Criticism of the News Media Takes On a More Sinister Tone

Mediator

Jim Rutenberg

MEDIATOR OCT. 16, 2016

… In the case of The Times, Mr. Trump has made its largest individual shareholder, Carlos Slim, of Mexico, part of the conspiracy. The Times’s publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. — whose family controls the company’s voting shares — said in a statement that Mr. Slim “has never sought to influence what we report.” The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, recently told me that he had never even met Mr. Slim.

Mr. Trump apparently had no problems doing media business with Mr. Slim — “a good guy,” he had called him on David Letterman’s show — before the election. It was just 2015 when a production company Mr. Slim controls, Ora TV, announced it was canceling a television project it said it had in the works with Mr. Trump, citing his comments about Mexicans.

Previously, I had mostly noticed suggestions of a Slim-Times conspiracy on sites like Breitbart and alt-right Twitter accounts.

In giving those allegations prominence, the standard-bearer of the Republican Party is adding a sinister, false twist to his press criticism that arguably puts the reporters covering his rallies in danger. In effect, he is painting them as traitors.

Now, who’s poisoning the minds of the electorate?