NY Times Columnist: Coverage of BLM Riots, Kavanaugh ‘Encourage Radicalization on Left’

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat took a polite shot at the liberal press, including his own paper, in Sunday’s “Why the Memory of Jan. 6 Can’t Prevent a Trump Resurgence.” 

Douthat argued that the liberal establishment (including its press handmaidens) unwittingly reinforce the idea that Trump isn’t a “uniquely malign figure” but only “one dubious actor among many.”

….because it’s constantly reinforced by a liberal establishment that’s officially committed to combating it. This means that not only are its Republican critics but its most committed champions the Jan. 6- committee. They include Democratic politicians who want conservatives to vote for them, while they also swing leftward and away from common ground. to media institutions whose sense of Trumpian emergency constantly undermines their claims of neutrality and fairness.

Douthat laid out detailed specifics.

This pattern was exemplified by the depressing incident that occurred last week. As the media geared up to cover the Jan. 6 committee hearings, a young man seemingly motivated by liberal causes — a constitutional right to abortion and gun control — crossed the country with the apparent intention of assassinating Brett Kavanaugh at the justice’s Maryland home….Since the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on abortion, justices have faced protests outside their homes and threats of violence, and pro-life organizations, especially crisis pregnancy centers, have been hit with arson and vandalism….

He was critical of his newspaper’s downplaying of the assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh.

The mainstream media has only covered the campaign sparingly. Kavanaugh’s would-be assassin did make the pages of this newspaper and The Washington Post.However, that threat is not a legal one. Given that assassination could change the court’s balance, it has not been covered as big news. Nor the general intimidation campaign, which deserves the same attention as similar strategies from the right.

It’s a similar pattern to what you saw around the George Floyd protests in 2020, when much of the ostensibly neutral press found it politically difficult — as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait put it recently — to use “clear language to describe the rioting and looting that was springing up around some demonstrations or the effects of the de-policing that took place in some areas in response.” Again and again, the spirit of emergency has converged with pre-existing ideological bias to both downplay and tacitly encourage radicalization on the left.

Douthat identified the information gap.

It has a negative impact on the way liberals view the world. Just as a lot of Fox News viewers don’t know what they should about Jan. 6, I encountered many high-information liberals across late 2020 who had literally no idea about the scale of damage from the spring and summer rioting.

The Times didn’t quite ignore the protest-related violence and looting, but certainly didn’t foreground it, and often rose to defend the protests against Republican criticism, ridiculously calling them “mostly peaceful” or even “overwhelmingly peaceful.”

He wrote Americans “are extremely aware that there’s more beyond the liberal media than just ‘disinformation,’” so that leads to a general skepticism of everyone that keeps Trump viable.

Every year or so Douthat lays a soft-spoken smackdown upon the liberal press, and his own paper, from his Times perch.