Steve, as the widow of a journalist who spent nearly 30 years at the NY Times in every station of the cross, including Op Ed columnist, from the late 1950s through the mid 1980s, I can tell you with assurance that nothing you have cited as "truth" or different about The Paper is different now than in the past. The Times has always been a for-profit news organization like every other and, like all the others based in New York is subject to pressure from the New York power structure, the US Government power structure, and the NY social elite.
My husband wrote myriad columns about Donald Trump during the 1980s, dubbed him "young Donald" (which he hated and made people laugh at him), called out his hypocrisy, his thievery, his lies, racism and his misogyny.
It is ironic to see the Trump "boxes" at Mar-a-Lago because we had a Trump box in our document storage room for years, full of letters of complaints from tenants, in addition to Trump's threatening letters, signed in golden sharpie, calling Syd a "loser" and vowing to sue. What was written about Trump 30 years ago remains true.
It's all the same stuff, just version 3.0.
As long as publications and broadcasters are for-profit entities sails will be trimmed, voices will be silenced and truths will be bent. Those with the courage to call out the creeps are loved by the readers (3000 letters were received when Syd's column was discontinued) but frighten their colleagues who fear for their careers and the inability to pay their kids' private school fees.
Our Democracy is cracking at the foundation. So the question for me, is not who-said-what-to-whom, or who's up or down, but who is tough enough, courageous enough and persistent enough to drown out the disinformation with truth. That requires a measure of authenticity, however, and ideologues don't come across as authentic.
The real question at hand -- which no one can answer (even the astrologers won't predict) -- is will our house divided crumble to the ground next November to be replaced by a foul-mouthed fascist dictator, or will we have an octogenarian with his finger in the dyke and fascists clawing at the White House doors?
My friends say we must fight for Democracy and fight for our rights, especially we women. But I don't want to fight for Texas, or Florida or any of the other places that want to bend laws to comport with their social and religious beliefs, the diminution of basic rights.
So how is that any different than the noisy newspaper ideologues protesting an opinion that is repugnant to them being published in their paper?
I'm not sure there is a difference. And I keep wondering what others in the middle, who feel as I do, can do. Meanwhile, I hear the foundation cracking and wonder whether it will heave when the earthquake comes or whether it's strong enough to remain intact.
As a lifetime reader of the times and a generation before me, I have to say what you say is so true. Many thanks. I find all media bending over backwards to keep this trump loser guy happy. In giving equal time to his perception he wants it all. No getting around the Haberman situation. Trump made it his business over the course of years to “own” certain media in ny.
Dear Jane Schanberg, thank you for your comment from someone who really knows how the NYT’s really works. I too hear the foundation cracking and worry that it may not hold.
Brilliant. I’ve read your comment multiple times, and I wish it could be writ large. Here’s to real reporters, reporters that I thought were a romanticized ideal. Thank you for your thoughts and for your craft.
What a pleasure to read such a profound, informative, and well written piece. I'd urge you to get it out elsewhere. It is helpful in a world so full of deceit to get this bottom line truth so we know what we are dealing with.
More importantly than either of these stories is: While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was meeting with President Biden this week to ask our help defending his democracy against the brutal, violent aggression of Russia, Republican lawmakers in DC were meeting behind closed doors at a Heritage Foundation event with representatives of Hungary’s strongman president Viktor Orbán. It got almost no press coverage at all, other than The Guardian.
“What Bennet and Weiss both describe is a brutalist culture that is totalitarian in disposition and utterly roiled by a churning confluence of hypocrisy, myopia and intolerance that flow from an ideological headwater that rejects pluralism as harshly as MAGA extremism does.”
I have no problem with this description of the NYT’s. They are a hotbed of stupidity and obtuseness. As for Cotton’s op-ed, that’s a different story. Cotton just didn’t just reflect a need to call in the military; his op-ed was filled with debunked conspiracies, propaganda and lies.
Bennet wrote after the fact on Twitter: “Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy.”
Fair enough, just don’t let someone write misleading information and lies that go unanswered or fact checked.
“This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s,” it begins, before trotting out hyperbolic (and false) phrases like “the riots were a carnival for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements,” “orgy of violence,” and “cadres of left-wing radicals like Antifa infiltrating protest marches.” --Tom Cotton
Seriously? Most of the protesting was peaceful and everyone knows it; including police and FBI statistics. So when Cotton gets to unload his Fox propaganda at the NYT’s, I’d say it’s a bit rich for anyone’s taste, whose not a full fledged MAGA brownshirt.
