The New York Observer announced Monday it would change the way it covers the 2016 election following revelations that one of its editors was involved in writing a speech for Donald Trump.
Editor Ken Kurson “read and provided input” on an address Trump delivered in March to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone reported.
“Going forward, there will be no input whatsoever on the campaign from Mr. Kurson or anyone on the editorial side of the Observer,” senior politics editor Jill Jorgensen said in a statement Monday.
The paper’s owner and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also involved in writing the AIPAC speech.
The casino tycoon has already admitted to Kushner’s involvement in the address’s preparation. It wasn’t revealed until this weekend, however, that Kurson also played a role.
New York magazine was the first to note that Kurson, who formerly wrote speeches for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, helped write Trump’s AIPAC speech.
Following news of Kurson’s involvement, Jorgensen said the paper has been forced to re-think how it covers the 2016 GOP race, particularly the GOP front-runner.
“[W]e are re-visiting our policy on covering Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign — something that has been a matter of frequent discussion and debate at the Observer since Mr. Trump announced his candidacy,” her statement said. “The policy has evolved from our original plans to simply not cover Mr. Trump to covering him when he intersected with New York politics to more recently covering his campaign with mainly straight news stories, with an effort to avoid the opinion and analysis pieces of which other candidates have been the subject.”
“That policy has become less tenable as the field of candidates has shrunk. In the interest of covering the race as fairly as possible despite the unavoidable conflict of interest created by our ownership — a conflict we disclose on each story about Mr. Trump — and in response to concerns raised by staffers at the paper, Observer writers will now be able to cover Mr. Trump in the same way they cover every other candidate in the presidential race,” it added.
Kurson defended his role in helping Trump prepare his speech for AIPAC.
“A week ago, a friend who’s working for Ted Cruz asked me for Ray Kelly’s phone number and I gave it to him. Until recently I was dating a Democrat operative who works for high-profile candidates. It’s a complicated world and I don’t intend to let the eleven people who have appointed themselves the journalist police tell me, at age 47, how to behave or to whom I’m allowed to speak,” he told the Huffington Post.
