We ask them to not only teach kids but often to act as kind of social workers to make sure kids are getting enough to eat in lower-income schools, to help think about whether kids are subject to abuse. in Retreat (January 19, a day with a reported 3,376 Covid deaths That shift has not gone unnoticed. New York Times liberal David Leonhardt has had plenty of dumb . day, like riding in a vehicle, Leonhardt wrote [12][20], On July 22, 2011, Leonhardt was appointed as chief of the Washington bureau of the Times. When I first spoke to Leonhardt over the phone in late December 2021, I was struck by how similar his demeanor is to his writing style. Is the point of COVID journalism to help us become better citizens? necessarily good or benevolent, but it is, rather, as it must be. David writes The Morning newsletter every weekday and also contributes to the Sunday Review section. His economics column, "Economic Scene," appeared on Wednesdays from 2006 until 2011. After three years, he was made editor of The Upshot, a venture intended to fill readers itch for Nate Silverstyle data journalism after he left the Times to start FiveThirtyEight. highread: A continuously updated summary of the news stories that US political commentators are discussing online right now. How we determined this rating: Community Feedback: 573 ratings Unless otherwise noted, this bias rating refers only to online news coverage, not TV, print, or radio content. There is, however, little And a chatbot is not a human. [32] Ezra Klein, of The Washington Post, called the book "one of the calmest, clearest looks you'll find at the deficit both what it is and how to fix it. The continuing COVID mitigations of blue America various data sets point to more time spent at home, more temporary school closures, less normalcy in schools, more masking, less restaurant eating, fewer open workplaces dont seem to be doing a huge amount to reduce the spread of the virus, he said. View David Leonhardt's business profile as Op-ed Columnist at The New York Times. During those terrible months, liberal readers adopted a justifiable suspicion of good news. When he appeared on the Times podcastThe Daily in late January to talk about his article, New York Times Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt will step down and be replaced by political editor Carolyn Ryan, sources familiar with the decision told POLITICO on Wednesday.. . States are lifting their mask mandates. The Californians have been booted from Frogmore Cottage because the king (or the character invented by the U.K. press) has had enough of their abuse. What we learn from this episode is not really what Americans think about the pandemic, but rather Leonhardts flawed interpretations thereof, began a viral tweet thread by Ceclia Tomori, a public-health scholar at Johns Hopkins. Leonhardt resents the attitude of some health officials, as he put it, that goes, We know better than you. I do think for progressives who are legitimately concerned about things like the future of American democracy and the future of our planet and other things like deep inequality in this country, its important for them to be rigorous about what the country actually thinks, rather than to engage in wishful thinking. After all, getting back to normal isnt going to be sufficient to fight the next pandemic because normal led to this.. had a time, but it is over for most of us because of its nebulous Sarah's personal network of family, friends, associates & neighbors include Douglas Leonhardt, Carl Leonhardt, Justin Starr, Justin Starr and Katherine . That his columns often include good, hopeful news a rarity in COVID commentary is likely one of the reasons theyre so successful. They decided to cut the pay of federal workers over the next several years, close military bases, reduce foreign aid, eliminate earmarks, expand the payroll tax and cut Social Security benefits for high earners, as the chairmen of a bipartisan commission . While continuing to criticize the irrational sentiments of the right Leonhardt frequently emphasizes that anti-vaxxers are considerably more damaging to public health than overcautious liberals are he has skewered COVID alarmists on the left, who overstate the danger to children and vaccinated adults. I think it represents, it is that it uses an attitude of measurement and calm have become The Mornings stock-in-trade. When I put this to Leonhardt, he seemed to understand my point, in his way. broadcast Reason should not compel changes or alterations to normal lifenever mind that more On a recent episode of the left-wing health policy podcast Death Panel, Abigail Cartus, a public-health postdoc at Brown University, called Leonhardt a relentless minimizer of the pandemic. Leonhardt and The Morning have turned their attention to the set of It's part of a trend: Her victory came shortly after Swedish elections that led to a far-right party becoming the second-largest in Parliament there. But numbers did little to dampen his optimism. You cant escape the fact that the poorest Americans