New York Times Coverage of Trump Is Critical in Reporting Lies as Lies

American president reported as lying in the New York Times
this week in historic news column by Shear and Huetteman.

The New York Times offers news analyses this week following its decision to run the headline Donald Trump stated a "lie" for a piece by Michael D. Shear and Emmarie Huetteman on Trump's latest voter fraud falsehoods.

Notes the Times' Dan Barry:

Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said that he learned of Mr. Trump’s latest comments in a text message from an editor on Monday night. After consulting with other top editors, he decided that the use of 'lie' was warranted.

Presidents have been lying since George Washington so what gives at the Times vis a vis Trump?

What gives is Donald Trump is a dangerous malignant fascist, deranged and depraved, who threatens large swaths of the population. It's that straightforward.

Sure the Times should have reported on, with similar justifications, other dangerous liars in the past, but so what?

Trump is a psychopath who can inflict terrible damage, and the ridiculous conventions of American journalism inhibiting reporting on liars as liars can inflict dreadful costs on human beings.

The Wisconsin political culture presents a case study of what can happen when just about everyone plays dumb in the face of fascism.

Take a policy-averse population, a moribund Democratic Party, strident appeals to bigotry and a cowardly corporate press and a polity will produce a Scott Walker, or a Donald Trump.

Wisconsin will survive Scott Walker and the Republican racists' lost decade (2011-2019), but any thinking Wisconsinite will tell you the state has been shaken to its soul.

The New York Times, ever mindful of history, has decided it will not stand by and watch Trump's promised systemic harm of people and the destruction of reforming and humanizing institutions.

In that very notion of characterizing a presidential lie as a lie is a commitment to the truth and an abiding belief in the words of the great Madison newspaper journalist, William T. Evjue,"Give the people the truth and the freedom to discuss it and all will go well."

So the paper acted. Good for the Times.