Good morning. It is August 28th. It is a hot morning heading into a hotter day here in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Yesterday, a federal grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against voting rights, based on his fraudulent attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6th mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.  The indictment presented by special prosecutor Jack Smith, superseded Trump's previous indictment on those charges, which was put on hold after the Trump-friendly Republican majority of the Supreme Court ruled in July that presidents are almost unprosecutable for crimes they commit in the course of their official acts.

With the Supreme Court blocking law enforcement from using the fact that Trump had, for instance, pressured the Justice Department to announce false investigations into nonexistent election fraud for the specific purpose of casting the actual election results in doubt, Smith simply convened an all-new grand jury, gave it only the evidence of the things that Trump had done outside official channels to steal the election, and came back with a fresh indictment crafted to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling that Trump was effectively king of the United States, on the grounds that even the court's expensive blanket of immunity was not big enough to cover all of the things that Trump did to try to overturn the election. 

This brings us to the front page of today's New York Times. Or does it? When the Supreme Court issued its decision about the previous indictment, sending it back for review, the result was a full width banner headline. “Justices give Trump substantial immunity.” How did the paper handle the news that the prosecutors had reindicted Trump? Was there another big headline across all six columns? Nope. 

Was there a four -column headline? No. 

Two columns? Nope. 

They only gave it a one -column headline? 

They did give it a one -column front -page headline, right? Nope. 

The lead news column on this morning's New York Times is, “parties embrace tariffs to fight trade pressures.” The lead column in the Washington Post is, “Trump's election charges updated, revised indictment by new grand jury, move follows high court ruling on immunity.” The Wall Street Journal uses its right hand column on “Trump faces new indictment in Capitol riot case.” 

The New York Times did not deem the re-indictment of the Republican candidate for president. on charges of trying to illegally overturn his last election defeat to be worth covering not just as the lead news story, but as front page news at all. 

The rest of the front page is “doctors saved her life, even over her wishes.” Story about do not resuscitate orders. “Mexico irked by US envoy, halts relations.” Up at the top left, “we moved on. COVID has not. So now what?” A good headline on a story that unfortunately only really deals with the “we moved on” part and not the “COVID has not part.” Down below the fold is “lonely, retired and longing for a twilight love.” A story about meetups among the elderly in Shanghai. And at bottom right, “an outlier court that Trump sees as a model.” A much needed look at the out of control fifth circuit that the Times should have run much higher on the front page long ago on a day when there wasn't any other major news to compete with it.

But the new indictment of, again, the current Republican presidential candidate, the man who is going to be on the ballot 68 days from now, on the criminal charges that most fundamentally address his contempt for democracy and law and his open-ended capacity to abuse his power, that indictment landed on page A11. The headline is, “After Immunity Ruling, Trump case is revised.” A passive -voiced headline on a story that is framed up so narrowly as to be essentially misleading. The Times' version of events is that this is a paperwork story in which prosecutors issued a “pared -down version,” as the Times puts it, of the previous indictment, also referring to it as a revised indictment, where the Journal called it a “new indictment “in the headline, and the Post's sub -headline stipulated that it was a “revised indictment by a new grand jury.” The Times declines to mention the existence of the new grand jury, the body that actually did the thing that made the news, until the next to the last paragraph. The whole story takes up half the space of the story next to it, “Vance Stokes Spears over Chinese factory in Michigan.” A report from the perspective of the JD Vance vice presidential campaign on how Trump's ticket is campaigning in a swing state. The next page is almost entirely given over to Trump coverage. “Trump gets cheers from National Guard crowd,” and “Trump makes Afghan exit focus of campaign stops” in appeals to military dueling attacks. The story about the National Guard event is much more mixed than the headline would suggest, but the story about Trump campaigning against the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan managed to write about Trump's visit to Arlington National Cemetery without mentioning the part where his entourage got into a physical fight with cemetery staff over their use of the cemetery for campaign photo ops. 

It's election season, the campaign is campaigning, and the people who put together and package the New York Times are going to treat it like a normal campaign, even if that means abdicating their most basic and obvious news judgment.

Turns out that little box at the top left isn't “all the news that's fit to print,” it’s “A11, the news that's fit to print.”

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The Indignity Morning Podcast theme is composed and performed by Mac Scocca-Ho. Please subscribe to Indignity with cash money to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.