Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, ripped into Donald Trump at last night’s Arthur W. Page awards dinner held at the Grand Hyatt in New York.
The recipient of the Larry Foster Award for Public Integrity discarded his prepared remarks to respond to the president’s tweet earlier in the day that called the NYT “a true enemy of the people.”
“Enemy of the people is not just a tossed-off line that sounds good in a tweet,” said Baquet. “It's a particularly pernicious phrase with a deep history that surfaced in the French Revolution when it was used to set up a tribunal that would punish the opposition.”
The term became so embraced by “dictators and despots” that former Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev demanded an end to its use because it eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight.
 Dean Baquet |
Baquet noted that Khrushchev said energy of the people was “specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating people who disagreed with the supreme leader.”
He said no American president had ever uttered those words in public. “I have no doubt that the president’s anti-press rhetoric has inspired a sudden and frightening round of attacks on reporters for The Times and other news organizations.”
If he had the opportunity, Baquet would ask Trump how is the Times the enemy of the people when it reported on the abuses of Harvey Weinstein and sparked an international movement or when its reporters risk their lives covering wars in Afghanistan and Syria.
“And of course, how is it against the interests of the American people when reporters spend more than a year digging into obscure hidden records to tell the story of the president’s wealth and how his father actually made him a wealthy man, a fact that goes against his lifelong narrative,” asked Baquet.
The US media, in the past, could always count on the support of the White House if an American reporter was captured or injured in war, noted Baquet.
“You could count on the White House to help because every president, no matter his party, understood our role in the world, even if they didn’t always love us. Sadly, I’m not sure who I would call today,” said Baquet, who received a standing ovation at the end of his remarks.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
USA TODAY brings on Jamie Stockwell as VP of news, effective March 30. Stockwell was most recently deputy managing editor of news for the Washington Post... YouTube expands its likeness detection capabilities to a pilot group of government officials, journalists and political candidates... The AP Fund for Journalism adds 50 news organizations to its local news program, bringing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100. 
Versant Media Group, the NBCUniversal cable TV spin-off, today reported its first financial results as 2025 revenues dipped 5.3 percent to $6.7B and standalone EBITDA dropped 9.1 percent to $2.2B.
