New York Times is being punished for not being 'sufficiently worshipful of Joe Biden', Matt Taibbi says
Journalist Matt Taibbi responded to controversy at The New York Times after the executive editor suggested the White House could not expect only positive stories from the outlet.
"The administration has continued to believe, somehow, that The New York Times is not sufficiently worshipful of Joe Biden," Taibbi said Wednesday on "Fox & Friends."
"I don't know what planet they're living on," he said.
NY TIMES EDITOR SAYS IT'S NOT PAPER'S JOB TO BE BIDEN CAMPAIGN ARM AMID WHITE HOUSE TENSIONS
"If you read The Times, there's almost nothing ever negative about the guy in the paper," Taibbi continued. "That shows you how delusional the White House is about these things."
"There was a security guard at The Times who said something nice about Joe Biden on the way up to [visiting] The Times and Biden invited that security guard up to do an appearance with him as a subtle tweak at The Times," the journalist said. "This is really petty stuff. That's not going to get you better coverage."
"Reporters don't expect special treatment. At least they didn't when I covered the White House. I don't understand what they're doing," Taibbi said of the White House.
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New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn told Semafor’s Ben Smith this week that the Times’ job is to "cover the full range of issues" that Americans have, not serve one side. The Times and the Biden White House have publicly clashed in recent months on several issues, notably the president's lack of media access in the Times' view and what Biden's team views as the Times' focus on the wrong issues.
"At the moment, democracy is [a top issue]. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them? I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work in the view of Dan Pfeiffer or the White House," Kahn said.
"We become an instrument of the Biden campaign? We turn ourselves into Xinhua News Agency or Pravda and put out a stream of stuff that’s very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side? And that would accomplish — what?" Kahn asked.
The New York Times and the Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.