Trump Is Hoping The New York Times’ New Publisher Will Go Even Easier on Him Than the Paper Already Does

A.G. Sulzberger, a journalist at The New York Times, succeeded his father Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. as the paper’s publisher on Monday. President Trump fired off a set of tweets Tuesday morning wishing Sulzberger “luck” in making the paper more “fair” to him.

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“The Failing New York Times has a new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger,” he wrote. “Congratulations! Here is a last chance for the Times to fulfill the vision of its Founder, Adolph Ochs, to give the news impartially, without fear or FAVOR, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.'”

He continued, “Get impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent “sources,” and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you won’t have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done! GL.”

While The Times is generally seen as a paper that leans more to the left than it does to the right — though it’s seen as part of the “liberal media elite” among conservatives — the paper has actually been slammed repeatedly for not challenging Trump enough, both when he was a presidential candidate and now that he’s president.

An analysis by the Columbia Journalism Review found that the media’s coverage of Hillary Clinton’s scandals, particularly about her emails, received disproportionate attention when compared to how much was focused on her policy. The study found “roughly four times as many Clinton-related sentences that described scandals as opposed to policies.” When it came to Trump, on the other hand, sentences were “one-and-a-half times as likely to be about policy as scandal.”

Among other media giants, The New York Times was guilty of feeding into the Clinton email frenzy and not scrutinizing Trump nearly as closely or as seriously. “In just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election,” the CRJ study found.

Much has been written about why most media outlets got the outcome of the 2016 election wrong, but in a letter to sent to readers on November 13 of last year, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger acknowledged the possibility that Trump’s not being a regular candidate might have resulted in reporters dismissing him as the definite loser of the election.

“After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions,” Sulzberger wrote. “Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”

Most recently, Times reporter Michael Schmidt was heavily criticized for conducting an interview in which he allowed Trump to spout off countless false and erratic statements without challenging the claims’ validity or asking the president to elaborate on concepts he clearly didn’t understand.

In a letter to readers, A.G. Sulzberger wrote that his great-great-grandfather’s mission of making The Times a paper “dedicated to journalism of the highest integrity and devoted to the public welfare” is “particularly urgent” to him as he steps in as the paper’s new publisher.