Former NYT Editor Warns Paper to be Careful About Trump Coverage

There's a certain type of commentary that can be twisted by critics as 'gloating' or 'overkill.'

October 7, 2017 5:00 am
Donald Trump
US President Donald Trump. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty)

Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of the New York Times, used White House reporter Glenn Thrush as an example of how reporters shouldn’t talk about President Trump.

“On Twitter, Glenn Thrush, an otherwise great reporter, has tweeted that Trump had ‘breathtaking chutzpah,’ that he ‘will never get over the shock of waking up and seeing the leader of the free world spouting demonstrably false information,’” Abramson recounted in a recent analysis of the paper’s political coverage.

While Thrush’s observations may be true, Abramson wrote, they are opinions — and it’s exactly that type of commentary that can be twisted by critics as “gloating” or “overkill” — and that can hurt the paper’s historic, unrelenting and overall accurate coverage of the administration.

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