National Opinions

Score one for Kellyanne Conway as New York Times plans to toughen its Twitter policy

Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway often complains about reporters' Twitter feeds, accusing journalists of posting not-so-journalistic snark about President Trump that indicates bias.

Conway has a point, if recent remarks by New York Times Executive Editor DeanDonald Baquet are any indication. Here's a bit of Michael Calderone's recap in Politico of what Baquet said Thursday during an event at George Washington University:

" 'I've spent full days policing our social media,' executive editor Dean Baquet said, adding that he's called reporters personally. Baquet said his view is that Times journalists 'should not be able to say anything on social media that they cannot say' in the pages of the Times or across its various platforms.

"As the Times aggressively covers the Trump administration, Baquet said he wants it to be clear to the public that the paper's motivation is 'journalistically sound' and not part of 'a vendetta' against the president. 'I can't do that if I have 100 people working for the New York Times sending inappropriate tweets,' he said. Baquet said the Times is 'going to come up with a tougher policy.' "

Baquet was not responding to Conway directly, and his comments certainly do not validate all of Conway's media criticisms, which are sometimes over the top. But Baquet's plan to toughen the Times's social media standards is an acknowledgment of at least some measure of previous fallibility.

Journalists' Twitter habits so irritate Conway that once, toward the end of the 2016 presidential campaign, she said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that she actually printed out all of the tweets posted by certain reporters and calculated the negativity rate.

"There are people who cover our campaign who actually just slander our candidate on Twitter," Conway said. "Ninety-two percent of one of them – I have them all on my desk. We printed them all out. Ninety-two percent of at least two of our embeds' tweets are negative towards Donald Trump. Why are they on our campaign plane?"

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On Fox News, in January, Conway said that "if you read people's Twitter feed, that crap would never pass editorial muster in a newspaper or on your TV show and your network here, nor should it."

Discussing journalists during an event at the Newseum in Washington in April, Conway said, "Some of those Twitter feeds are a hot mess."

"If you read people's Twitter feeds, I'm telling you this – it would never pass editorial muster," she added. "It just wouldn't."

Baquet seems intent on ensuring that Times reporters' tweets do pass editorial muster.

At least one of the paper's White House correspondents, Glenn Thrush, won't have anything to worry about. He quit Twitter almost a month ago.

Thrush's colleague, Maggie Haberman, tweeted on Oct. 7 that she was taking a one-week break from Twitter.

Callum Borchers covers the intersection of politics and media for the Washington Post. 

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