That said, I have no love lost for the NYT’s. May they rot in hell for all I care. They aren’t the fourth estate, just the worst of the so called “all the news that’s fit to print” organizations.
My rational for this claim? Whenever its readers need them the most to disseminate critical information, they never miss an opportunity to disappoint.
Whether its being a useful idiot for the Cheney administration in the run up to the Iraq War, or withholding critical information regarding illegal spying on Americans for a year; the NYT’s will always chose its own interests ahead of its readers. And those interests are profits and access.
They are the epitome of hypocrisy. End of story...:)
Great comment. So on point. And just to put a slightly finer point on the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the Times had Judith Miller holding hands with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Perle, and more, to SELL the war to Americans through lies, disinformation, and journalistic collusion. Miller and the NYT will never get that stain out.
A story was broken in the Daily Beast a couple of weeks ago about Comer's shell company with his brother on some farmland. No mainstream media touched the story until now. Comer is the idiot who is working toward impeaching the president and leading the disgraceful witch hunt on Hunter Biden just to get his fat mug on Faux every. single. night. Finally, the story about Comer was published in today's Los Angeles Times about the duplicity of that goober Comer. The hypocrisy is amazing. And remember, it was the NY Times that hammered Hillary Clinton's emails and probably helped give us TFG.
Your essay recalls a line by Yves Simon, about France's communists in the years following WWII: "They would be fascists if there was enough money in it."
Thank you very much for the Hunter Biden coverage. Hunter Biden was brave enough to show up at Congress but the characterless maga’s serving in Congress were not because they don’t want the truth that they have zero evidence on him or his father to be known. They go after the Biden’s when Hunter has never served in any position in government but they totally ignore the Trump/Kushner crime family. Being clean and sober is daily ordeal. I hope Hunter Biden continues to do well in spite of the harassment he is receiving from maga hypocrites. Thank you Mr Schmidt for your attempts at balance and fairness in your writings. It makes me sad to know John McCain lied to you and made it your lie also because you were trying to help him win. I thought he was better than that,I thought he could handle the truth but he was just another politician in the end. Power over truth when America needed truth.
The dignity and the sincerity of President Biden and his family’s conduct left me speechless. They are the new American royal standard for our democratic state.
I feel like you are bending over backwards to blame Liberals for Trump's existence. Giving someone like Cotton a platform to spew hate and ideas that are fundamentally anti-democratic is like demanding that the man who abuses his wife get his say in how his bad behavior was characterized. That all things must be equally treated. They shouldn't be. Some things are beyond the pale. Cotton can go spew on Fox, I know where to find him any time of the day.
Also, 'neutral' journalism is ridiculous. I prefer and consume news from all sorts of channels for this reason. I want my journalists to give me the facts, back it up with their sources, but most importantly set it in place, give me context (which usually ends up steering me to an opinion they have). Doesn't mean I have to accept their opinion, but it should give me something to think hard about.
It can't be comfortable to be in this position as a long-standing Conservative, watching your party taken over by fascists like a wasp eats its living prey from inside. But I suggest you stop getting upset at everyone else and instead come to accept that there are actually decades of Republicans withdrawing slowly but relentlessly away from believing in Democracy.
The finagling with our Judiciary, the gerrymandering, the kowtowing to White and Christian Nationalists: this, ultimately, is what is really behind the phenomenon of Trump. Trump is just a symptom. It is Trump's enablers who are the problem, not Trump.
Get past that and decide what you want to do about it (hint: a third-party candidate isn't going to fix this). You believe in Democracy passionately. Your train ran off the rails and is heading straight for the station platform crowded with the most innocent and vulnerable people: children, women, elderly. Stop yelling at us.
Real journalism died with Walter Cronkite. The news is no more than old west bounty hunters. They write for money and likes. They write what they think sells not what’s real. Detective Friday from dragnet should have been a news editor with his repetitious statements “ Just the Facts...”.
Whether the networks or radio or TV , they intentionally blur the line between opinion and facts. They tell you their slant of the facts and call it news. Hannity is not a journalist, he simply states what he thinks ( although there is doubt that he actually has any real brain activity).
It’s all about the money. The fact tellers are starved out.
Yet I think people should be told the facts and allow them to reach their own conclusions.
