The New York Times on Saturday changed a headline on an article about President Joe Biden as Twitter users reacted to the phrasing in a variety of mostly negative ways.
The original headline “Biden, Still Grieving His Son, Finds That Not Everyone Wants to Hear About It” was on a Katie Rogers article about the president expressing his grief and facing some criticism over discussing his lost son while visiting with the families grieving the deaths of United States service members in the terror attack in Kabul.
The new version of the headline on the article reads: “In Invoking Beau, Biden Broaches a Loss That’s Guided His Presidency.”
Some suggested that the controversial version of the headline was not actually ever the headline, but that is not true.
That is a reference to one of a variety of newspaper sites that republish NYT content, such as the Boston Globe, many of which still have and have tweeted the original headline.
However, the cache, as illustrated by Christopher, in fact shows it was the actual headline at the newspaper when it first published.
By the way, National Review did this same story a few days ago. I guess they are the new assignment editor for the NYTimes:
This comes from some of the families of the service members killed in Afghanistan who reportedly angrily lashed out at Biden in a closed door ceremony and later accused him of being selfish when he brought up the loss of his own son. Grieving parents are allowed their grief so I’m not blaming them (even though I suspect they are Trump voters.)
But the media are just being assholes for flogging this story. I guess we’re in the “he can’t do anything right” phase of presidential coverage but this is ridiculous, bordering on “but her emails” territory, and it’s dangerous when you have fascism rising. The press needs to get a grip on this.
Biden is not above criticism, of course. While the shrieking, hysterical coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal was over-the-top it was certainly a legit criticism if they had done it more professionally. But now we’re getting into the petty coverage that they love and the danger is that they’re going to “Clintonize” Biden at a time when the right wing is more dangerous than it’s ever been. I’m hoping this is just a blip. But it’s not a good sign.