In "F.B.I. Director Wants to Moves Forward, but the President is Making His Job Harder", the NYT again reminds us that their journalistic standards have been stretched beyond their limits by Trumpism.
The NYT in their news coverage needs to confine the news to reporting of what is happening as objectively as possible. Unfortunately, the NYT tries to give all news makers the benefit of the doubt that they are eminently reasonable people whose motives must be taken as face value to coincide with their stated purpose. For the NYT, you can only question the statements of Trump or other politicians by subjecting those statements to "fact checking". But we can never know for sure what another person is thinking or feeling. So, as a reporting shortcut and a way to bend over backwards to be "fair", the NYT accepts statements and actions by politicians in the most favorable light possible.
The story begins with
"WASHINGTON — When President Trump tapped Christopher A. Wray to be his next F.B.I. director, it signaled a clear break from the tenure of James B. Comey, whom Mr. Trump had grown to distrust and eventually fired."
That statement, taken without context that we all know so well, is, on its face, completely absurd. What exactly was so bad about the tenure of Comey that required a "clear break"? Integrity comes to mind as the most likely problem. And "Mr. Trump had grown to distrust..." implies some reason the so-called "Mr." Trump would have good reason to lose confidence in Comey, other than the simple reason that Comey's team of investigators was closing in on the Trump team, especially Flynn and Manafort at that time. So this NYT news piece begins poorly by granting way too much benefit of the doubt to Trump.
It gets worse.
"It seemed Mr. Trump would let his handpicked F.B.I. director do his work unimpeded, giving Mr. Wray some breathing room. “I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity,” the president said in June."
This is more cutting corners and benefit of the doubt - what Steve Schmidt refers to as not starting fresh every Monday morning with Trump as if the previous week (and all prior weeks) had never happened and writing as if he is a perfectly reasonable person who can never be trusted by anyone.
If we try to make the Times statement accurate with as few changes as possible, the sentence would need to read as follows:
"If Mr. Trump was a reasonable person and not a constant liar, it would have seemed Mr. Trump would let his handpicked F.B.I. director do his work unimpeded, giving Mr. Wray some breathing room. “I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity,” the president said in June."
Or something along those lines, acknowledging Trump's pathological behavior. But that kind of nod to reality bumps up against the NYT journalistic standard that any description that is or could be construed as negative about a person has to be treated as "opinion" which can only appear in the Opinion section or, in some circumstances, the NYT Magazine or, with certain restrictions, in Business or Media or similar sections.
That leaves the News articles with an artificially imposed requirement to sacrifice accuracy in the interest of "balance" in order to maintain an appearance of "fairness" with the result being inaccuracy and unfairness. The remainder of the article strikes a tone of appearances being important for Mr. Wray. He supposedly needs to maintain appearances so that FBI rank and file agents due not lose morale while Mr. Trump wants agents who were promoted by Director Comey - (remember, the man who lost Mr. Trump's trust for reasons unspecified in the piece.
And that's too bad because today we learned that McCabe is indeed going to retire. Baker has been reassigned. And Comey was fired. So the dismantling of the FBI is well underway while the Times puts the focus on appearances.
Public trust will suffer, but public trust is not something Trump has ever cared about.
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