yes indeed. think a similar argument can be made for support of the even more imperfect Washington Post, which may be a shadow of its former self, but still produces some very good stuff, notwithstanding subsciptions cancelled by friends who want to punish it for inane editorial views.
Agreed. When I sit down each morning to read the Times' print edition, I'm awed by the scope and depth of the coverage. By refusing to be cowed, the Times is doing what our government institutions can no longer do. It's standing up to a bully whose erratic and self-serving actions are destroying our country. Perfection isn't necessary. All the Times needs to do is keep telling the truth, as best as it or anyone can, in this terrible time.
Very well said, Dick! And the continuing attacks on The New York Times by commenters here are proof that the truth is inconvenient. Of course, The Times has made mistakes! What human being or organization associated with them hasn't? But The Times truly is committed to reporting the truth, without fear or favor.
Bravo for calling attention to the dangers of the "treason" drumbeat. We can't get desensitized to the egregious misuse of this term to describe routine newsgathering, reporting and analysis. As important, I appreciate your larger point, that we cannot take for granted the courage and integrity of the Times. I couldn't agree more that we need to rally around the Times and celebrate its immeasurable contributions to standing up for press freedom, which really means the public's right to hold power to account. All Americans should be grateful for the principled resistance the Times is mounting to the deplorable anti-press campaign that is relentlessly eroding Americans' trust in journalistic truth-telling. Another reminder of this resistance came this week with the Times' second lawsuit against the Pentagon's anti-democratic press restrictions: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/business/media/new-york-times-pentagon-lawsuit.html They aren't giving up, and neither can any of us. Thank you for the reminder!
I am glad the NY Times sometimes publishes controversial and disturbing pieces. That said, I wish they still had the position of Public Editor, who could lend some independent weight or doubt on the quality of the reporting of a particular piece. In announcing that elimination, Sulzberger said in 2017, "Today, our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog." I appreciate your comments on the NY Times piece. I've seen comments saying other things. Reader comments are important to add depth. But a Public Editor on the inside, as difficult as that job might be, could help me understand the standards behind, and reliability of, a controversial piece.
If these are the two remaining voices questioning power (which I doubt — I believe there are others), all the more reason we should be asking them to clean up their acts when we notice their errors and transgressions. Both are remarkably sexist in their coverage and lack thereof, as a start.
An important reminder, Dick. We needed that. To return to a comparison of juggernauts, it’s interesting to note that both the Times and WaPo saw huge subscriber gains in the wake of Trump’s first election, but only the Times was able to keep them. Also: it appears to matter a lot if ownership of a newspaper isn’t also seeking government contracts for their other businesses.
This is a useful reminder of how casually the powerful now reach for legal and criminal language against reporters they don't like. When a sitting president calls a journalist's observation "treasonous" — a capital charge under the Constitution — that's not rhetorical excess. It's a stated preference for execution over accountability. Worth saying plainly.
Where the piece loses me is the leap from "the Times is under attack" to "the Times is the jewel of our industry" and a proxy for press freedom itself.
Those are different claims. The first is about political targeting. The second is about institutional quality. Tofel treats the attacks as proof of the second, but that's not how proof works. Netanyahu's lawsuit threat and Trump's treason accusation tell us something about Netanyahu and Trump. They don't settle the question of whether the Times has earned the authority it holds.
And that question matters more, not less, because of the scale. The Times doesn't just report — it sets the agenda for every newsroom downstream of it, confers legitimacy on what counts as serious discourse, and resets the historical baseline when it corrects or declines to correct. That's not a criticism. That's a description of what "paper of record" actually means in practice.
Power that large doesn't earn immunity from scrutiny. It earns the opposite. Iraq. The Biden cognitive decline story. The years of Russiagate coverage where the gap between what was reported and what was established never got a real accounting. You can dispute any individual case. You can't dispute the pattern: when the Times leans hard in a direction, reality shifts for millions of people, and the corrections rarely travel as far as the original framing did.
So yes — defend Kristof's right to publish without being hauled into retaliatory litigation. Defend Sanger's ability to state a fact on Air Force One without the president calling it treason. Those fights are real and they matter.