are disproportionately likely to be unvaccinated, said Ed Yong, The Atlantics Pulitzer-winning COVID reporter, and that among the poorest groups, the number of people who say they want or would consider a vaccine outnumbers the people who are outright never going to get it. our adversaries are in the wrong. . February 18, 2022. people locate potentially lifesaving treatments, he writesbut shows little part of the story they are being told. consist of getting vaccinated, continuing to mask while the rest of society This, understandably, had the effect of making liberals suspicious of such comparisons. Saying endemicity is the future doesnt make it the present, Yong said. 2021, he was once again pronouncing Covid, John F. Harris is about as mainstream as the mainstream media gets. That's journalistic malpractice, though I'm guessing Paul Krugman would approve. When Leonhardt published a newsletter in October 2021 acknowledging the minimal risk of COVID to children, Berenson praised it on his Substack. The truth is, as a regular reader of Leonhardts column, I enjoyed interacting with its flesh-and-blood analogue. This is saying that change can be a big problem for the Journal. experimenting with an argument that would become a recurring favorite: that we Under President Biden, Leonhardt says, Democrats are emphasizing "the humane treatment of immigrants, regardless of their legal status," causing adverse consequences: He announced a 100-day halt. but it cannot be turned toward them; popular feelings exist, but risk is The Logos in this editorial have been used by David Leonhardt. A member of the Republican Party, he came to prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.. Born in Middletown, Ohio, Vance studied political science and philosophy at Ohio State University before earning a . He speaks in long, careful paragraphs, citing stimulating data from preprints and making magnanimous allowances for possible counterarguments. too annoying and inconvenientto bear any longer. By 2021, the journalist had around 5 million USD as his net worth. him as an acquaintance. Leonhardt has cultivated the confident, chatty, and readers, I suspect, Leonhardtalong with a handful of similar personalities at conservative, in their views. In an ideal world, the government would not have abandoned its responsibility to our collective well-being, but in this world, where we are left to fend for ourselves and blame one another for whatever goes wrong we do need to know how one risk compares to another. He won the Gerald Loeb Award for magazine writing in 2009 for a New York Times Magazine article, "Obamanomics. ", In February 2013, The New York Times and Byliner published a 15,000-word book by Leonhardt on the federal budget deficit and the importance of economic growth, titled Here's the Deal: How Washington Can Solve The Deficit and Spur Growth. David Leonhardt is a Pulitzer Prize winning NY TImes journalist who writes The Morning newsletter every weekday and also contributes to the Sunday Review section. The newsletter Its like that one question that sometimes journalists are too smart to think of, he thinks of it. While most journalists are struggling with the news of the day, Baquet continued, the effect on hospitals, the effect on doctors, the rising deaths, etc., David asks very simple questions, right? Recently, Leonhardt has used his personal front page to amplify a particular message: that the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic is over and that the persistent degree of anxiety and COVID-mitigation efforts in Blue America are not only ineffectual but doing more harm than good. to that of any beloved TV character, a parasocial almost-friend whose Weve all come to understand that a life-or-death public-health crisis is going to inspire really strong feelings from people, he said. [4] He previously wrote the paper's daily e-mail newsletter, which bore his own name. This position has enraged some readers doctors, scientists, and journalists among them who believe its absurd to call for a return to normal when, according to the Times, around 2,000 people are dying from COVID each day. labels news analysis, which is supposed to be distinct from opinion, Will others follow? the Vulnerable, which outlines five steps that can Terms of Service apply. In this account, it is inevitable But its impossible to meaningfully assess a relatively low risk without a point of comparison. . Maggie Baska / PinkNews: . the left, even though the most powerful and influential people in the partyJoe question that the Times management has made a choice to put him in the . Dr. Pangloss or if he is Candidethe relentless crackpot optimist or the In October one believes (well, no one should believe, anyway) that anyone at the New [12], Leonhardt was born in Manhattan,[13] the son of Joan (ne Alexander) and Robert Leonhardt. Those who argue that all Sign up here to get it nightly. They Let David Say Just Anything Now David Leonhardt says Lori Lightfoot was a "progressive. The Morning plays an agenda-setting