In a baffling tweet that was quickly deleted and recanted on Wednesday, the New York Times appeared to declare itself and other news media outlets as the sole arbiter of American elections. In an effort to push back on President Trump’s declaration of victory in the early morning hours, the Times went overboard, making itself look ridiculous in the process.
“The role of declaring a winner of the presidential election falls to the news media,” the paper tweeted. “The broadcast networks and cable news outlets have vowed to be prudent. Here’s how it will work.”
The tweet linked to a piece written in the Times, where they explained: “In the United States — which, unlike many other countries, does not have a national electoral commission — the role of projecting the winners of presidential elections falls to the news media.”
Well, it is true that it falls to the media to “project” a winner of the election, but for the Times to grant themselves the authority to “declare” the winner? Well, that’s a ‘nother ball of wax, and it should come as a surprise to anyone who has read the Constitution. As is outlined by the U.S. government, “the president and vice president are not elected directly by citizens. Instead, they’re chosen by ‘electors’ through a process called the Electoral College. The process of using electors comes from the Constitution.”
Indeed, this process doesn’t actually take place until December, making it doubly idiotic for the Times to tell readers that it “falls to the news media” to declare the winner of a presidential election.
Some time later, they appeared to come to that conclusion themselves.
“Correction: We’ve deleted an earlier tweet that referred imprecisely to the role of the news media in the U.S. presidential election. The news media projects winners and reports results; it does not declare the winner of the election,” they wrote in the updated tweet.
We should perhaps note that in between the Times writing their first tweet and taking it down, the arbiters of censorship and truth at Twitter did not label, correct, or delete the message. They didn’t suspend the Times for spreading false information. They didn’t lock any account that shared the tweet. Once again, Twitter proved that when the “misinformation” comes from someone they like, they don’t take any action at all.
How about that!
