Top New York Times Edi­tor Joe Kahn: We Don’t Want to Be Biden’s Prav­da!

Cur­rent New York Times exec­u­tive edi­tor Joe Kahn grant­ed an inter­view to for­mer Times media colum­nist Ben Smith at his new ven­ture Semafor.com. Kahn sure­ly infu­ri­at­ed left­ists like for­mer Times ombuds­man Mar­garet Sul­li­van, who want to shred any notion of objec­tiv­i­ty against those hor­ri­bly lying author­i­tar­i­an Repub­li­cans. He said don’t skew the news!? 

BEN SMITH: Dan Pfeif­fer, who used to work for Barack Oba­ma, recent­ly wrote of the Times, “They do not see their job as sav­ing democ­ra­cy or stop­ping an author­i­tar­i­an from tak­ing pow­er.” Why don’t you see your job as: “We’ve got to stop Trump?” What about your job doesn’t let you think that way?
JOE KAHN: …One of the absolute neces­si­ties of democ­ra­cy is hav­ing a free and fair and open elec­tion where peo­ple can com­pete for votes, andthe role of the news media in that envi­ron­ment is not to skew your cov­er­age towards one can­di­date or the oth­er, but just to pro­vide very good, hard-hit­ting, well-round­ed cov­er­age of both can­di­dates, and inform­ing vot­ers. If you believe in democ­ra­cy, I don’t see how we get past the essen­tial role of qual­i­ty media in inform­ing peo­ple about their choice in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.
To say that the threats of democ­ra­cy are so great that the media is going to aba …