WEBVTT - Steve Schimdt breaks down how the New York Times failed democracy 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:08.440 There is a great deal of political commentary and social 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:15.040 commentary that examines the collapse of trust between institutions and 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:20.919 the American people through a static lens. It observes the 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:27.160 existence of the breach without much pondering about why it occurred. 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:33.559 Why has there been such a fraying of the bonds 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:40.760 of respect, of the capacities for trust between companies and 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:46.159 the American people, Between brands and the American people, Between 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:52.280 political parties and the American people, Between high political officeholders 0:00:52.440 --> 0:01:00.240 and the American people. Institution after institution has lost trust. 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:09.240 Now most of the media coverage focuses on a specific 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:15.319 dimension of the collapse of trust, a quarter of it, 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.480 if you will, if you think about it like a 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:27.320 pizza round and sliced, And that portion is the collapse 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:31.520 of trust between the American people and their government, between 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:35.520 the American people and their candidates, between the American people 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:39.520 and the Senate, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And all 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:43.560 of that is true, deeply so. But there is also 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:49.360 a corresponding collapse of trust, for example, with big tech. 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:58.000 Giant tech companies were once deeply admired. Today they are 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:06.120 overwhelmingly distrusted and broadly feared. There is a wide consensus 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:13.360 understanding the capacity of these companies to reak true havoc 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:20.080 while returning little benefit. The days of Google proclaiming itself 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.960 as doing no evil and Facebook being a happy place 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:31.040 and social media being benign are long gone. The American 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:35.320 people know that trust was breached. But it's not just 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:41.960 with big media, or the big insurance companies, or big 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:49.919 medicine or big agriculture. The list goes on. It includes 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:54.960 the Boy Scouts, where there are seventy eight thousand allegations 0:02:55.000 --> 0:03:01.640 of sexual abuse. It includes the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:09.839 the Southern Baptist Convention. Everywhere there is a powerful institution, 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:19.800 it seems there is hypocrisy, malfeasance, and wrongdoing everywhere, including 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:26.800 the media. America's media companies have become reviled by the 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:33.079 American people. The American people do not believe them because 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:39.840 what they see is the daily production of conflict, Its 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:50.120 manufacture division for division's sake, for billions in profit. The 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:53.040 American media, of course, is not monolithic. There is a 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:58.120 material difference between the Fox News and the New York Times, 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:04.480 we're told, and there is in many ways, But there 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:10.920 are also similarities that must be talked about because they 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:15.120 speak to the corruption of a national spirit and a 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:19.800 degradation of the American people and their ability to tell 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.360 what is real from what is not, what is up 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.280 from what is down, what is read from blue and 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:32.159 blue from green. On the election evening, Brett Baer was 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:36.960 terrified to tell the Fox News audience that, in fact, 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:42.359 Donald Trump had lost. It helped set in moment a 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:49.919 national crisis. It helped inflame and extremism that threatens the 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:57.039 existence of the republic. Fear of the mob can be 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:03.520 that powerful, and it can be that degrading to both 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:11.920 truth and any sense of journalistic integrity. James Bennett is 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:18.520 the former New York Times reporter, opinion page editor, an 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:23.680 editor of The Atlantic magazine. He is a towering figure 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.359 in the modern era of American journalism. He is a 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:32.320 reporter who has traveled to every corner of the world 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:40.000 and every inch of America. He has covered every type 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:47.760 of issue, from the elderly as he explains, to conflict 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:54.000 and war in the most dangerous places on Earth. He 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:59.279 writes about the crisis at the New York Times and 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:07.479 a collapse of journalistic integrity and absolute immolation of the 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:15.039 time zone standards and a rising tide of dishonesty and 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:21.760 intolerance and ends justify the means double standards in the 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:31.960 pursuit of ideological conformity and dogma in an institution in 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:36.760 the United States that is part of the United States 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:45.760 inextricably so that exists because of the First Amendment that 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:52.600 has turned so utterly hostile towards it. With James Bennett 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:57.120 shows and demonstrates is that The New York Times has 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:05.800 become so broken that it actually takes clear language and 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:14.560 distorts its meaning, changes the clear understanding in English of 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:23.120 what it says to fit a narrative that conforms to 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:30.040 the sensibilities of what is a mob of New York 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:40.960 Times journalists who are aggrieved, brittle, and hostile to the 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:50.120 expression of any thought, opinion, or idea that does not 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:59.760 conform ideologically to the mean of the mob. It helps 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:04.680 me understand some things so much better, such as the 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:10.360 years I spent on television, and at the second the 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.920 camera would go off and we would go to commercial break, 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.160 how many of the reporters and all of the ones 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.720 at the New York Times would pick up their phone 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:26.040 and look at it. Staring at the Twitter, no doubt 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:34.480 reading what is the mob saying? Enforcing? How do I conform? 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:44.319 What James Bennett tells is a tale of utter madness. 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.160 He tells the tale of what happened when he dared 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:57.520 to print an opinion stupid, although it was by United 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:04.120 States Senator Tom Cotton. What happened? What happened with the 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:11.080 words are violence, crowd that an idea is a physical attack. 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:17.120 Let me explain clearly, with this type of smug arrogance 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:26.559 and hostility to truth, embrace overtly of double standards, and 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:34.960 the despising of any idea, it isn't ideologically rooted in 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:42.679 the dogma of identity politics. I'll explain what it has wrought. 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:51.800 There are no people who can claim credit more so 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:59.240 than Arthur Salzburg and deemed back At with their access 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:09.040 journalism and intolerance and smugness that have been more of 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:17.960 a wind beneath the fascist wings of the Trump eagle. Truly, 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:26.120 it is amazing, and I encourage everybody to sit down 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:35.160 and read read the details about the gravest journalistic scandal 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:42.520 of our time, and that is the shattering of the ethic, 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:51.880 the ethos, the tolerance and the embrace of Americanism at 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:59.920 the New York Times. Read it, understand it, Appreciate it 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:06.800 for what it is. It is a warning about a 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:15.320 growling authoritarianism of spirit. It demonstrates a weakness in our 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:22.160 democratic fiber. If The New York Times doesn't respect the 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:29.000 integrity of dissent and the power of the First Amendment, 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:35.040 If The New York Times is filled with brittle children 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:43.080 who need trigger warnings to confront the mob, then American 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:52.440 journalism stands on a line of near irredeemability. It is 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:59.160 certainly facing a deep crisis. It says a lot that 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:09.000 mister Saltzburg decided to directly address mister Bennett's descriptions and journalism, 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:15.440 not with participation, not with responsiveness to the questions in 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:23.840 the story, but after the fact, denunciations and clarifications. Who 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:29.360 else does that remind you of? It looks like the 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:33.720 publisher of The New York Times has embraced the fake 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:41.679 news strategy. It's not surprising because in the end he 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:49.040 shares something with Donald Trump, just like Deane Baguette, and 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:53.960 that is a deep contempt for the American people.