New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet on Sunday said President Trump’s sustained attacks on the media were “out of control” and causing a “longstanding, harmful effect on the country.”
“It’s out of control, and his advisers should tell him to stop, because it’s actually affecting the civic life and debate in the country,” Baquet said during an interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
.@deanbaquet: If President Trump creates a culture where ‘Fox and Friends’ is regarded as “serious journalism,” and the New York Times and Washington Post are not, it will have a “longstanding, harmful effect on the country” https://t.co/khOJbYoPoz
— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) April 8, 2018
Baquet, however, said the “Trump effect,” combined with the New York Times’ coverage of the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct scandal, helped the newspaper drum up $1 billion in revenue in 2017.
“It’s not just Trump, but I think people understand right now that there is a need for an aggressive, independent press to cover a government that right now is in more turmoil than it’s been in a generation,” he continued.
Baquet added he didn’t consider it a slight on the White House press corps that Trump was again snubbing the White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner, saying he believed the event’s organizers should “rethink their mission.”
“I pulled us out of the White House Correspondents Dinner when I was the Washington bureau chief because I hated the image of journalists, editors and powerful politicians seeming chummy,” Baquet said, referring to a move that ocurred well before before Trump became president. “They should not need for the president to come.”
