The New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger admits that the Biden administration has been less than impressed with their coverage of his age and declining health. 

In an interview with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Sulzberger said that the White House had been "extremely upset" with the paper over their coverage of Biden's presidency:

We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden. He is a historically unpopular incumbent and the oldest man to ever hold this office. We’ve reported on both of those realities extensively, and the White House has been extremely upset about it.

We are not saying that this is the same as Trump’s five court cases or that they are even. They are different. But they are both true, and the public needs to know both those things. And if you are hyping up one side or downplaying the other, no side has a reason to trust you in the long run.

Sulzberger's comments come as The New York Times was among the various mainstream media outlets to cover Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s handling of classified material.

The report, published earlier this month, concluded that Biden had likely broken the law in his handling of classified materials but that his age, memory, and declining overall health meant that a criminal prosecution would not be in the public interest. 

Among the report's various conclusions was that Biden had repeatedly forgotten when his son Beau had passed away, substantiating the widely held public view that the president is in a state of serious mental decline. 

The White House was angry with the manner in which much of the liberal media covered the report, even sending a letter to the White House Correspondents Association demanding that they stop discussing the president's mental capacities. 

In his letter to the WHCA, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, Ian Sams, wrote that “covering the report is challenging" due to its length and intricacy but that the “wrong and inappropriate personal comments have distracted from due attention to the substance.”

"Those facts stress the importance of careful, patient coverage,” Sams wrote. “Instead, many outlets have reported striking inaccuracies that misrepresent the report’s conclusion about the President, and reporters in the White House Briefing Room have asked questions that include false content or are based on false premises.”

In recent weeks, the Times has published various op-eds suggesting that Biden should step aside in favor of another candidate. Among them has been the columnist Ezra Klein, who also has an eponymous podcast owned by the media company. 

Klein made the case that Biden should not run again based on his age and lagging poll numbers and even suggested that the president "sometimes speaks in gibberish." 

"I take nothing away from how hard that is, how much Biden wants to finish the job he has started, keep doing the good he believes he can do," Klein argued. "Retirement can be, often is, a trauma. But losing to Donald Trump would be far worse."