Just don't let "they're under attack" do the work of "therefore they are trustworthy." The Times operates at a scale where that conflation is itself a press freedom problem.
You are right that I did not make the case for the Times's value in this piece, in part for reasons of space and in part because I think it is largely self-evident. I don't dispute, as I said, that it sometimes falls short. But I do stand by the idea that it is the jewel of our industry, and I think the proof of that is ample.
I don’t doubt the Times’s importance; I doubt that its status as “the jewel of our industry” is self‑evident in the way you suggest. To me, that’s actually the interesting question your piece leaves on the table: what, precisely, should count as the proof? Reach? Resources? Pulitzers? Agenda‑setting power? Or something about how consistently it has served the broader public, including when that meant challenging its own class and priors?
I agree it would take more space than this comment thread allows, and I don’t want to derail the specific point you’re making here about weaponized libel and “treason” rhetoric. But if you’re ever up for a separate, good‑faith back‑and‑forth on what justifies that “jewel” status in 2026, I’d be very interested. I think a lot of us who care about the press, but also worry about its blind spots, would benefit from seeing that case laid out and stress‑tested.
The New York Times (like my mother) is very old, regularly infuriating and disappointing, past its prime, but also endearing and necessary and worthy of support. And, like my mother, would quickly perish without support and our world would be a poorer place for it. We have only imperfect institutions. True today. True always.
Love this, and hope your mother does as well. Not knowing her, my only quibble is that I am not sure the Times is past its prime. My continuing observation these days-- and by no means limited to the Times, but including it-- is that the very best journalism being published today is among the best there has ever been.
You write: "A former Israeli prime minister told Kristof that he 'definitely' believes such sexual assaults occur." If you are going to reference Olmert in relation to these claims it seems at least worth also noting that he subsequently issued a statement: "I did not validate these claims. I have no knowledge supporting these claims as I said to Mr. Kristof. Therefore, the positioning of my quote after pages of such allegations misrepresents my views." See https://x.com/EliLake/status/2054294062992134262 . Also perhaps worth noting that there were "more than 2,000 claims from formerly incarcerated people who say they were sexually assaulted by staff at New York's jails and prisons." No 3,700-word Kristof column on that. https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/what-will-new-york-do-to-answer-decades-of-rape-claims-rikers-rosies/ The double standards are one reason that not only the Israeli government but the American Jewish community consensus broadly finds this story problematic: https://conferenceofpresidents.org/press/jewish-leaders-condemn-kristofs-new-york-times-column/
I did see the Olmert statement. It seems to me to distance itself from the details of the piece (without refuting them) while carefully declining to walk away from the overall claim that substantial sexual assault has been occurring under the color of Israeli authority. And Kristof does note in some detail the Abner Louima case, one of the darkest chapters in recent New York history.
Those Pulitzers won for an investigation that was found to be less than and the Walter Duranty agitprop that won a Pulitzer. The right thing would be for the Times to return the award.
To which of the five Times Pulitzers that I note are you talking about? Kristof’s reporting Pultizsr was for Tiananmen Square— the farthest thing imaginable from Communist propaganda.
The Times wins Pulitzers because it has people on the inside. Margaret Sullivan wrote about that.
Also, both the Times and Pulitzer committee have for years ignored evidenced fabrication and sexual assault by star reporters. No one in the industry is willing to talk about this despite the considerable documentation.
We need real journalism about the horrific sexual abuses, not opinion pieces.
To what Margaret Sullivan piece are you referring?
And if you have read the Kristof piece, you will see that it is deeeply reported. Fourteen sources claiming personal experience cannot simply be waved away.
“The Times almost always had someone on the Pulitzer board that picked the winners,” wrote former Times editor Jill Abramson.
Also, that both the Times and Pulitzer committee have ignored documented fabrication and sexual assault, which you’re ignoring too, is the wider issue.
yes indeed. think a similar argument can be made for support of the even more imperfect Washington Post, which may be a shadow of its former self, but still produces some very good stuff, notwithstanding subsciptions cancelled by friends who want to punish it for inane editorial views.
