’s claims. The Western Journal has reached out to New York Times’ vice president of communications, Danielle Rhoades Ha, for comment, but no response had been received as of Saturday morning.
The Vanity Fair report said MSNBC was irked that Enrich was banned from Maddow’s show.
An MSNBC spokesman told Vanity Fair, “For over a decade, ‘The Rachel Maddow Show’ has welcomed the best journalists from across the country and celebrated the hard work they do, day-in and day-out. This includes countless New York Times reporters and editors. That commitment to journalism is part of the DNA of the show.”
The report framed The Times policy, which is largely a stricter enforcement of a policy long on the books at the newspaper, as an effort by executive editor Dean Baquet to avoid having Times reporters appear to be in step with the political opinions of talk show hosts.
“He thinks it’s a real issue,” the report quotes what it calls a Times source as saying.
The report quoted what it called a “highly placed source at one of the cable networks” as saying that the guidelines developed by The Times are “inconsistent, incoherent, and poorly conceived.”
“At the moment that Donald Trump became president, and print media was coincidentally in crisis mode from a business perspective, a significant contributor to the success of publications like The New York Times and the Washington Post was the exposure that their great work got on networks like MSNBC and CNN. They are the beneficiaries of some very positive exposure for their journalists,” the source said.
That The Times would reportedly bar reporters from left-leaning TV shows brought a chorus of guffaws from some conservatives, Fox News reported.
“This isn’t a news story, it’s a sitcom plot,” Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor told Fox. “The nation’s most liberal paper is suddenly concerned that the wacky network filled on air with its employees might be too far left. The Times is liberal on the opinion and news pages on every major issue facing the nation — from abortion to taxes. Yet, MSNBC is even further left? Does anyone at The Times read their own paper?”
Conservative strategist Chris Barron suggested The Times does not know what it has become.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this story,” Barron told Fox. “Has anyone from The New York Times actually read The New York Times? If they want to avoid the appearance of overt partisanship they might try taking a look in the mirror first.”
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck suggested objectivity might begin at home for The Times.
“There’s no denying that the [Times] is right about MSNBC primetime shows, as they are hotbeds for the Resistance, but if MSNBC is that home on TV, The New York Times is without a doubt their paper equivalent,” Houck told Fox.
“So while it’s nice they’re realizing something that a lot of us already know about how biased they are, it would behoove them to take care of matters in their own newsroom first.”
DePauw University professor Jeffrey McCall said, however, that The Times needs to set boundaries.
“News outlets such as The Times need to protect their more objective reporters from the appearance that they are playing a partisan role for a broadcast outlet’s benefit. The news industry already suffers from public perception that real reporters are agenda-driven, and trotting reporters into opinion shows just fuels that problem,” McCall told Fox.
“In a sense, partisan television interview shows want to use real reporters as props to borrow the credibility of direct news reporting to support their opinion angles.”
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