On the latest episode of Channels, host Peter Kafka asked New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn if he has any “regrets” about the paper’s 2024 election coverage “given what’s happened” in Donald Trump’s second term, including “a lot of the concerns about press freedom” having “been borne out.” Kahn said he believes the Times was “ahead of everybody else in giving people a preview of what was going to happen” in a new administration, from Trump’s skepticism of NATO to his immigration agenda to taking “retribution against enemies.”
Days later, Kahn found himself on front lines of a press freedom battle. In a Saturday memo to staff, Kahn condemned the Trump administration’s “naked attempt to intimidate” five journalists by issuing them subpoenas in response to their reporting on Secret Service concerns over the president’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One. It’s also an attempt, he wrote, to “prevent the Times and other independent news media from doing important reporting protected by the First Amendment.” The Times will “mount a full defense of our staff,” he added, and “fight to ensure that this blatant effort to suppress coverage of a matter clearly in the public interest in no way impedes accountability reporting of this or any other administration.”
