Reposted from Media Matters for America
By: Zachary Pleat
The New York Times has published many profiles of conservative figures which effectively elevated and whitewashed their extremism, rather than shining needed sunlight on their ignoble efforts. A recent profile of right-wing activist Christopher Rufo and an obituary of former Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), both bigots through words and deeds, have only continued this pattern.
On April 24, the Times published a profile of Rufo titled “He fuels the right’s cultural fires (and spreads them to Florida),” which helped to legitimize Rufo’s attacks on public education, via his anti-critical race theory movement, and LGBTQ Americans. The Times shied away from contextualizing Rufo’s actions in its own words, writing that he “has become, to some on the left, an agitator of intolerance” and that “the left views as just as dangerous” his efforts to demonize LGBTQ Americans in public schools. By couching accurate descriptions of Rufo’s work only as labels from his political opponents and “critics,” the Times is whitewashing Rufo’s naked agenda of preserving structural racism and demonizing LGBTQ Americans as sexual predators.
The Times profile of Rufo has been criticized for its shortcomings. Press Watch Editor Dan Froomkin savaged it.
BuzzFeed reporter David Mack wrote a short Twitter thread criticizing the profile, pointing out that it doesn’t quote anyone targeted by Rufo’s actions and that it failed to expose Rufo’s own words that validate what people who oppose him are saying.
Georgetown University public policy professor Don Moynihan also highlighted in a Twitter thread the Times’ failure to show that Rufo lied to the paper about his efforts to demonize LGBTQ Americans and their supporters as “groomers.”
A day earlier, the Times published an obituary for Hatch, who had just passed away. The obituary repeatedly described him in positive terms, variously calling him “a Republican force,” a man “who crusaded for conservative causes,” and “a fighter” in the Senate. But the Times’ description of Hatch as “a gentlemanly conservative rock” before mentioning some of the actions he took to block gender equality received some criticism.
Media critic Jamison Foser, who formerly worked at Media Matters, called out such efforts to whitewash Hatch’s history, saying he was “a hateful and dishonest man who dedicated his life to making others suffer.” Foser highlighted Hatch’s pastattacks on affirmative action, voting rights, and civil rights. (And as The Advocate reported, Hatch also once said: “I wouldn't want to see homosexuals teaching school any more than I’d want to see members of the American Nazi Party teaching school.”)
The Times’ history of publishing ridiculous profiles of right-wing figures goes back years. Journalists and other experts have repeatedly mocked the Times’ November 2016 attempt to rehabilitate right-wing antisemitic pundit Glenn Beck. Regarding the Times’ 2017 profile of Daily Wire co-founder and editor Ben Shapiro portraying him as a “provocative ‘gladiator,’” the former activist director for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting asked if Shapiro paid the Times for the profile, while progressive writer Gary Legum slammed the Times for how it portrayed him.
The May 2018 opinion piece on “the renegades of the intellectual dark web” from former Times columnist Bari Weiss (who has since joined their ranks) that featured right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and Candace Owens was also panned. Raw Story reporter Matthew Chapman wrote on Twitter: “I don't think I'll ever find anything more stupid than how conservatives keep publishing columns in the nation's most prominent newspaper about how conservatives are never allowed to express their opinions.” Investigative reporter Ashley Feinberg wrote that “it’s astounding how dishonest this is.” And Jamelle Bouie, who later joined the Times as a columnist, mocked the premise that any of these conservative figures were intellectuals.
Business Insider media reporter Steven Perlberg ridiculed the Times for a “wide-eyed profile” of Charlie Kirk in April 2020. Meanwhile, journalist Melanie Sill suggested the Times should have portrayed Kirk as the “radical” he is.
A September 2018 Times profile of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was slammed by University Network for Human Rights executive director James Cavallaro for giving “free publicity for dangerous psychopaths.” Military tech writer Kelsey D. Atherton wrote a few tweets criticizing a January 2021 profile of far-right extremist Anthime Joseph Gionet (aka Baked Alaska, aka Tim Treadstone) for dancing around his fascist beliefs.
Yet another prominent example of the Times’ mistakes in profiling right-wingers is its November 2017 profile of a Nazi in Ohio. The backlash to this profile was so swift that it was widely covered in other media outlets, and Times editor Marc Lacey published an article responding to the criticism that the newspaper was “normalizing a Nazi sympathizer.”
The Times’ repeated failures to properly contextualize the extremist right-wing figures it profiles have in at least one other instance returned to haunt the paper of record. A September 2009 profile of right-wing activist James O’Keefe, which labeled O’Keefe as merely a “political gadfly,” was forced to run corrections after repeating O’Keefe’s descriptions of his misleadingly edited videos targeting the former community activist organization ACORN. That “political gadfly,” who has used illegal tactics for his operations in the past, won a court order in 2021 temporarily forcing the Times to stop reporting on his right-wing propaganda company.