The New York Times has assigned over 60 “journalists” to cover the Joe Biden-Donald Trump debate Thursday night, including an absurd 29 fact-checkers. In the opening paragraph of their article preening about their upcoming coverage, they made it very clear that they weren’t doing this to be fair-minded arbiters of facts—there’s one candidate on the stage who they really, really don’t like.
Their snarly opening paragraph didn’t even mention Biden:
How do you cover a historic presidential debate that includes a candidate convicted of 34 felonies in what he has called, without evidence, a “rigged trial,” and that will air on TV absent an audience? With a few dozen reporters and fact-checkers. [Emphasis mine.]
"Without evidence?" There is in fact a plethora of evidence that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s manufactured business fraud case against Trump ran afoul of previous legal norms and was presided over by an obviously biased Judge Juan Merchan. Commentators on both sides of the political aisle were shocked at the perversion of justice, but the Times could care less—they got what they wanted, namely, the opening to write “convicted felon Donald Trump” over and over.
Fired CNN commentator and DNC waterboy Chris Cillizza seemed to feel a thrill running up his leg:
The New York Times is dedicating 29(!!!) fact checkers to Thursday's debatehttps://t.co/OfzVqMpGcE
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) June 25, 2024
The Times gloats about how 60 journalists will be on hand to be feel triggered by Trump’s every utterance. Couldn’t just a few good ones do the job?
The New York Times will livestream the debate, and 60 Times journalists will be on hand Thursday night to offer context, insight, photos, reactions and fact-checking as part of our live coverage beginning around 8 p.m.
Not mentioned in their story is the dubious past of fact-checkers, who seem to get reality wrong more than they get it right. It was only last Thursday that fact-checking site Snopes admitted—after seven years—that the narrative claiming that the former president called neo-Nazis and white supremacists "very fine people" was false.
And we’re supposed to believe these jokers?
Team Trump Demands Biden Stop Peddling Charlottesville Lie After Snopes Debunked It
No, then-President Donald Trump did not call neo-Nazis and white supremacists "very fine people" in 2017. Speaking about a deadly protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, he said those groups should be "condemned totally." https://t.co/AHjw0mwl3i pic.twitter.com/TtCH1BzZja
— snopes.com (@snopes) June 20, 2024
It’s not the first time Snopes has misled the public:
Related: Busting the Fact-Checkers, or Why Fact-Checkers Stink
Snopes is certainly not the only source of misinformation; PolitiFact once felt the need to fact-check an article from the Babylon Bee—a site that makes it quite clear that they’re satire. Did the low IQ researchers who put up this nonsense fail to check the Bee’s motto, “Fake news you can trust”? That might have given them a clue.
Somebody gets paid for this?
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous. Despite the fact the New York Times and other corporate media organizations have beclowned themselves over and over again, a disturbing number of voters take their word as gospel. That’s one of the reasons we go out of our way to point out their “malarkey.”
As my colleague Brandon Morse has pointed out, Trump won’t just be debating Biden on Thursday evening—he’ll be taking on the biased media as well. Count on CNN and the New York Times to keep delivering their dishonest takes to the electorate.
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