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**JULY 14, 2023**

Kuttner on TAP

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**** The Pro-Corporate New York Times

Its coverage is often biased and sloppy.

Sometimes the news and "interpretative" coverage of the supposedly
liberal

**New York Times** is astonishingly shabby and friendly to the corporate
view. Recent exhibits A, B, and C are the

**Times** treatment of the fraught question of U.S. limits on sensitive
exports to China; the right-wing assault on the heroic Lina Khan; and
the issue of how to think about the national debt. On China, the

**Times** ran an explainer piece largely taking the corporate view, with
a few brief quotes from China hawks for the sake of credibility. The
July 13 piece, by Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson
<[link removed]>,
was headlined "Looming U.S. Investment Restrictions on China Threaten
Diplomatic Outreach." The subhead helpfully explains: "Any such
restrictions are expected to anger Beijing and will be the first test of
the new channels of communication that the world's two largest
economies are trying to restore."

In fact, strategic export controls have been Biden policy since last
October. As the details are finalized, there is a great deal of
infighting as corporate players and their allies in government work to
make them as weak as possible. The

**Times** piece first quotes the concerns of someone named Mark Sobel,
described as "a former longtime Treasury Department official who is now
the U.S. chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions
Forum." It doesn't mention that the private organization, despite the
official-sounding title, is almost entirely corporate.

The piece goes on to quote one critic after another about the risks of
the controls, without saying much about the Chinese practices that make
the controls necessary. Just to gild the lily, the forthcoming

**Times** Sunday magazine features a piece by Alex Palmer
<[link removed]>
with the title "'An Act of War': Inside America's Silicon Blockade
Against China: The Biden administration thinks it can preserve
America's technological primacy by cutting China off from advanced
computer chips. Could the plan backfire?"

Here's an even worse one. FTC Chair Lina Khan has been under repeated
assault by corporations and their Republican allies for the sin of
resurrecting long-dormant antitrust enforcement, and with great energy
and creativity. On the eve of a hearing called by House Judiciary Chair
Jim Jordan to flay Khan, the

**Times** ran a "news" piece by Cecilia Kang
<[link removed]>
largely siding with Khan's critics.

Kang began by citing two recent court decisions blocking FTC efforts,
and went on:

The defeats raise questions about Ms. Khan's ability to carry out her
ambitious goal of reversing decades of weak antitrust enforcement
<[link removed]>, as
political pressure mounts and patience wanes for the 34-year-old
academic, who has ruffled the feathers of corporate America. Ms.
Khan's critics are more emboldened and are speaking out more loudly to
poke holes in her take-it-to-the-courts strategy, saying the losses are
not even partial wins-they're just losses.

"I completely disagree with this approach," Anthony Sabino, a professor
of business and law at St. John's University, said of Ms. Khan's
methods. "She's trying to change a century's worth of antitrust law
overnight, and that's not necessarily wise."

The piece neglected to mention the right-wing politicization of the
courts or Khan's many successes. As our colleague David Dayen writes,
the hearing backfired on Jordan
<[link removed]>
and was a triumph for Khan, who had the support of many committee
Republicans concerned about the impact of extreme corporate
concentration on independent businesses and consumers.

Here's one more from the supposedly liberal

**Times** editorial page
<[link removed]>. The
editorial, titled "America Is Living on Borrowed Money," concludes, with
splendid evenhandedness:

Both parties will have to compromise: Republicans must accept the
necessity of collecting what the government is owed and of imposing
taxes on the wealthy. Democrats must recognize that changes to Social
Security and Medicare, the major drivers of expected federal spending
growth, should be on the table. Anything less will prove fiscally
unsustainable.

This of course falls into the trap of bothsidesism. Today's
Republicans are a lunatic-fringe party. The Democrats are a normal,
moderately center-left party. Should they just split the difference?

Medicare's shortfall is the result of deep structural flaws in the
larger health system. If wages, the basis for the payroll tax shortfall,
had kept up with productivity growth, there would be a much more
manageable Social Security deficit that could be plugged by taxes on the
rich. Instead of looking at these deeper factors, the

**Times**' fiscally conservative homily on debt sounds like the
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The New York Times has been exemplary in its coverage of race. But as
Hillary Clinton learned in 2016, going left on identity and right on
political economy is not a great recipe. Same for our paper of record.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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[link removed]

Jim Jordan Misfires in Attacks on Lina Khan
<[link removed]>
House Judiciary Committee Republicans didn't follow Jordan in his
assaults on Khan's ethics. Some Republicans even praised her. BY DAVID
DAYEN

Federal Highway Safety Regulator Torpedoes Massachusetts Right-to-Repair
Legislation
<[link removed]>
The federal regulator cites concerns over hacking, but that argument is
an industry pretext. BY JAROD FACUNDO

Maine Unions Near Compromise With Governor on Offshore Wind
<[link removed]>
The governor rejected a bill requiring a project labor agreement in the
state's contract with offshore wind developers. Now, she is said to
support a similar proposal that drops the term 'PLA.' BY LEE HARRIS

 

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