Jim Friedlich is Chief Executive Officer and executive director of the Leftist, oops, sorry, Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the nonprofit organization that owns what I have sometimes called The Philadelphia Enquirer^[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.. In this morning’s newspaper, he is “Giving thanks — and offering up a prayer — for America’s free press: On this, more than any Thanksgiving in memory, a free and independent American press seems in peril.” It’s mostly boilerplate stuff, such as claiming that President Trump’s attempt to eliminate the Voice of America as somehow an attack on freedom of the Press, as though VOA is somehow not a government body rather than an independent news source. He decries the defunding of the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio, even though both still exist and can survive the way every other broadcaster survives, by selling advertising.

But this is the line which attracted most of my attention:

What does not get printed is as important as what does. The palpable chill of partisan press criticism has meant the self-censorship of even some of the nation’s wealthiest newspaper owners.

“What does not get printed”? Such as the censorship and self-censorship of virtually every outlet among the credentialed media of then-President Joe Biden’s visibly declining mental status? Remember our coverage of Jake Tapper‘s and Alex Thompson‘s book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again? Only a fool would believe that the major television news networks, that the reporters of The New York Times and The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times didn’t see the President’s slips, falls, gaffes, and zoning out. That it was visible to all who paid attention is attested to by conservatives having seen it and publishing it and tweeting it out, but, alas! the credentialed media pooh-poohed all of that, and told their readership and audiences that it was nothing, that maybe Mr Biden had lost a step physically but mentally he was, according to Mary Peltola, “one of the smartest, sharpest people I’ve met in DC.” That was just before the disastrous debate on June 27, 2024. After the debate, the Associated Press tried to tell us that Mr Biden was “Often sharp and focused but sometimes confused and forgetful,” but most of the media admitted that his debate performance was a disaster, and, worst of all, the American public saw it, in ways the credentialed media couldn’t cover up.

I asked the Inquirer’s Will Bunch, on Bluesky, if there was “any discussion in the newsroom concerning Mr Biden’s growing incapacity before it all blew up during the debate?” but of course I didn’t get a response.

It’s simple: to the credentialed media, President Biden was running for re-election, and nothing, nothing! was more important than defeating the evil Donald Trump. And Mr Friedlich’s newspaper was definitely in the forefront of that effort: following the debate, the Editorial Board of The New York Times said, “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race,” to which the Editorial Board of the Inquirer replied, “To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race.”

So, Mr Friedlich, I had to laugh when you wrote what does not get printed is as important as what does. Your own newspaper chose not to report on the mental condition of the 46^th President of the United States, at the time it was most important, when he was running for re-election, but Mr Bunch keeps crying that Mr “Trump’s rapidly deteriorating mental state remains mostly off-limits for the elite media. It’s a massive error of omission that the world will look back on and regret.” Perhaps the Lenfest Institute for Journalism needs to push the newspaper to actually engage in journalism.