The NYT is a rag. It no longer has any credibility. Mr.Bennet’s mistake was to publish anything the reptile Tom Cotton wrote. You play with fascists, you’re going to get burned.
Powerful commentary on Hunter Biden, Steve. I just wish these a-holes would back off the man, but that is wishful thinking. They should instead train their fire on the spawn of TFG who got trademarks from China and billions in investments from the Saudis - while working in the White House! Funny thing, when Dems were in control of the house, they didn't launch investigations into that stuff, they were too busy doing work for the American people, who elected them to do so. These repigs have the second most ineffective congress in history. A real accomplishment to be proud of, for sure!
Most Welcome! Truly, trying times ahead. Your words, wisdom, insight, will be needed more than ever as we move forward through the minefield/s we've created for ourselves.
It is good, mighty good, to see growing commentary on the media. Long, long overdue. And of the NYT, the gaudiest, most painted, most demanding whore on the corner, especially poignant. But final focus, complete resolution is kept askew by maintaining refraining from the use of a single word--corporation. The collective media for years obliged the corporate collective by not using the identifying word corporation, using instead the word lobbyist. True, most of those credibly hip, credibly informed knew that lobbyists were huckster fronts for corporations, but those of a much larger group, those referred to as Boobus Americanus by Mencken, went reliably uninformed. Not a hundred percent, but get what you can. To use the word corporation with any perjorative nuance invites immediate, reflexsive, collective response. Corporatism, like capitalism, allows for zero criticism. Only criticism of religion in America approximates the total deference expected. Mere mention of anything negative about corporations is met with "communist.". There is no room, no ground between. Point is, medias in America are all corporations. At the end of day, they go to the same country club. Good arguments have been made that corporations by structure and function are fascist, both by topdown, absolutist control and adamantly controlled compliance. Got their own legal force, their own armed security force. Better arguments can be made by pointing out that corporations, as with our radioactive billionaires, are America's oligarchs. The uncontrolled, unjustified current fleecing at your grocery store reflects the stage at which this tumor grows unchecked.
It seems to me that denigrating Fox, a worthy vocation, simply requires that you pull 1000 clean examples to support your arguments about their misleading, corrupt offerings in the name of news, from the roughly 100,000 or more available, polish them up and write your piece. On the other hand we are ready to tar and feather the New York Times on the basis of ONE mis-step, probably and childishly encouraged by the fact that Tom Cotton is a well-educated idiot, champion of conspiracies and a Hall of Fame liar. No doubt, in a perfect world, Tom would have had his oped unbesmerched, but knowing who he is and the nonsense he typically spews, folks acted badly. On the other hand he was promoting a solution that the Constitution rejects, even though the constitution is supposed to be his guide, or so his oath of office would suggest. Sure, presenting counter-arguments is a noble thing to do but who authored the argument? Do you offer up column inches to DJT just because he has a new mislead or threat or salacious insult of a respected figure? I don't think so. If the Times is a boil ready to be lanced, why just this ONE objection? If they are so corrupt, where is the list? Strikes me that we are in danger of serious blood pressure problems. Not for me. I am relaxing with my copy of the NYT, still worthy after all these years.
I wish you were right that they only erred once, but since NY Times’ share of responsibility in taking down Burmese democracy movement with sensationalized but with no real foundation on accusations that the Burmese democrats were racist demagogues who were against the Muslim Rohingyas. While the cruel acts were perpetrated by the junta who are now using Russian scorched earth campaign against the hill tribe rebels about which will never headline NY Times. Daily their peaceful native villages, which are the ideal paradise with loving people are bombed with Russian missiles. Burma had a small window of opportunity to rise up to a democratic utopia when Aung San Suu Kyi came to America. But using Kremlin’s play book, on the same day she was collecting Nobel Peace prize they attacked a Muslim man pulling him out of a bus and spread rumors that he raped a village girl. After that, riots and arson spread while ASSK was collecting prizes and praise during her trip. But the most interesting thing was how Russian KGBs found the weak point and created a huge chasm out of it. It began a year or so prior when a beautiful and educated daughter of a Burmese Muslim political leader was invited and then gave an enviable speech at the British parliament. Burmese Muslims had the advantage at that point of being English educated compared to an average Burmese. They jumped on the signs of jealousy and found the toxic anti Muslim sentiment pretty similar to Anti immigrant trend in America. And mixed it with the western antiterrorism campaign against the Jihadist. The most important reason Burmese were unable to rebuff that was because the nomenclature Rohingyas was never been used in Burma before. And ASSK was married to a foreigner and she could not afford to back unknown foreign sounding migrants from outside. And by the way I even translated for NY Times for such a story once.
