Where is New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, Jr. with a lecture on how “inflammatory language” contributes “to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” not to mention erode “one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press”?
That was part of a stern warning he directed at Pres. Donald Trump in June 2018. Shouldn’t he have delivered the same spiel to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is quoted in his paper calling the Fox News Channel “‘a hate-for-profit racket’ that seeks to turns Americans against one another”?
Warren’s criticism came in response to a request from the network to participate in one of its town halls, as other Democratic candidates have done. Instead of politely declining, Warren tweeted out a thread in which she accused Fox of giving “a megaphone to racists and conspiracists … risking life and death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class”:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists—it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) May 14, 2019
Not once do the authors of the piece, Michael M. Grynbaum and Matt Stevens, remark on how invective like Warren’s could precipitate the very sorts of dangerous outcomes she describes, and neither does their boss. The writers do take a shot of their own at Fox, noting that its “biggest stars are prime-time pundits like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham who regularly defend the White House,” but they fail to mention that a star of equal magnitude, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, counterbalances that service.
So much for fairness and balance from the Times.
