New York Times Website Scrubs Admission CBS Moderator 'Helped Mr. Kaine Along' at Debate

October 5th, 2016 1:02 PM

Dan Gainor, MRC's vice president for business and culture, analyzed the debate overnight for Foxnews.com. This part really jumped out: The New York Times, openly proclaiming on the front page that journalism demands that Trump be defeated, scrubs its own copy if it sounds too helpful to conservative spin. Times reporters Nick Confessors and Matt Flegenheimer live-blogged the debate, as Gainor reported:

Even The New York Times admitted she took sides: “Elaine Quijano, the moderator, helped Mr. Kaine along, opening one question with a recitation of Mr. Trump’s statements.”

Of course, the Times also deleted that quote later in the evening and eliminated any reference to the moderator in the story.

Thanks to the helpful site NewsDiffs, it’s clear how Times editors whitewashed their own reporting. The story sits ironically under the headline: “Vice-Presidential Debate: What You Missed.”

According to NewsDiffs, this sentence of the summary right after the Quijano mention was also deleted:

Mr. Pence did not even try to defend his running mate, instead attacking the Obama administration for allowing sanctuary cities and releasing some illegal immigrants from custody while their cases were being adjudicated.

Apparently, the phrase "sanctuary cities" and going soft on criminal aliens are not to be recognized as "news" copy. What viewers can read online today is cheerleading copy for the Kaine camp:

What followed was a thumping: Mr. Kaine reeled off chapter and verse on Mr. Trump’s musings on the Russian autocrat and Mr. Putin’s own record as president, from Russia’s struggling economy to his persecution of gay people and journalists. Mr. Pence tried repeatedly to argue that Mr. Trump hadn’t said the things Mr. Kaine had claimed. When that failed, he tried to suggest that [SNIP] merely quoting Mr. Trump was to engage in insults.

That set Mr. Kaine up for a revealing summation. “Six times tonight I have said to Governor Pence I can’t imagine how you can defend your running mate’s position,” Mr. Kaine said. “He is asking everybody to vote for somebody that he cannot defend.”

Here's what was in the snip, according to NewsDiffs:

When that failed, he tried to [suggested that Mr. Kaine was inventing or exaggerating some of the comments attributed to Mr. Trump (he was not) and — without missing a beat — argued that any of Mr. Trump’s insults paled against Mrs. Clinton’s headline-making comparison of some Trump supporters to a “basket of deplorables.”]

In the online version, the Times reporters eventually get to describing the "deplorables" gaffe, but seven paragraphs later. Perhaps the Times felt that the summation ought to imply strongly that Kaine crushed Pence.

There's nothing wrong with live-blogging getting a little editing overnight....but this summation at the top of the piece today is misleading to the public: "Here’s how we analyzed in real time the only vice-presidential debate between Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia and Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana."

That statement is False.