When Ben Smith at Semafor asked Kahn about former Obama official Dan Pfeiffer’s complaint that the Times does not “see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power,” Kahn went ballistic.

“I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work in the view of Dan Pfeiffer or the White House,” Kahn snapped. “We become an instrument of the Biden campaign? We turn ourselves into Xinhua News Agency or Pravda, and put out a stream of stuff that’s very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side? And that would accomplish — what?” ...

Finally, in a sweeping indictment of Trump-era journalism, Kahn pointed a finger at a generation of reporters who appeared to arrive in newsrooms unequipped to deal with unpleasant facts. Sounding offended on behalf of the paper’s reporting reputation, which took a beating with years of misses on stories like Russiagate and factual fiascoes like the “Caliphate” podcast, Kahn reminded Times reporters that the job is about facing and reporting difficult truths, not striving to remake reality into a campus-like safe space, in pursuit of any political “mission”[.]