Hi May I'm afraid what I don't know exceeds by many times what I do. I am sorry to hear of what you report and I know my comment was somewhat glib, the worse for there being so much I do not know and the worse for bringing the sting of this story to the front of your mind again. It is unfortunate that a respected journal can make mistakes that have such harsh consequences. Bob
That Burmese experience also makes me wary of the border policy argument the Republicans aka Putin’s surrogates are playing up in Washington DC. I also used to live by NY Times until confronted with the shallowness of their news business model. We are learning as we live now too, as US, Ukraine and Israel are under constant information assaults from Moscow daily. Here is a great take on how to navigate in this new age of information war. https://youtu.be/A41DncEyi0s?si=zy6hLW_NRdv59XE5
Hi Hugh She combines great intellect, an open mind and compassion. She appears quite frequently on MSNBC where she demonstrates these qualities consistently. Bob
Listen. If I wasn’t 50 years too old and very happily married, had a Harvard PhD, was a Heisman Trophy winner, had a couple mil in my savings account, looked like Cary Grant, maybe a Nobel here or there, an electric car and lived in NYC and if she wasn’t married, probably with kids and fifteen worthies on the sidelines thinking “I wish it were me”, I’d probably ask her for a date. Bob
Steve, your youtube videos are Gold! Thank you, again, for speaking about addiction and recovery. Some people fight battles others know nothing about. I'm proud of Hunter Biden for speaking Truth, for stepping into his power, and I'm proud of you, too! Keep up this powerful work! Best, Lisa
Steve, as the widow of a journalist who spent nearly 30 years at the NY Times in every station of the cross, including Op Ed columnist, from the late 1950s through the mid 1980s, I can tell you with assurance that nothing you have cited as "truth" or different about The Paper is different now than in the past. The Times has always been a for-profit news organization like every other and, like all the others based in New York is subject to pressure from the New York power structure, the US Government power structure, and the NY social elite.
My husband wrote myriad columns about Donald Trump during the 1980s, dubbed him "young Donald" (which he hated and made people laugh at him), called out his hypocrisy, his thievery, his lies, racism and his misogyny.
It is ironic to see the Trump "boxes" at Mar-a-Lago because we had a Trump box in our document storage room for years, full of letters of complaints from tenants, in addition to Trump's threatening letters, signed in golden sharpie, calling Syd a "loser" and vowing to sue. What was written about Trump 30 years ago remains true.
It's all the same stuff, just version 3.0.
As long as publications and broadcasters are for-profit entities sails will be trimmed, voices will be silenced and truths will be bent. Those with the courage to call out the creeps are loved by the readers (3000 letters were received when Syd's column was discontinued) but frighten their colleagues who fear for their careers and the inability to pay their kids' private school fees.
Our Democracy is cracking at the foundation. So the question for me, is not who-said-what-to-whom, or who's up or down, but who is tough enough, courageous enough and persistent enough to drown out the disinformation with truth. That requires a measure of authenticity, however, and ideologues don't come across as authentic.
The real question at hand -- which no one can answer (even the astrologers won't predict) -- is will our house divided crumble to the ground next November to be replaced by a foul-mouthed fascist dictator, or will we have an octogenarian with his finger in the dyke and fascists clawing at the White House doors?
My friends say we must fight for Democracy and fight for our rights, especially we women. But I don't want to fight for Texas, or Florida or any of the other places that want to bend laws to comport with their social and religious beliefs, the diminution of basic rights.
So how is that any different than the noisy newspaper ideologues protesting an opinion that is repugnant to them being published in their paper?
I'm not sure there is a difference. And I keep wondering what others in the middle, who feel as I do, can do. Meanwhile, I hear the foundation cracking and wonder whether it will heave when the earthquake comes or whether it's strong enough to remain intact.
As a lifetime reader of the times and a generation before me, I have to say what you say is so true. Many thanks. I find all media bending over backwards to keep this trump loser guy happy. In giving equal time to his perception he wants it all. No getting around the Haberman situation. Trump made it his business over the course of years to “own” certain media in ny.
Dear Jane Schanberg, thank you for your comment from someone who really knows how the NYT’s really works. I too hear the foundation cracking and worry that it may not hold.
