The New York Times on Thursday hyped CNN President Jeff Zucker as a man leading “the network against the leader of the free world.” But don’t get the impression that’s a bad thing. No, readers are told that CNN stands apart from “networks with an ideological bent in prime time.”

Clearly, the victim in all of this is the cable network. Writer Michael M. Grynbaum sympathized with CNN in its battle against a Republican president: “The onslaught has contributed to a foxhole-like mentality inside CNN’s offices, where security measures have been tightened and some hosts have considered abandoning their social media accounts because of abuse.”

Grynbaum continued:

One challenge Mr. Zucker has thought about: safety. The level of threats against CNN employees, he said, has spiked this year. Mr. Trump, he said, “has caused us to have to take steps that you wouldn’t think would be necessary because of the actions of the president of the United States.”

Despite all this, the NYT journalist wants you to believe that CNN is right down the middle: “CNN has recently placed third in weekday prime time, behind the more ideologically driven coverage of Fox News and MSNBC.”

According to Zucker and the Times:

“Television is his preferred medium,” Mr. Zucker said, asked why the president had zeroed in on his network. “And he knows our viewers can be swayed because they’re not watching Fox or MSNBC” — networks with an ideological bent in prime time.

Got that? Despite liberal anchors like Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, it’s others who are biased.

Of course, now that Zucker is a heroic liberal figure fighting Trump, there is no need to mention that CNN cultivated the 2016 candidate’s rise. It’s something that the Times managed to remember back in April for a long NYT Magazine story: