NYT Criticized For Declaring Jan. 6 Committee Hearings 'Most Important TV Show Of The Year'

Right-wing outlets have criticized a television critic from the New York Times for calling the Jan. 6 Congressional hearings investigating the attempted Capitol insurrection the “most important TV of the year.”

James Poniewozik, a television critic for the newspaper broadsheet the New York Times, called the televised investigation a “TV show” that used “deft editing, story structure, graphics, suspense, social media virality and, yes, a touch of showmanship” as a way of becoming the “show of the summer and the most important TV of the year,” according to Fox News.

Many right-wing social media commentators have latched onto it, mocking the inclusion of the hearings in the list. Right-wing sports commentator Clay Travis called the inclusion “woke sh*t,” before saying that it was impossible to “satirize” the commentary.

Others like Steve Krakauer, the editor of the Fourth Watch media newsletter, openly mocked how the production values of the hearings were described during the short year-end review of Poniewozik.

Poniewozik has previously written about the hearings, praising it as “well-made, well-promoted TV,” as well as for gaining an audience during the summer. He compared it to an “ambitious TV drama,” saying that the hearings had used similar methods to such shows to gain and retain an audience, according to the New York Times.

The Times also published a guest essay by Christopher Caldwell calling the hearings “ineffective,” claiming that despite the production values of the event, that it was ineffective in “shifting views about the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021 by a pro-Trump crowd.”

The NYT, that has been reported as having a liberal editorial stance, has been criticized in the past for allowing op-eds with “right-wing propaganda” to be published without checking if the data being cited is used accurately in the article, according to the American Prospect.