The New York Times mocks the conservative media for their “misinformational bubbles” (that’s media columnist Jim Rutenberg on Monday), but the Times bubble looked doubly reinforced for a Sunday Styles front-page puff piece on NBC reporter Katy Tur. The headline was
‘You Can’t Rattle Her’: Katy Tur’s rise at NBC mirrors that of the presidential hopeful who baited her at his rallies.
In other words, liberals and conservatives both employ the principle that being scorned by the other side makes you more popular with your own side. Except the liberal media uniquely believe (or often pretend) they don’t have a side. They just stand for “the truth.”
As a candidate, Donald Trump would single out “Little Katy” at rallies and say “She’s such a liar, what a little liar she is!” This has yet to score a New York Times puff piece for “Little Marco” Rubio, but Tur is a true-blue liberal, down to her three years of dating former MSNBC star Keith Olbermann, which is mentioned. (Neither media star will now comment on the other.)
That titular quote – “you can’t rattle her” – comes from NBC News president Andy Lack. How’s that for media outlets scratching each other's backs? Times writer Luisita Lopez Torregrosa uncorks a real pile of praise from inside the liberal media elite, with zero rebuttal from MSNBC critics:
If ratings are any indication, she’s a hit. All cable news networks are scoring big gains across the board since Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Her 2 p.m. hour has jumped 69 percent in total viewers since 2016, according to recent Nielsen ratings provided by MSNBC.
“Katy is old-school in the best ways,” her boss, Andrew Lack, the chairman of NBC News and MSNBC, said. “She’s tough, edgy, and operates with one guiding mission: Chase the facts. And you can’t rattle her. No matter what’s thrown at her, she stays focused, digs in and gets answers.”
Norah O’Donnell, an anchor of “CBS This Morning” and a contributor to “60 Minutes,” told me: “The hardest thing to do is to report the truth in the face of taunting, and Katy did that. The sky’s the limit for her.”
Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, sizes her up: “She’s a quick study, handling hard news in a conversational tone. She stumbles over names and words, but I don’t see that as a liability. It makes her human, and she brings also a sense of earnestness and candor.”
But she showed mastery of issues recently when she was a guest on “Charlie Rose,” handling with ease his questions on the Trump presidency and foreign policy.
Her cutting wit, which she underscores with a sharply raised eyebrow, comes through occasionally. When the White House press secretary Sean Spicer, on the receiving end of a barrage of questions, blurted, “You guys have an NBC thing,” Ms. Tur hissed back on-air: “Yes, we do. It’s called journalism.”
You can't rattle her, she reports the truth, the sky's the limit, she has cutting wit and a mastery of the issues....all this gush, and the Times still drew criticism from the left! Their Tur headlines were sexist, according to some. Joe Concha at The Hill reported:
The original Saturday headline, “Katy Tur Is Tougher Than She Looks,” was changed to “Katy Tur's Swift and Surprising Rise” later that day.
After that headline also came under criticism, the Times put a third headline on the story: “You can't rattle her: Katy Tur is on the rise.”
Even Times reporters were critics: "I don't think Katy Tur looks fragile," tweeted Maggie Haberman.
Tur offered a couple of her favorite boosters, crazy Esquire reporter Charlie Pierce and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post:
The Times was late to this party. Their puff piece read like the Washington Post puff piece in January. The online headline: “Taunted by Trump, ‘Little Katy’ stood her ground. And became a star because of it.” Post media reporter Paul Farhi actually turned to poetic metaphors in appreciation:
Tur’s reaction to the tumult was like that during her first confrontations in New Hampshire and in Trump Tower. She stood her ground. She didn’t fire back. She continued reporting.
Now she smiles at the memory, as composed as a sonnet.
“Generally, I find the hotter the temperature, the cooler I am,” she says. “It’s times of relative calm and ease that I start to wind myself up.”
These profiles don't get into what Tur said to Trump, only what Trump said to Tur. For example, in their first interview, Tur kept suggesting Trump had to go to the border with Mexico before he could have an immigration position: "When was the last time you were at the border?...But when was the last time that you were there?...So how do you-- if you haven`t been there in three years, how do you know that it is such a problem?"
This is a little like saying we can't criticize NBC News if we haven't been to the studio in Manhattan.
