A New York Times news article headlined, "Trump and Aides Try to Change the Narrative of the White House Protests" begins:
WASHINGTON — President Trump and his aides spent much of Wednesday trying to rewrite history, claiming that Mr. Trump was merely "inspecting" a bunker last week during riots over the death of George Floyd and insisting falsely that peaceful protesters near the White House were attacking the police when the authorities used chemical agents to make them move so that Mr. Trump could have his picture taken at a nearby church.
Eventually the Times gets down to explaining what the White House "rewrite" of the history of the "peaceful protesters" amounts to. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, the Times reports, "cited the fact that St. John's, where Mr. Trump posed for the cameras, 'was burning' the night before."
The Times news article corrects McEnanay on that point: "In fact, there was a relatively small fire in the basement that was quickly extinguished."
Glad they cleared that one up!
This is the sort of thing that makes people think the Times news columns are ridiculously biased. If some Trump supporter or Republican Senator had, uninvited, set a fire in the basement of New York Times headquarters or the offices of the NAACP or the Democratic National Committee, you think the Times would be characterizing it as a "peaceful" protest or emphasizing, dismissively, how "relatively small" the fire was (relative to what?) and how it was "quickly extinguished"? The Times displays a remarkable lack of curiosity about how the fire got there. Was it an attempt at arson? A Molotov cocktail? Were the "peaceful" protesters just seeking a cozy hearth to gather round, like members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family on a winter evening at one of their country estates back in the era before concerns about global warming made wood-burning fireplaces not politically correct?
The Episcopal News Service (not exactly a Trump administration mouthpiece) reports that the fire "completely destroyed" the nursery room of the church, according to the church's rector, and that there were smoke and water damage to surrounding areas. The New York Times doesn't tell its readers that. The Washington Post reported D.C. Police said the fire "was deliberately set in the basement," and the Post said the fire "was started through a window, by some sort of fire igniter." The New York Times article doesn't report that the fire had been set deliberately. The Post also points out that the fire was extinguished not by the "peaceful" protesters but by the D.C. Fire Department escorted by D.C. Police—another piece of information the New York Times leaves out.
Back in 1996, when there was a wave of arsons against African-American churches, the Times wrote an editorial about it, asserting, "It took far too long for this problem to capture Washington's conscience. It should remain high on the public agenda until it is solved."
I'm all for the Times applying skepticism to statements from government spokespeople, but this is a case where the "fact-checking" looks like a clumsy effort by the Times news columns to minimize the seriousness of firebombing of a church.
I can see why ideological sympathy with protests against police brutality or racism might cause the Times journalists to want to emphasize the peaceful elements of the protests rather than the arson-related aspects. And I suppose it's at least theoretically possible, since the crime is unsolved, that the arson was done by some pro-racist-police provocateur who wanted to make the protesters look bad. But the Times wording on this was just clumsy to the point of cringe-inducing.