Brilliant. I’ve read your comment multiple times, and I wish it could be writ large. Here’s to real reporters, reporters that I thought were a romanticized ideal. Thank you for your thoughts and for your craft.
What a pleasure to read such a profound, informative, and well written piece. I'd urge you to get it out elsewhere. It is helpful in a world so full of deceit to get this bottom line truth so we know what we are dealing with.
More importantly than either of these stories is: While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was meeting with President Biden this week to ask our help defending his democracy against the brutal, violent aggression of Russia, Republican lawmakers in DC were meeting behind closed doors at a Heritage Foundation event with representatives of Hungary’s strongman president Viktor Orbán. It got almost no press coverage at all, other than The Guardian.
Absolutely no probing questions from the like of NY Times and many other press.
“What Bennet and Weiss both describe is a brutalist culture that is totalitarian in disposition and utterly roiled by a churning confluence of hypocrisy, myopia and intolerance that flow from an ideological headwater that rejects pluralism as harshly as MAGA extremism does.”
I have no problem with this description of the NYT’s. They are a hotbed of stupidity and obtuseness. As for Cotton’s op-ed, that’s a different story. Cotton just didn’t just reflect a need to call in the military; his op-ed was filled with debunked conspiracies, propaganda and lies.
Bennet wrote after the fact on Twitter: “Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy.”
Fair enough, just don’t let someone write misleading information and lies that go unanswered or fact checked.
“This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s,” it begins, before trotting out hyperbolic (and false) phrases like “the riots were a carnival for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements,” “orgy of violence,” and “cadres of left-wing radicals like Antifa infiltrating protest marches.” --Tom Cotton
Seriously? Most of the protesting was peaceful and everyone knows it; including police and FBI statistics. So when Cotton gets to unload his Fox propaganda at the NYT’s, I’d say it’s a bit rich for anyone’s taste, whose not a full fledged MAGA brownshirt.
That said, I have no love lost for the NYT’s. May they rot in hell for all I care. They aren’t the fourth estate, just the worst of the so called “all the news that’s fit to print” organizations.
My rational for this claim? Whenever its readers need them the most to disseminate critical information, they never miss an opportunity to disappoint.
Whether its being a useful idiot for the Cheney administration in the run up to the Iraq War, or withholding critical information regarding illegal spying on Americans for a year; the NYT’s will always chose its own interests ahead of its readers. And those interests are profits and access.
They are the epitome of hypocrisy. End of story...:)
Great comment. So on point. And just to put a slightly finer point on the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the Times had Judith Miller holding hands with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Perle, and more, to SELL the war to Americans through lies, disinformation, and journalistic collusion. Miller and the NYT will never get that stain out.
Thank you for your good memory and excellent communication skills!
A story was broken in the Daily Beast a couple of weeks ago about Comer's shell company with his brother on some farmland. No mainstream media touched the story until now. Comer is the idiot who is working toward impeaching the president and leading the disgraceful witch hunt on Hunter Biden just to get his fat mug on Faux every. single. night. Finally, the story about Comer was published in today's Los Angeles Times about the duplicity of that goober Comer. The hypocrisy is amazing. And remember, it was the NY Times that hammered Hillary Clinton's emails and probably helped give us TFG.
Yes- Cheryl Kelly- everything you said!
Your essay recalls a line by Yves Simon, about France's communists in the years following WWII: "They would be fascists if there was enough money in it."
Thank you very much for the Hunter Biden coverage. Hunter Biden was brave enough to show up at Congress but the characterless maga’s serving in Congress were not because they don’t want the truth that they have zero evidence on him or his father to be known. They go after the Biden’s when Hunter has never served in any position in government but they totally ignore the Trump/Kushner crime family. Being clean and sober is daily ordeal. I hope Hunter Biden continues to do well in spite of the harassment he is receiving from maga hypocrites. Thank you Mr Schmidt for your attempts at balance and fairness in your writings. It makes me sad to know John McCain lied to you and made it your lie also because you were trying to help him win. I thought he was better than that,I thought he could handle the truth but he was just another politician in the end. Power over truth when America needed truth.
The dignity and the sincerity of President Biden and his family’s conduct left me speechless. They are the new American royal standard for our democratic state.
Yes they are.
I feel like you are bending over backwards to blame Liberals for Trump's existence. Giving someone like Cotton a platform to spew hate and ideas that are fundamentally anti-democratic is like demanding that the man who abuses his wife get his say in how his bad behavior was characterized. That all things must be equally treated. They shouldn't be. Some things are beyond the pale. Cotton can go spew on Fox, I know where to find him any time of the day.