role in Washington comparable to that of Mike Allens Playbook during the Obama years. although how the distinction is drawn is not very clear. The CDC said 10 percent, which seemed incredibly high to me . Leonhardt, who oversaw the papers Washington coverage from 2011 to 2014, has sources within the White House, and they read his columns. [22][23] However, after he began his editing assignment, Leonhardt continued to publish analyses of economic news. Also in May 2021, Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens wrote, "If it turns out that the Covid pandemic was caused by a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, it will . possible conflict between nuclear superpowers, a catastrophic eventuality that After one such newsletter on January 19, a wag on Twitter said, The Leonhardt Retreat Signal has consistently appeared two months ahead of the next wave. The fact that Leonhardt is himself something of a cipher as a against Iraq in the First Gulf War, Persuasion Unfortunately, continuing the mitigations doesnt seem to be contributing to that better world, even if people wish it were so, he said. The second-largest retail pharmacy chain wont buck Republican attorneys general. The therapeutic dimension of Leonhardts approach is perhaps not incidental. Im not going to go on any show that just spouts misinformation, Leonhardt said. . Two is the best tool that public officials have. sanctions will strengthen their hand. David Leonhardt: "Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, noticed something last year about the Covid-19 television coverage that he was watching on CNN and PBS.It almost always seemed negative, regardless of what was he seeing in the data or hearing from scientists he knew." "When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. Yes, but the elderly. I mean, Ive written the Yes, but the elderly myself. These columns are then 2021, The Morning carried the headline, Pandemic For those who are sick or vulnerable, unhoused less partisan and more respectful of people with different views. Many progressives, he said, hoped COVID would be a turning point in American history. He began that editorial role on September 6, 2011. has more I do have the sense that Biden himself is on the side of the scale of We need to move back to normal, Leonhardt told me, which would make sense if you think about his instincts on many things.. in September. The only and impossible in a divided polity, and smart or targeted [7], Leonhardt was previously the head of an internal strategy group, known as the 2020 group, that made recommendations to Times executives in January 2017 about changing the newsroom and the news report in response to the rise of digital media. a problem, but it is the left that risks going too far, alienating only works on the persuadable. But you also cant be afraid of it., Some of the anger directed toward Leonhardt stems from his ambiguous but powerful position in the newsroom, where he helms a nine-person fiefdom. James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman; August 2, 1984) is an American venture capitalist, author, and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Ohio since 2023. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by . The gap in total per capita COVID-19 deaths in Republican and Democratic counties has grown a lot wider since New York Times data journalist David Leonhardt chronicled the red . Like, Are things getting better or not? He then proceeds to answer them, Baquet said, with remarkable clarity in very un-newspaper-y language. conflict of this scale until the moment when he proved me and many others He spent 21 years at The Washington Post, including as its political editor. American Enterprise Institute 1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Main tel The network has reportedly instituted a soft ban on Trump, a huge problem for his campaign and for Fox News if the policy backfires. war that political leadership is intent on waging. Ukraine. He has become the Times COVID conscience: a calm, clear voice amid a cacophony of competing and often contradictory medical, scientific, and public-health messages. After the jury found Murdaugh guilty of murdering his wife and son, he was given two consecutive life sentences. health experts and academics pointed out, including point to a frustrating inability to engage with the substance of the critiques. Early life and education. Meanwhile, we are learning more every day about the ineptitude of the Biden administration in this arena, including It struck me, reading this, that Leonhardt was doing more than following the evidence wherever it leads. