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Once upon a time, the New York Times was regarded as the
most respected newspaper in America. No longer! These days, the New
York times has fallen from its lofty pinnacle into the gutter. It has become biased
and lacks journalistic integrity.
In September 2019, the Times it reached a new low when it published
unsubstantiated charges against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “The recent
fiasco at the New York Times, which . . . published the latest uncorroborated sexual
assault accusation against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, was a monument
to hearsay and a travesty of journalistic ethics.
“The story, since modified to include crucial information, was
an adapted excerpt from a book, ‘The Education of Brett Kavanaugh,’ written by two Times
staff writers, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. In it, the authors reported {sexual
misconduct} allegations by a Yale classmate {against} Kavanaugh . . .
“. . . eye-popping was the omission from the original
Times piece that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed for the book —
and, according to friends, doesn’t remember any such incident. [Emphasis
mine]
“Such an oversight is inexcusable.
- - -
“The facts that the alleged victim refused to be
interviewed by the authors, and apparently told friends that she doesn’t recall any
such incident, amount to the very definition of a non-story. . . [Emphasis mine]
- - -
“Some {unconscionable and opportunistic} Democratic contenders for
the presidency immediately called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. They include Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (Mass.), Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Tex.) and South
Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
- - -
“The truth is, Kavanaugh has been the target of a media siege since
his name was announced for consideration for the high court. . .
“What’s all too clear is that America’s privileged youth had a
serious drinking problem in the early 1980s, and boozy memories from high school and young
adulthood are unreliable. Far more troubling is that several presidential candidates
seemingly would impeach a Supreme Court justice on nothing more than hearsay — and
impeachable journalism. ” [Emphasis mine] (Ref. 1)
The New York Times Times rag-sheet article about
Kavanaugh’s supposed youthful indiscretions were outdated, unsubstantiated, and
irresponsible. They were journalistic incompetence at best and character assassination
at worst – an affront to journalistic integrity and just one more glaring example of
how far into the gutter the once proud and respected newspaper has fallen.
More than one hundred years ago - in 1897 - perhaps the most
famous seven words in American journalism — “All the news that’s fit to
print” — appeared in the upper left corner of the New York Times
masthead. It signified the standard of impartiality, honest journalism and journalistic
excellence that could be expected from one of the world’s leading newspapers. The phrase
was often associated with fairness, restraint, and impartiality. Today, those seven
words are, at best, hypocritical and constitute a joke and a reproach when applied to
the New York Times.
Since those famous words first appeared in the Times
masthead, the quality and credibility of the reporting in the New York Times has
continually deteriorated over the years and, along with it, the paper’s impartiality.”
(Ref. 2)
As reported as far back as 1998, “The Times has touted
itself as an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and
unselfishly devoted to the public welfare. 'The paper's independence, however, and the
century-long accretion of influence and wealth by the owners, has been contingent on
their defining public welfare in a manner acceptable to their elite audience and
advertisers. In the 1993 debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
for example, the Times was aggressively supportive of the agreement, and
solicited its advertisers to participate in advertorials with a letter touting the
central importance ... of this important cause’ and the need to educate the public
on NAFTA's merits, which polls showed that most citizens failed to appreciate. As the
paper regularly takes positions on domestic and foreign policy issues within parameters
acceptable to business and political elites, it is evident that the owners have failed
to escape class, if not selfish, interests in defining public welfare and what's fit
to print.
“In debates within the range of elite opinion, moreover, the
Times has not been ‘fearless,’ even in the face of gross outrages against law,
morality, and the general interest. During the McCarthy era, for example, the management
buckled under to the Eastland Committee by firing former communist employees, who spoke
freely to management but would not inform on others, and more generally it failed to
oppose the witch hunt with vigor and on the basis of principle. . . .
- - -
“James Reston, the Times's most famous reporter, was
on close terms with a string of presidents and secretaries of state, but in the strange
mores of U.S. journalism, the resultant compromised character of his reporting did not
diminish his professional standing. Bruce Cumings, writing about Secretary of State Dean
Acheson in 1950, states that ‘Acheson vented his ideas through our newspaper of record,
James Reston's lips moving but Dean Acheson speaking.’ . . .
“As the Reston story suggests, the most common pattern of
serving the political establishment is not by directly telling lies, but rather by
omission, and by letting officials tell lies that remain uncorrected. {Harrison}
Salisbury describes the internal debate over how far the paper should go in accommodating
propaganda, the upshot of which was that the Times would ‘leave things out of
the paper,’ or would publish statements known to be false if U.S. officials ‘were
willing to take responsibility for their statements.’ What the Times would
not do is publish unattributed lies. This is the high principle underlying news fit
to print.
- - -
“The Times has attracted many quality reporters
over the years. But power at the paper still flows down from the top, affecting hiring,
firing, promotion, assignments, and what reporters can do on particular assignments.
. . . In writing on topics on which the Times has an ideological
position and policy, 'like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict', or Russia and its ‘reform’
process, or health care reform and the Social Security ‘crisis,’ the reporters all toe
a party line, which either comes naturally to them or to which they adapt. . . .
“In short, reporters are underlings, and in an
establishment paper like the Times they will report within an establishment
framework or leave. [Emphasis mine] . . . “ (Ref. 3)
Then in 2012, we read: “New York Times journalists are
extremely protective of their newspaper’s reputation as the ‘paper of record.’ So when faced
with criticism of their reporting or accusations of journalistic bias, they tend to reject
it, discrediting their critics as insignificant right-wingers.
