Ira Stoll writes for the Washington Free Beacon about a major media outlet’s role in promoting a terrible US Senate candidate.
A New York Times columnist who has repeatedly risen to the defense of U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner is now publicly accepting “blame,” saying that she “deeply” regrets a column she wrote defending the Democratic nominee, who put his Maine campaign on hold this week after being accused of rape.
Apologies from the rest of the paper’s staff for the newspaper’s oddly gentle treatment of Platner haven’t yet emerged, but they’d be warranted.
“While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself,” Times columnist Michelle Goldberg writes. “Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was ‘nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.’” In retrospect, Goldberg now acknowledges, “If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.”
Even the apology doesn’t quite do justice to how deeply in the tank Goldberg was for Platner. She didn’t defend him only in that October column; she also wrote a May 8, 2026 column headlined “Graham Platner Is No Nazi.” …
… That followed a May 4, 2026 column by Timesman Frank Bruni—who is also the Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke: “If Democrats Have Appropriate Fear of Trump, They Will Elect Platner.”
Nor is the opinion section the only part of the Times that has been plumping for Platner.
The news section of the paper greeted his campaign launch with a write-up that was extensive for what a headline acknowledged was a “Long-Shot Bid” by a “Political Novice.” In passing, it noted Platner’s “light social media footprint,” which proved to be a spectacularly inaccurate assessment given that Platner’s deleted Reddit posts have caused his campaign a few headaches.
