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Joe Biden, Ukraine, and the NY Times’ desperate need for a public editor mediamatters.org/blog/2019/06/0…
It is entirely possible that the Times' explanation is correct and Iuliia Mendel's reporting was fine and unaffected by her new gig.
But Times reporters would never accept a "we reviewed the situation and determined we did nothing wrong" statement from another institution.
But Times reporters would never accept a "we reviewed the situation and determined we did nothing wrong" statement from another institution.
A public editor would be empowered to get reporters answers about the workings of a powerful institution that plays a key role in our politics -- the Times itself.
When the Times killed off the position in 2017, its publisher said the role was no longer needed because "our followers on social media" can serve as a "modern watchdog."
That isn't working out too well.
That isn't working out too well.
The Times has put its reporters in a terrible position, subject to constant criticism. Could they better respond to it? Sure. But I'm sympathetic to the reality that they're deluged.
So the same pattern plays out again and again. The Times publishes a piece, its widely panned for reasons sometimes good and sometimes bad, the reporter and the paper and the colleagues defend the work, the readers don't get answers and everyone leaves angry.
It doesn't have to be this way.
The public editor isn’t a panacea. Having the position did not prevent the paper’s deeply flawed treatment of the 2016 election, and bringing it back won’t break the Times’ political reporting from its adherence to a model of journalism that seems insufficient to the moment.
And yes, people will still be mean to Times journalists on Twitter.
But the experiment in eliminating the public editor has obviously failed, and reversing it would bring some crucial transparency to the paper.