“Last year {2012}, for example, former New York Times
correspondent Neil Lewis wrote a lengthy piece for the Columbia Journalism Review
on ‘The Times and the Jews,’ discounting criticism of the newspaper’s
Palestinian-Israeli coverage as ‘ill-founded,’ ‘toxic’ and ‘based on misunderstandings
of journalism.’ He marginalized the critics as likely to come from a small group of
Orthodox Jews who support Israeli right-wing policies condemned by the majority of
American supporters of Israel. Such critics, he insisted, ‘can easily find what seem
to them errors in emphasis or tone on any individual article.’ But any fair analysis
should view coverage ‘as part of a larger thematic narrative.’
“Well, the results of just that sort of fair analysis
were recently released by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in
America (CAMERA). And they provide detailed evidence that exposes the newspaper’s
biased coverage and disproves Lewis’ dismissive arguments. [Emphasis mine]
“CAMERA is a media-monitoring organization whose 65,000 members
represent a wide cross-section of the American public -- Jews and non-Jews, secular and
orthodox, liberal and conservative -- motivated by the desire to see accurate and balanced
coverage of Israel and the Middle East. The study, ‘Indicting Israel: New York
Times Coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,’ empirically examines coverage
over an extended period of time, July 1-Dec. 31, 2011, and finds a ‘larger thematic
narrative’ of continued, embedded indictment of Israel that pervades both the news and
commentary sections of the newspaper.
“On the news pages, where readers expect objective and balanced
reporting, criticism of Israel was cited more than twice as often as criticism of the
Palestinians. The Palestinian perspective on the peace process was laid out nearly twice
as often as the Israeli perspective. Vandalism by a fringe Israeli group and IDF military
defensive strikes were emphasized in numerous articles, often with headlines highlighting
Israeli actions, while Palestinian aggression and incitement was downplayed or ignored.
Israel's blockade of Gaza was usually mentioned without context. And Israel’s resort to
force aboard a Turkish ship attempting to break the blockade was frequently discussed and
faulted without referencing the precipitating attacks on Israeli soldiers by pro-Palestinian
activists.
“The theme of faulting Israel was amplified on the editorial and
op-ed pages to one of Israel as a malignant force in the region. Despite the
newspaper’s purported commitment to expose a diversity of opinions, three quarters of all
opinion pieces on the conflict were devoted to denouncing Israel’s leaders or policies,
while none were devoted to condemning Palestinians. Even Israel’s tolerance toward gays
was condemned as a ploy to support human rights abuses against Palestinians.
[Emphasis mine]
“Consider the following: When a group of Israeli teenagers were
arrested in August 2012 for beating an Arab youth unconscious, The New York Times
ran two separate front-page, above-fold articles about it. Both articles focused on the
negative features of Israeli society that the incident was said to reveal.
“Contrast that with the Times’ coverage, 17 months earlier,
of an assault by Palestinian teenagers on an Israeli family. The victims, including three
young children, were brutally slaughtered in a bloody attack that included slitting the
throat of a 3-month old as she lay asleep in her crib. The New York Times chose
not to cover that gruesome event on the front page, nor to comment on what the incident
reveals about Palestinian society and the pernicious effects of incitement to kill Israelis
by the Palestinian leadership.
- - -
“{This} follows a long history of similar distortions,
dating back to the1930's when The New York Times downplayed the Nazi persecution,
and later, genocide of European Jews in order to avoid being seen as a ‘Jewish’
newspaper. [Emphasis mine]
- - -
“CAMERA’s study provides objective documentation that demonstrates
exactly how The New York Times abandoned journalistic standards to turn coverage
of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into the supposedly ‘progressive’ cause of indicting
Israel.” (Ref. 4)
The abysmal quality of the writing that appears on the pages
of the New York Times is proof that their journalists have become the mouthpieces
for East Coast white liberals, where their news writing and coverage reflect the social and
political interests of the cultural elite. Too often these journalists see their jobs as
the fulfillment of the mass media role to educate the proletariat masses, empowering them
to eventually seize political control from the ruling capitalist bourgeoisie. As Jonah
Goldberg of National Review Online observed, "If the apocalypse were nigh, the
(New York) Times would run a headline 'World to End Tomorrow: Women, Blacks in Peril.
" (Ref. 5)
In his book, Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of
the New York Times Means for America, author William McGowan writes that "The
New York Times, which was once considered the gold standard in American journalism and
the most trusted news organization in America, today is generally understood to be a
vehicle for politically correct ideologies, tattered liberal pieties, and a repeated
victim of journalistic scandal and institutional embarrassment."
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References:
- Opinions | The New York Times’s travesty of journalistic ethics,
Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post, 18 September 2019.
- All the News that’s Fit to Print?, David Burton, Son of Eliyahu;
Article 246, 18 March 2016.
- All The News Fit To Print (Part I): Structure and Background of the New York Times,
Edward S. Herman, Z magazine , April 1998.
- Study Indicts New York Times for Anti-Israel Bias , Ricki Hollander,
PB MEDIA,
21 January 2013.
- Deteriorating Journalism, David Burton, Son of Eliyahu;
Article 141, 13 September 2012.
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