New York Times 'forcefully' responds to Democratic backlash over Trump coverage

Increased pressure from Democrats prompted the New York Times on Thursday to directly respond to concerns that Donald Trump isn’t being characterized by the publication as more of a direct threat to American democracy.

The response came after the Times “forcefully rejected” a report issued by Media Matters for America in which the liberal media watchdog complained “that major media organizations gave evidence recently unsealed in the Jan. 6 indictment dramatically less attention than they did coverage of Hillary Clinton’s email server during the 2016 election,” according to the news website Semafor.

A spokesperson for the Times said in a statement that the evidence revealed in the new October indictment was “so heavily redacted that it didn’t reveal a great deal of new information beyond what was already reported.”

It also defended itself by saying that it covered the aftermath of Jan. 6 “much more extensively than it covered the Clinton email investigation.”

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“This extensive coverage amounted to more than 2,600 online and print articles, visual investigations, audio and other multimedia journalism discounted by MMFA’s report. For comparison, The Times published 300 news and opinion articles about Hillary Clinton’s server and emails since 2015. This includes coverage following former FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress in the days leading up to the 2016 election, a breaking news story that evolved in a more compressed time frame,” according to the statement.

The Times also complained that Media Matters focused on print stories without understanding the paper's digital news platform and how stories are received online.

“The Times’s audience overwhelmingly engages with our digital report, including newsletters, alerts and social media programming, where these stories were given heavy prominence,” the publication's statement said.