Agreed. When I sit down each morning to read the Times' print edition, I'm awed by the scope and depth of the coverage. By refusing to be cowed, the Times is doing what our government institutions can no longer do. It's standing up to a bully whose erratic and self-serving actions are destroying our country. Perfection isn't necessary. All the Times needs to do is keep telling the truth, as best as it or anyone can, in this terrible time.
Very well said, Dick! And the continuing attacks on The New York Times by commenters here are proof that the truth is inconvenient. Of course, The Times has made mistakes! What human being or organization associated with them hasn't? But The Times truly is committed to reporting the truth, without fear or favor.
Bravo for calling attention to the dangers of the "treason" drumbeat. We can't get desensitized to the egregious misuse of this term to describe routine newsgathering, reporting and analysis. As important, I appreciate your larger point, that we cannot take for granted the courage and integrity of the Times. I couldn't agree more that we need to rally around the Times and celebrate its immeasurable contributions to standing up for press freedom, which really means the public's right to hold power to account. All Americans should be grateful for the principled resistance the Times is mounting to the deplorable anti-press campaign that is relentlessly eroding Americans' trust in journalistic truth-telling. Another reminder of this resistance came this week with the Times' second lawsuit against the Pentagon's anti-democratic press restrictions: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/business/media/new-york-times-pentagon-lawsuit.html They aren't giving up, and neither can any of us. Thank you for the reminder!
I am glad the NY Times sometimes publishes controversial and disturbing pieces. That said, I wish they still had the position of Public Editor, who could lend some independent weight or doubt on the quality of the reporting of a particular piece. In announcing that elimination, Sulzberger said in 2017, "Today, our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog." I appreciate your comments on the NY Times piece. I've seen comments saying other things. Reader comments are important to add depth. But a Public Editor on the inside, as difficult as that job might be, could help me understand the standards behind, and reliability of, a controversial piece.
Amen.
Thanks for not bowing down!
If these are the two remaining voices questioning power (which I doubt — I believe there are others), all the more reason we should be asking them to clean up their acts when we notice their errors and transgressions. Both are remarkably sexist in their coverage and lack thereof, as a start.
An important reminder, Dick. We needed that. To return to a comparison of juggernauts, it’s interesting to note that both the Times and WaPo saw huge subscriber gains in the wake of Trump’s first election, but only the Times was able to keep them. Also: it appears to matter a lot if ownership of a newspaper isn’t also seeking government contracts for their other businesses.
This is a useful reminder of how casually the powerful now reach for legal and criminal language against reporters they don't like. When a sitting president calls a journalist's observation "treasonous" — a capital charge under the Constitution — that's not rhetorical excess. It's a stated preference for execution over accountability. Worth saying plainly.
Where the piece loses me is the leap from "the Times is under attack" to "the Times is the jewel of our industry" and a proxy for press freedom itself.
Those are different claims. The first is about political targeting. The second is about institutional quality. Tofel treats the attacks as proof of the second, but that's not how proof works. Netanyahu's lawsuit threat and Trump's treason accusation tell us something about Netanyahu and Trump. They don't settle the question of whether the Times has earned the authority it holds.
And that question matters more, not less, because of the scale. The Times doesn't just report — it sets the agenda for every newsroom downstream of it, confers legitimacy on what counts as serious discourse, and resets the historical baseline when it corrects or declines to correct. That's not a criticism. That's a description of what "paper of record" actually means in practice.
Power that large doesn't earn immunity from scrutiny. It earns the opposite. Iraq. The Biden cognitive decline story. The years of Russiagate coverage where the gap between what was reported and what was established never got a real accounting. You can dispute any individual case. You can't dispute the pattern: when the Times leans hard in a direction, reality shifts for millions of people, and the corrections rarely travel as far as the original framing did.
So yes — defend Kristof's right to publish without being hauled into retaliatory litigation. Defend Sanger's ability to state a fact on Air Force One without the president calling it treason. Those fights are real and they matter.
Just don't let "they're under attack" do the work of "therefore they are trustworthy." The Times operates at a scale where that conflation is itself a press freedom problem.
