Okay, tacky headline…couldn’t resist. But those of us who cancelled our New York Times subscriptions in disgust during the 2016 campaign because of public editor Liz Spayd’s refusal to entertain the notion that her paper was playing with fire by vilifying Clinton and normalizing Trump might be interested to know that the Times is laying off Spayd effective Friday and replacing her with…Twitter. Excerpt of Times memo via @DylanByers:
Here’s the hackery from Spayd that finally drove me to shit-can my Times subscription on September 10, 2016:
“I am begging you to please refrain from drinking the false equivalency KoolAid,” said Rhiannon Hutchinson of Claremont, N.H. “There’s too much at stake in this election for the media to stoke the belief that Hillary’s mistakes (which she has definitely made) are even close to par with Trump’s admitted use of his money to influence political outcomes and the contempt he deliberately displays for America’s
citizens, journalists, allies, and longstanding traditions of immigration, equality, and tolerance.”The problem with false balance doctrine is that it masquerades as rational thinking. What the critics really want is for journalists to apply their own moral and ideological judgments to the candidates. Take one example. Suppose journalists deem Clinton’s use of private email servers a minor offense compared with Trump inciting Russia to influence an American election by hacking into computers — remember that? Is the next step for a paternalistic media to barely cover Clinton’s email so that the public isn’t confused about what’s more important? Should her email saga be covered at all? It’s a slippery slope.
That didn’t age well, did it? Spayd is as useless as teats on a boar. She won’t be missed.