The New York Times is reportedly warning editors and reporters to steer clear of appearances on cable-news shows that are seen as "too partisan" or "opinionated."
Vanity Fair's Joe Pompeo reported finance editor David Enrich was asked to decline an invitation to appear on Rachel Maddow's highly rated MSNBC show to talk about his May 19 report on Deutsche Bank flagging suspicious transactions involving President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner.
"The Times was wary of how viewers might perceive a down-the-middle journalist like Enrich talking politics with a mega-ideological host like Maddow," Pompeo wrote.
But it is not just MSNBC.
"The Times has come to 'prefer' . . . that its reporters steer clear of any cable-news shows that the masthead perceives as too partisan, and managers have lately been advising people not to go on what they see as highly opinionated programs," Pompeo wrote, citing an unnamed source.
According to Pompeo, those kinds of shows ones hosted by MSNBC's Lawrence McDonnell and CNN's Don Lemon, as well as Fox News' Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson — although no Times reporters have appeared on those programs.
Pompeo reported Times executive editor Dean Baquet and other managers are worried if a Times reporter goes on one those shows, it could be seen as they were aligned with the show's political leanings.
"He thinks it's a real issue," one unnamed source said of Baquet, Pompeo reported, while another source said: "Their view is that, intentionally or not, it affiliates the Times reporter with a bias."
But one unnamed cable network source pushed back, calling the Times' guidelines
"inconsistent, incoherent, and poorly conceived," Pompeo reported.
"At the moment that Donald Trump became president, and print media was coincidentally in crisis mode from a business perspective, a significant contributor to the success of publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post was the exposure that their great work got on networks like MSNBC and CNN," the source told Pompeo.
"They are the beneficiaries of some very positive exposure for their journalists."
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