Also, 'neutral' journalism is ridiculous. I prefer and consume news from all sorts of channels for this reason. I want my journalists to give me the facts, back it up with their sources, but most importantly set it in place, give me context (which usually ends up steering me to an opinion they have). Doesn't mean I have to accept their opinion, but it should give me something to think hard about.
It can't be comfortable to be in this position as a long-standing Conservative, watching your party taken over by fascists like a wasp eats its living prey from inside. But I suggest you stop getting upset at everyone else and instead come to accept that there are actually decades of Republicans withdrawing slowly but relentlessly away from believing in Democracy.
The finagling with our Judiciary, the gerrymandering, the kowtowing to White and Christian Nationalists: this, ultimately, is what is really behind the phenomenon of Trump. Trump is just a symptom. It is Trump's enablers who are the problem, not Trump.
Get past that and decide what you want to do about it (hint: a third-party candidate isn't going to fix this). You believe in Democracy passionately. Your train ran off the rails and is heading straight for the station platform crowded with the most innocent and vulnerable people: children, women, elderly. Stop yelling at us.
Real journalism died with Walter Cronkite. The news is no more than old west bounty hunters. They write for money and likes. They write what they think sells not what’s real. Detective Friday from dragnet should have been a news editor with his repetitious statements “ Just the Facts...”.
Whether the networks or radio or TV , they intentionally blur the line between opinion and facts. They tell you their slant of the facts and call it news. Hannity is not a journalist, he simply states what he thinks ( although there is doubt that he actually has any real brain activity).
It’s all about the money. The fact tellers are starved out.
Yet I think people should be told the facts and allow them to reach their own conclusions.
The NYT is a rag. It no longer has any credibility. Mr.Bennet’s mistake was to publish anything the reptile Tom Cotton wrote. You play with fascists, you’re going to get burned.
Powerful commentary on Hunter Biden, Steve. I just wish these a-holes would back off the man, but that is wishful thinking. They should instead train their fire on the spawn of TFG who got trademarks from China and billions in investments from the Saudis - while working in the White House! Funny thing, when Dems were in control of the house, they didn't launch investigations into that stuff, they were too busy doing work for the American people, who elected them to do so. These repigs have the second most ineffective congress in history. A real accomplishment to be proud of, for sure!
There are no words that can define where we are, but you certainly have a way with them. One of your best!
Thank you, Gregory!
Steve
Most Welcome! Truly, trying times ahead. Your words, wisdom, insight, will be needed more than ever as we move forward through the minefield/s we've created for ourselves.
I agree with you and have seen the degradation for some time now. But this gave me the kick in the pants I needed
NYTimes.com <ordercs@nytimes.com- You've canceled your subscription
a comment on the op ed caught my attention. I an trying to figure out what it means.
Free speech not altered or edited speech. Orwell's dystopian vision becoming the norm at the conflicted and confused New York Times.
It is good, mighty good, to see growing commentary on the media. Long, long overdue. And of the NYT, the gaudiest, most painted, most demanding whore on the corner, especially poignant. But final focus, complete resolution is kept askew by maintaining refraining from the use of a single word--corporation. The collective media for years obliged the corporate collective by not using the identifying word corporation, using instead the word lobbyist. True, most of those credibly hip, credibly informed knew that lobbyists were huckster fronts for corporations, but those of a much larger group, those referred to as Boobus Americanus by Mencken, went reliably uninformed. Not a hundred percent, but get what you can. To use the word corporation with any perjorative nuance invites immediate, reflexsive, collective response. Corporatism, like capitalism, allows for zero criticism. Only criticism of religion in America approximates the total deference expected. Mere mention of anything negative about corporations is met with "communist.". There is no room, no ground between. Point is, medias in America are all corporations. At the end of day, they go to the same country club. Good arguments have been made that corporations by structure and function are fascist, both by topdown, absolutist control and adamantly controlled compliance. Got their own legal force, their own armed security force. Better arguments can be made by pointing out that corporations, as with our radioactive billionaires, are America's oligarchs. The uncontrolled, unjustified current fleecing at your grocery store reflects the stage at which this tumor grows unchecked.