You are right that I did not make the case for the Times's value in this piece, in part for reasons of space and in part because I think it is largely self-evident. I don't dispute, as I said, that it sometimes falls short. But I do stand by the idea that it is the jewel of our industry, and I think the proof of that is ample.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I don’t doubt the Times’s importance; I doubt that its status as “the jewel of our industry” is self‑evident in the way you suggest. To me, that’s actually the interesting question your piece leaves on the table: what, precisely, should count as the proof? Reach? Resources? Pulitzers? Agenda‑setting power? Or something about how consistently it has served the broader public, including when that meant challenging its own class and priors?
I agree it would take more space than this comment thread allows, and I don’t want to derail the specific point you’re making here about weaponized libel and “treason” rhetoric. But if you’re ever up for a separate, good‑faith back‑and‑forth on what justifies that “jewel” status in 2026, I’d be very interested. I think a lot of us who care about the press, but also worry about its blind spots, would benefit from seeing that case laid out and stress‑tested.
The New York Times (like my mother) is very old, regularly infuriating and disappointing, past its prime, but also endearing and necessary and worthy of support. And, like my mother, would quickly perish without support and our world would be a poorer place for it. We have only imperfect institutions. True today. True always.
Love this, and hope your mother does as well. Not knowing her, my only quibble is that I am not sure the Times is past its prime. My continuing observation these days-- and by no means limited to the Times, but including it-- is that the very best journalism being published today is among the best there has ever been.
You write: "A former Israeli prime minister told Kristof that he 'definitely' believes such sexual assaults occur." If you are going to reference Olmert in relation to these claims it seems at least worth also noting that he subsequently issued a statement: "I did not validate these claims. I have no knowledge supporting these claims as I said to Mr. Kristof. Therefore, the positioning of my quote after pages of such allegations misrepresents my views." See https://x.com/EliLake/status/2054294062992134262 . Also perhaps worth noting that there were "more than 2,000 claims from formerly incarcerated people who say they were sexually assaulted by staff at New York's jails and prisons." No 3,700-word Kristof column on that. https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/what-will-new-york-do-to-answer-decades-of-rape-claims-rikers-rosies/ The double standards are one reason that not only the Israeli government but the American Jewish community consensus broadly finds this story problematic: https://conferenceofpresidents.org/press/jewish-leaders-condemn-kristofs-new-york-times-column/
I did see the Olmert statement. It seems to me to distance itself from the details of the piece (without refuting them) while carefully declining to walk away from the overall claim that substantial sexual assault has been occurring under the color of Israeli authority. And Kristof does note in some detail the Abner Louima case, one of the darkest chapters in recent New York history.
As for any American Jewish community "consensus," you are in no more posiitiion than I, or any group of leaders, to claim any such thing. I do note, however, that an April poll by Pew found that "56% of Jewish Americans have little or no confidence in Netanyahu on world affairs." https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/07/negative-views-of-israel-netanyahu-continue-to-rise-among-americans-especially-young-people/
Those Pulitzers won for an investigation that was found to be less than and the Walter Duranty agitprop that won a Pulitzer. The right thing would be for the Times to return the award.
To which of the five Times Pulitzers that I note are you talking about? Kristof’s reporting Pultizsr was for Tiananmen Square— the farthest thing imaginable from Communist propaganda.
The Times wins Pulitzers because it has people on the inside. Margaret Sullivan wrote about that.
Also, both the Times and Pulitzer committee have for years ignored evidenced fabrication and sexual assault by star reporters. No one in the industry is willing to talk about this despite the considerable documentation.
We need real journalism about the horrific sexual abuses, not opinion pieces.
To what Margaret Sullivan piece are you referring?
And if you have read the Kristof piece, you will see that it is deeeply reported. Fourteen sources claiming personal experience cannot simply be waved away.
Time will tell
See Margaret’s book.
I’ve read the Kristof piece and it’s not terribly reported, though not as deeply reported as it could have been.
Still, my point is wider about the Times and Pulitzers.
I have read Margaret's books. To what passage of which book are you referring?
Sorry, I meant Jill Abramson:
“The Times almost always had someone on the Pulitzer board that picked the winners,” wrote former Times editor Jill Abramson.
Also, that both the Times and Pulitzer committee have ignored documented fabrication and sexual assault, which you’re ignoring too, is the wider issue.