November 19, 2016 --

New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin reported, November 12, that New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. wrote a letter to the paper’s subscribers promising, in part, to “’rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is, to report America and the world honestly, without fear of favor.” This means, of course, that Mr. Sulzberger would need to restore objectivity as the keystone of “Times journalism. Jim Rutenberg, the paper’s media reporter, made it clear, in a front page article, August 8, that “objectivity” would not be honored at the Times in its coverage of the Trump candidacy.

Rutenberg asserted, in part, “ If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer that you’ve ever been to being oppositional.” If Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. did not direct the journalists at The New York Times to drop objectivity to serve as a public relations arm of the Clinton campaign, as publisher, he must take responsibility for the betrayal by his newspaper of journalistic ethics and decency.

Rutenberg asserted in his article that Donald J. Trump had receive d “ nearly $2 billion in free media.”

It is not clear to LPR how Rutenberg arrived at that figure.

LPR would point out that it has seen no estimate of the value to Hillary Clinton, the defeated Democratic candidate for president, of the dozens of anti-Trump articles and editorials, in the Times, plus the hundreds of anti-Trump letters and columns and op-ed articles in the Times.

If The New York Times printed one pro-Trump op-ed or column, LPR is not aware of it.

At the end of Frank Capra’s great populist movie, “Meet John Doe,” a group of ordinary citizens persuades John Doe not to commit suicide to protest corruption, as he had pledged to do. As Doe and the citizens leave, the newspaper editor Henry Connell says to the anti-John Doe media magnate D.B. Norton, “There you are, Norton! The people! Try and lick that!”

Well, there you are, Sulzberger! The people! Try and lick that!