It seems to me that denigrating Fox, a worthy vocation, simply requires that you pull 1000 clean examples to support your arguments about their misleading, corrupt offerings in the name of news, from the roughly 100,000 or more available, polish them up and write your piece. On the other hand we are ready to tar and feather the New York Times on the basis of ONE mis-step, probably and childishly encouraged by the fact that Tom Cotton is a well-educated idiot, champion of conspiracies and a Hall of Fame liar. No doubt, in a perfect world, Tom would have had his oped unbesmerched, but knowing who he is and the nonsense he typically spews, folks acted badly. On the other hand he was promoting a solution that the Constitution rejects, even though the constitution is supposed to be his guide, or so his oath of office would suggest. Sure, presenting counter-arguments is a noble thing to do but who authored the argument? Do you offer up column inches to DJT just because he has a new mislead or threat or salacious insult of a respected figure? I don't think so. If the Times is a boil ready to be lanced, why just this ONE objection? If they are so corrupt, where is the list? Strikes me that we are in danger of serious blood pressure problems. Not for me. I am relaxing with my copy of the NYT, still worthy after all these years.
I wish you were right that they only erred once, but since NY Times’ share of responsibility in taking down Burmese democracy movement with sensationalized but with no real foundation on accusations that the Burmese democrats were racist demagogues who were against the Muslim Rohingyas. While the cruel acts were perpetrated by the junta who are now using Russian scorched earth campaign against the hill tribe rebels about which will never headline NY Times. Daily their peaceful native villages, which are the ideal paradise with loving people are bombed with Russian missiles. Burma had a small window of opportunity to rise up to a democratic utopia when Aung San Suu Kyi came to America. But using Kremlin’s play book, on the same day she was collecting Nobel Peace prize they attacked a Muslim man pulling him out of a bus and spread rumors that he raped a village girl. After that, riots and arson spread while ASSK was collecting prizes and praise during her trip. But the most interesting thing was how Russian KGBs found the weak point and created a huge chasm out of it. It began a year or so prior when a beautiful and educated daughter of a Burmese Muslim political leader was invited and then gave an enviable speech at the British parliament. Burmese Muslims had the advantage at that point of being English educated compared to an average Burmese. They jumped on the signs of jealousy and found the toxic anti Muslim sentiment pretty similar to Anti immigrant trend in America. And mixed it with the western antiterrorism campaign against the Jihadist. The most important reason Burmese were unable to rebuff that was because the nomenclature Rohingyas was never been used in Burma before. And ASSK was married to a foreigner and she could not afford to back unknown foreign sounding migrants from outside. And by the way I even translated for NY Times for such a story once.
Hi May I'm afraid what I don't know exceeds by many times what I do. I am sorry to hear of what you report and I know my comment was somewhat glib, the worse for there being so much I do not know and the worse for bringing the sting of this story to the front of your mind again. It is unfortunate that a respected journal can make mistakes that have such harsh consequences. Bob
That Burmese experience also makes me wary of the border policy argument the Republicans aka Putin’s surrogates are playing up in Washington DC. I also used to live by NY Times until confronted with the shallowness of their news business model. We are learning as we live now too, as US, Ukraine and Israel are under constant information assaults from Moscow daily. Here is a great take on how to navigate in this new age of information war. https://youtu.be/A41DncEyi0s?si=zy6hLW_NRdv59XE5
Point taken. Another objection: Maggie Haberman.
Hi Tanya I'll see your Maggie Haberman raise you Mara Gay.
Why Mara Gay?
Hi Hugh She combines great intellect, an open mind and compassion. She appears quite frequently on MSNBC where she demonstrates these qualities consistently. Bob
Oh, I thought you were equating her with Haberman. All good:)
I really like Mara Gay too
Listen. If I wasn’t 50 years too old and very happily married, had a Harvard PhD, was a Heisman Trophy winner, had a couple mil in my savings account, looked like Cary Grant, maybe a Nobel here or there, an electric car and lived in NYC and if she wasn’t married, probably with kids and fifteen worthies on the sidelines thinking “I wish it were me”, I’d probably ask her for a date. Bob
...and she is on the NYT editorial board.
Exposing the Root Cause of Trumpism
Steve, your youtube videos are Gold! Thank you, again, for speaking about addiction and recovery. Some people fight battles others know nothing about. I'm proud of Hunter Biden for speaking Truth, for stepping into his power, and I'm proud of you, too! Keep up this powerful work! Best, Lisa
Steve has become a real independent voice to help digest the noises all around.
So have you, May, thank you, Schmidt and others for your devotion to Democracy!