The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

Professional sports figured out
how to sputter back to life over the
past three months.
The N.B.A. finished its season
with LeBron James on top again.
The N.H.L. has a new Stanley Cup
champion. The W.N.B.A. also de-
livered a title team, including two
of its biggest stars. The N.F.L. is
charging ahead despite a series of
positive coronavirus tests among
some of its 32 teams. And Major
League Baseball this week, if all
goes as planned, will become the
latest elite sports league to pull off
the small miracle of completing a
season that once appeared be-
yond hope.
Against all odds, and with their
financial futures threatened as
never before, the leagues de-
ployed aggressive, rapid-re-
sponse testing that remains out of
reach for the general public. Keep-
ing spectators out or severely lim-
iting attendance, they apparently
avoided the calamity of a virus
death traced to an event. And they
pushed through, their schedules
overlapping as never before, as
the country was reeling from the
pandemic and politics, and was
not necessarily watching.
When things looked dire, as
when N.B.A. players refused to
take the court in protest of the po-

lice killings convulsing the coun-

try, it took former President

Barack Obama to step in and keep

the action going, telephoning a

group of players led by Chris Paul

and James and persuading them

not to abandon the season.

In a late-night call, after an acri-

monious player meeting on Aug.

26 appeared to leave the season

hanging in the balance, the former

president, a fan of the game who is

friendly with basketball lumi-

naries, stressed to the players that

they would be giving up a power-

ful platform if they stopped play-

ing. Seen as something of a wise

elder of the sport, he urged them

to demand specific actions from

the league before agreeing to re-

Improbably, Sports Made It Back in 2020. Now, the Hard Part.

By MATTHEW FUTTERMAN

and MARC STEIN

Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday was screened outside Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

Continued on Page 37

OAKLAND, Calif. — When Tim

Cook and Sundar Pichai, the chief

executives of Apple and Google,

were photographed eating dinner

together in 2017 at an upscale

Vietnamese restaurant called

Tamarine, the picture set off a tab-

loid-worthy frenzy about the rela-

tionship between the two most

powerful companies in Silicon Val-

ley.

As the two men sipped red wine

at a window table inside the

restaurant in Palo Alto, their com-

panies were in tense negotiations

to renew one of the most lucrative

business deals in history: an

agreement to feature Google’s

search engine as the preselected

choice on Apple’s iPhone and

other devices. The updated deal

was worth billions of dollars to

both companies and cemented

their status at the top of the tech

industry’s pecking order.

Now, the partnership is in jeop-

ardy. Last Tuesday, the Justice

Department filed a landmark law-

suit against Google — the U.S.

government’s biggest antitrust

case in two decades — and homed

in on the alliance as a prime exam-

ple of what prosecutors say are

the company’s illegal tactics to

protect its monopoly and choke off

competition in web search.

The scrutiny of the pact, which

was first inked 15 years ago and

has rarely been discussed by ei-

ther company, has highlighted the

special relationship between Sili-

con Valley’s two most valuable

companies — an unlikely union of

rivals that regulators say is un-

fairly preventing smaller compa-

nies from flourishing.

“We have this sort of strange

term in Silicon Valley: co-opta-

tion,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s

general counsel from 2009 to 2017.

Why Apple and Google Set Aside

A Rivalry: To Rake In Billions

By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

and JACK NICAS

Sundar Pichai, left, and Tim

Cook dining together in 2017.

STEVE SIMS

Continued on Page 23

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — To under-

stand how much President Trump

has altered the conversation

around the economy, just listen to

Bruce Haines, who spent decades

as an executive at U.S. Steel be-

fore becoming a managing part-

ner of the elegant Historic Hotel

Bethlehem.

The steel mills that still domi-

nate Bethlehem’s skyline have

long been empty. And now, so are

the tables in the Tap Room, the ho-

tel’s restaurant, a sign of the eco-

nomic hardship caused by the co-

ronavirus pandemic. “It’s been

very difficult,” Mr. Haines said.

The president’s management of

the pandemic is a prime reason

many voters cite for backing his

opponent. But Mr. Haines, who

lives in a swing county in a swing

state, is struck most by a different

aspect of Mr. Trump’s record.

“I spent 35 years in the steel

business and I can tell you unfair

trade deals were done by Republi-

cans and Democrats,” Mr. Haines

said. Both parties, he complained,

had given up on manufacturing —

once a wellspring of stable mid-

dle-class jobs. “Trump has been

the savior of American industry.

He got it. He’s the only one.”

In perhaps the greatest rever-

sal of fortune of the Trump presi-

dency, a microscopically tiny vi-

rus upended the outsize economic

legacy that Mr. Trump had

planned to run on for re-election.

Instead of record-low unemploy-

ment rates, supercharged confi-

dence levels and broad-based

gains in personal income, Mr.

Trump will end his term with ris-

ing poverty, wounded growth and

a higher jobless rate than when he

took office.

TRUMP’S LEGACY

ON ECONOMY GOES

BEYOND NUMBERS

HIGH MARKS IN A SLUMP

President Altered Parties’

Positions on Trade

and Immigration

By PATRICIA COHEN

Many in Bethlehem, Pa., a steel industry town, believe the president has been good for the manufacturing sector and the economy.

RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 31

Bill Johnson knew, before he
reached out to Joseph R. Biden
Jr.’s campaign last spring, that
things had changed between the
former vice president and the na-

tion’s police unions. A once-close
alliance had frayed amid clashes
over police brutality and racism in
the justice system. Still, Mr. John-
son, the executive director of the
National Association of Police Or-
ganizations, invited Mr. Biden to
address the group as it weighed its
2020 endorsement.
For weeks, the campaign was
politely noncommittal, Mr. John-
son said. Finally, he recalled, on
the day NAPO was deciding its en-
dorsement, he heard from a cam-
paign aide asking if there was still
time to send a message. “Not to be
a jerk, but we were literally start-
ing the meeting,” Mr. Johnson
said. “It’s kind of a little late.”
The police federation, which
twice endorsed the Obama-Biden
ticket and stayed neutral in 2016,
backed President Trump in July.
Soon after, its president told the
Republican convention that Mr.
Biden and Senator Kamala Harris
were “the most radical anti-police
ticket in history.”
That attack marked a low point
in a political relationship that had
endured for most of Mr. Biden’s
career.
If elected, Mr. Biden would
bring to the White House a long
career’s worth of relationships
with police chiefs, union leaders
and policy experts that is un-
matched by any other major fig-
ure in the Democratic Party, ac-
cording to more than a dozen cur-
rent and former law-enforcement
officials who have worked with
Mr. Biden in various capacities.
During a late-summer speech

A Frayed Bond

Between Biden

And the Police

Amid Calls for Reform,

Old Ally Seeks Trust

By ALEXANDER BURNS

Continued on Page 26

THE LONG RUN

Crime Bills and Social Justice

For years, The Epoch Times

was a small, low-budget newspa-

per with an anti-China slant that

was handed out free on New York

street corners. But in 2016 and

2017, the paper made two changes

that transformed it into one of the

country’s most powerful digital

publishers.

The changes also paved the

way for the publication, which is

affiliated with the secretive and

relatively obscure Chinese spiri-

tual movement Falun Gong, to be-

come a leading purveyor of right-

wing misinformation.

First, it embraced President

Trump, treating him as an ally in

Falun Gong’s scorched-earth fight

against China’s ruling Communist

Party, which banned the group

two decades ago and has perse-

cuted its members ever since. Its

relatively staid coverage of U.S.

politics became more partisan,

with more articles explicitly sup-

porting Mr. Trump and criticizing

his opponents.

Around the same time, The Ep-

och Times bet big on another pow-

erful American institution: Face-

book. The publication and its affili-

ates employed a novel strategy

that involved creating dozens of

Facebook pages, filling them with

feel-good videos and viral click-

bait, and using them to sell sub-

scriptions and drive traffic back to

its partisan news coverage.

In an April 2017 email to the

staff obtained by The New York

Times, the paper’s leadership en-

visioned that the Facebook strat-

egy could help turn The Epoch

Times into “the world’s largest

and most authoritative media.” It

could also introduce millions of

people to the teachings of Falun

Gong, fulfilling the group’s mis-

sion of “saving sentient beings.”

Today, The Epoch Times and its

affiliates are a force in right-wing

media, with tens of millions of so-

cial media followers and an online

audience that rivals those of The

Daily Caller and Breitbart News,

and with a similar willingness to

feed the online fever swamps of

the far right.

It also has growing influence in

Mr. Trump’s inner circle. The pres-

ident and his family have shared

articles from the paper on social

media, and Trump administration

officials have sat for interviews

with its reporters. In August, a re-

porter from The Epoch Times

asked a question at a White House

press briefing.

It is a remarkable success story

for Falun Gong, which has long

struggled to establish its bona

fides against Beijing’s efforts to

demonize it as an “evil cult,”

partly because its strident ac-

counts of persecution in China can

sometimes be difficult to substan-

tiate or veer into exaggeration. In

2006, an Epoch Times reporter

How an Obscure Newspaper Became a Bullhorn for the Far Right

By KEVIN ROOSE

The Epoch Times is affiliated

with a Chinese spiritual group.

ALAMY

Continued on Page 22

Jorge Gonzalez Zuniga’s death after a

violent arrest prompted protests that

are rare in a region where undocument-

ed immigrants often stay silent.PAGE 21

NATIONAL 20-

Tragedy in Rio Grande Valley

The September issue celebrated Black

culture. But some say Anna Wintour,

the editor, fostered a workplace that

sidelined women of color. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Diversity at Vogue

PBS created the blueprint for what TV

has become, but while the networks and

streaming services reap the benefits, it

is still struggling to survive. PAGE 7

ARTS & LEISURE

The Future of Public Television Nada Bakri PAGE 5

SUNDAY REVIEW

U(D547FD)v+&!@!/!$!z

Lee Kun-hee made the company a tech
giant. But his tenure typified the rela-
tionship between South Korea and its
business dynasties. He was 78. PAGE 16

INTERNATIONAL 10-

Samsung Chairman Dies

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX... No. 58,857 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020

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