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. Perhaps hes both. David Leonhardt (born January 1, 1973) [1] is an American journalist and columnist. They have opposed the resumption of normal operations in schools. an analytical reading of events. Nowhere is the lab-leak debate more personal than among the experts investigating the origins of COVID. are impractical In Defense of the Talkative Trump Grand Juror. A better country? not like to see parallels between the U.S. and its adversaries, even Imagine that Democrats and Republicans somehow came together and agreed on a grand bargain to cut the deficit. His analysis was opinion posing as fact, extremely biased and prejudiced and, frankly, overwrought for what some used to call the 'paper of record' for the country. Hes contributing to a reality thats based on political small-mindedness, a sort of austerity thinking, said Gonsalves of Yale, an idea that theres no such thing as doing better in America. alcohol unless they are on birth control, and used them to mock those who are following the science on the pandemic as needless worriers. Learn about our bias rating methods Go to David Leonhardt Contents for instance, has an awkward record of making claims that prompt actual memorably complained about the news medias bad however protected they may be by education, employment, and class, is ironic as For his devoted audience, he has turned himself into a classic point-of-view Leonhardt, in contrast, has been The one story you shouldnt miss today, selected by, This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google, Rick Scott Is Unfortunately Right About Novak Djokovic. And they follow a strong ideological February 2021 Pandemic in Retreat article, more than 400,000 people died of because of it. He joined the news station in 1999. [27], In early 2016, it was announced that Leonhardt would be the head of an internal strategy group at the Times. His hard work and skills that he pours into his work have helped him earn recognition and fortune. character, a stand-in through which spectators can imagine themselves taking Written by David . possible, if it is not too expensive and unwieldy, but their individual needs Florida Republican Wants to Cancel Democrats Over Slavery. Recently Leonhardt wrote that Obama, the biggest spending and biggest deficit-creating president in our history, is a "fiscal conservative" (!). in Retreat. By April of the same year, Leonhardt was castigating the global strain. "As a result, the country is suffering thousands of preventable deaths every week. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. consistently pushes this line is not some matter of deliberate subterfuge; no after that column, the World Health Organizationnamed Murdoch, exposed It's not a secret that Fox News is a political operation seeking to bolster the prospects of Republicans. In 2011, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his columns. McNeil, the papers star COVID reporter during the first year of the pandemic he shared in the news teams Pulitzer said, If I can say this without sounding massively egotistical, I think hes the best since my departure a yearago.. I often find in these discussions, theres a kind of yes, but, he said. Congress seemed on the verge of passing a major package of progressive legislation. David Leonhardt AllSides Media Bias Rating: Lean Left agree disagree Lean Left What does this mean? We just ask an enormous amount of teachers, and were asking even more of them now because kids are now behind academically and kids have greater mental-health problems and all kinds of behavior, bad behavior, is rising. Leonhardt wasnt willing to go all the way with my armchair political psychology, but he agreed that taking COVID seriously has become a badge of progressive thinking. Given how conservative politicians twisted the truth about the pandemic and resisted measures to contain it, its understandable, he said, why so many people especially political progressives responded by going as far in the other direction as possible. He added, Those steps saved lives.. 9 talking about this. These disagreements are as much about how we should regard all this suffering as they are about how we may prevent it. Theres so much ideological work you need to do to try to convince people that this thing thats killed a million people in your country is fine and were overreacting, said Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist at Harvard. Since April 30, 2020, he has written the daily "The Morning" newsletter for The New York Times. millions of doses of Paxlovid, Pfizers Covid-fighting drug. easily accept tens of thousands of road deaths every year, so why should Covid and social catastrophe, it has been easier for those with a is the best tool that public officials have, but persuasion Leonhardts five-point plan, for those keeping score. David Leonhardt analyzes the media's "bad news bias" and the different ways that vaccine mandates are covered. The sum effect of this partisan thinking, Yong told me, is to individualize blame. The Key Moments From Alex Murdaughs Testimony and Murder Trial. When Leonhardts grandfather, a German Jewish refugee, died in 1950 at age 42, Leonhardts grandmother kept the store going; it was uncommon enough at the time for a woman to own a business in Times Square that she was profiled in the Times. Public sentiment emerges from the ether; it can sour on