Biden’s people think they’re “entitled.” The Times says “they’re not being realistic.”
When news broke one Saturday night in March 2023 that President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration was withdrawing, Mark Walker was the reporter on duty in the New York Times Washington bureau. Assigned to write up the news, Walker asked the White House for a comment just before midnight. Assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan was still up and emailed a quote blaming the withdrawal on a barrage of “unfounded Republican attacks.” After going through edits, Walker’s 502-word story was posted on the Times’ website in the wee hours Sunday morning.
Then all hell broke loose.
Hasan, who has since left the White House, had offered the quote to Walker on background sourced to “an administration official.” Walker, not a member of the Times’ White House team, was unfamiliar with the protocol and had made an unintended mistake and attributed the quote to Hasan. When officials in the press shop called him Sunday morning about the mistake, they asked to speak with his editor, Elizabeth Kennedy. But the number he gave them was the cell phone of Elisabeth Bumiller, the Times Washington bureau chief.
Bumiller, who was away from Washington visiting family, received a call from Emilie Simons, a White House deputy press secretary who had actually written the statement. According to three people familiar with the conversation, Simons asked that Hasan’s name be removed and the quote attributed to a nameless official. Bumiller, who expressed dismay that the issue had been escalated to her level, was reluctant to alter a story that had already been online for over 12 hours.
Both parties later told colleagues the call ended on a sour note. Two Times staffers recalled Bumiller grumbling, as she occasionally does, about how she’d been spoken to. Aides in the press shop recalled hearing that the bureau chief had been surprisingly defensive and that when Simons tried to bring up another concern with Walker’s story, Bumiller just hung up. The following day principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton emailed Bumiller asking the Times to reaffirm its commitment to abide by the administration’s rules about information given on background. For Dalton, Simons and others, it was about ensuring fairness with embargoed information so that all news organizations could be on a level playing field. But the Times’ bureau chief never replied. In response, the White House removed all Times’ reporters from its “tier one” email list for background information about various briefings and other materials, a situation that wasn’t resolved for 11 months.
The seemingly minor incident over sourcing might not have escalated or triggered such emotional responses on both sides if not for tensions between the White House and the Times that had been bubbling beneath the surface for at least the last five years. Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president.
After a quote mistakenly attributed to then-assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan (left) published in a Times story in March 2023, deputy press secretary Emilie Simons (right) asked that Hasan’s name be removed and the quote attributed to a nameless official. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
According to interviews with two dozen people on both sides who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives — remains remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust. Complaints that were long kept private are even spilling into public view, with campaign aides in Wilmington going further than their colleagues in the White House and routinely blasting the paper’s coverage in emails, posts on social media and memos.
When news broke one Saturday night in March 2023 that President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration was withdrawing, Mark Walker was the reporter on duty in the New York Times Washington bureau. Assigned to write up the news, Walker asked the White House for a comment just before midnight. Assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan was still up and emailed a quote blaming the withdrawal on a barrage of “unfounded Republican attacks.” After going through edits, Walker’s 502-word story was posted on the Times’ website in the wee hours Sunday morning.
Then all hell broke loose.
Hasan, who has since left the White House, had offered the quote to Walker on background sourced to “an administration official.” Walker, not a member of the Times’ White House team, was unfamiliar with the protocol and had made an unintended mistake and attributed the quote to Hasan. When officials in the press shop called him Sunday morning about the mistake, they asked to speak with his editor, Elizabeth Kennedy. But the number he gave them was the cell phone of Elisabeth Bumiller, the Times Washington bureau chief.
Bumiller, who was away from Washington visiting family, received a call from Emilie Simons, a White House deputy press secretary who had actually written the statement. According to three people familiar with the conversation, Simons asked that Hasan’s name be removed and the quote attributed to a nameless official. Bumiller, who expressed dismay that the issue had been escalated to her level, was reluctant to alter a story that had already been online for over 12 hours.
Both parties later told colleagues the call ended on a sour note. Two Times staffers recalled Bumiller grumbling, as she occasionally does, about how she’d been spoken to. Aides in the press shop recalled hearing that the bureau chief had been surprisingly defensive and that when Simons tried to bring up another concern with Walker’s story, Bumiller just hung up. The following day principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton emailed Bumiller asking the Times to reaffirm its commitment to abide by the administration’s rules about information given on background. For Dalton, Simons and others, it was about ensuring fairness with embargoed information so that all news organizations could be on a level playing field. But the Times’ bureau chief never replied. In response, the White House removed all Times’ reporters from its “tier one” email list for background information about various briefings and other materials, a situation that wasn’t resolved for 11 months.
The seemingly minor incident over sourcing might not have escalated or triggered such emotional responses on both sides if not for tensions between the White House and the Times that had been bubbling beneath the surface for at least the last five years. Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president.
After a quote mistakenly attributed to then-assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan (left) published in a Times story in March 2023, deputy press secretary Emilie Simons (right) asked that Hasan’s name be removed and the quote attributed to a nameless official. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
According to interviews with two dozen people on both sides who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives — remains remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust. Complaints that were long kept private are even spilling into public view, with campaign aides in Wilmington going further than their colleagues in the White House and routinely blasting the paper’s coverage in emails, posts on social media and memos.