policies, David Leonhardt. "In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from . He launched his presidential campaign by describing Mexicans as "rapists.". the BBCs Andrew Marr in an interview in the 1990s: Im sure you believe help protect the vulnerable as society moves back toward normal. These steps The New York Times has done some of the most essential reporting on COVID during the pandemic, but the content thats being most amplified often minimizes at-risk people, including those at the New York Times, said Taylor Lorenz, who left her job at the Times earlier this year a circumstance that permits her to speak more freely about the Times than its current employees, who are subject to strict internal rules regarding collegiality. None of the science or health-desk reporters I contacted for this story agreed to comment. I must admit that I have a grudging admiration for his perverse accomplishment. Here too Leonhardt John von Neumann Thought He Had the Answers. We know that Sarah's political affiliation is currently a registered Republican; ethnicity is unknown; and religious views are listed as unknown. The effect is I dont know of a better explanatory writer than David, Times executive editor Dean Baquet gushed when I spoke to him in January. In February 2013, The New York Times and Byliner published a 15,000-word book by Leonhardt on the federal budget deficit and the importance of economic growth. He devoted several For the most part, he said, the more helpful stuff is the comparisons, not the numbers., It seemed to break something of a taboo in liberal COVID commentary when, last April, Leonhardt compared the likelihood of fatal COVID in a vaccinated person to the likelihood of death in a car crash. We are optimistic, deeply so, because The Times is better positioned than any other media organization to deliver the coverage that millions of people are seeking," the report read. Despite the hype about Ron DeSantis surging past Donald Trump, both Republicans look unusually strong at this early stage of the presidential race. He has positioned himself as the pundit who punches holes in public health orthodoxy, who shuns the "bad news bias" of journalism, who offers soothing rationality grounded in his years of. Leonhardt is one of the key pundits leading the charge of those who want to declare unilateral surrender to COVID-19, Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, told me. They have called for defunding the police They have also called for abolishing the agency that enforces immigration laws, eliminating private health insurance, maintaining the current system of affirmative action, and forbidding almost all abortion restrictions. which the illness and death it causes becomes a more normal part of daily life.. Previously, David was a Bureau Chief at Time and als o held positions at The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Upshot. public a failure to properly earmark funds, impractical Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Such thinking chafes with American moral common sense. them, replacing the stentorian, big-screen voice of the unsigned editorial with David Leonhardt: "The gap in Covid's death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.". P.S. disappointed student who finally throws up his hands and concludes that we The spectacular one more buzz in the background noise of violent death and destruction that we City to Pay Millions to Protesters Kettled by NYPD in 2020. There is no value in making people angry,Leonhardt told me. Plays Incompetent Willy Wonka at CPAC. In early February, I took a brisk walk with Leonhardt from the New York Times building to the Hudson River. ), The host also noted that, within a few weeks of airing the Leonhardt episode along with a companion segment featuring the White Houses chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci we did start to see a pretty meaningful change in policy. In recent weeks, blue-state governors have loosened mask mandates and other restrictions, signaling what New Jersey governor Phil Murphy called a huge step toward normalcy., Barbaro and Leonhardt see these changes as reflective of the changing national mood and epidemiological reality not as a consequence of their coverage. Leonhardt, who has described his journalistic colleagues as having a bad-news bias, sees his role as being an implicit corrective to some of the more alarmist coverage showing up elsewhere in traditional media and even in the Times itself. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country's economic system. a 1 in 5,000 chance of contracting Covid-19. to treat the pandemics still-growing toll of death and debilitation as just [15] His father was the head of the French-American School of New York. My dad, as a toddler, was their unpaid diaper model, he told me. People like Leonhardt, he said, are doing that work. Leonhardts emphasis on partisan polarization, Feldman argues, is a key ideological maneuver. explanatory journalism, which combines statistics and economics to flatter