Why I Don’t Read The New York Times
Relax. I am not going to tell you all the reasons I don’t read our former paper of record. I am not even going to mention its appalling subservience to political correctness or the dumbed-down sewer that is its cultural coverage. (Can a sewer be “dumbed-down”? Read the Times before answering.) Nor will I go on about what’s happened to the book review under its current editor. Let’s move on, as Hillary Clinton used to say when she wanted to put something unpleasant behind her. Let’s talk about facts.
“The Times is still a great paper.” You’ve heard that, right? The paper may be rushing towards bankruptcy but it still commands formidable resources. When they set out to cover a story, they can “flood the zone” with reporters and researchers and really dig deep and get things right.
Or can they?
Consider this correction:
Instead of being arrested , as we stated, for kicking his wife down a flight of stairs and hurling a lighted kerosene lamp after her, the Revd. James P. Wellman died unmarried four years ago.
Actually, I’m not sure that is from the Times. All we know is that it is from “an American newspaper,” quoted by Edward Burne-Jones in a letter and reproduced in that literary treasure trove Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks.
It’s funny, right? But what if you were the Revd. Wellman? And what, more to the point, what if you were the students named in a recent article in the Times about “the effect of social media use on the bar scene in several college towns.” The article in question is the usual emetic Times piece, instinct with a scolding, know-it-all tone and oozing social concern. What’s noteworthy, however, is not the piece but the correction that follows:
Editors’ Note: September 28, 2012
An article on Thursday described the effect of social media use on the bar scene in several college towns, including the area around Cornell. After the article was published, questions were raised by the blog IvyGate about the identities of six Cornell students quoted in the article or shown in an accompanying photo.
None of the names [None!] provided by those students to a reporter and photographer for The Times — Michelle Guida, Vanessa Gilen, Tracy O’Hara, John Montana, David Lieberman and Ben Johnson — match listings in the Cornell student directory, and The Times has not subsequently been able to contact anyone by those names.
But here is my favorite bit: “The Times should have worked to verify the students’ identities independently before quoting or picturing them for the article.”
Really? Do you think so?
Pathetic, what? (H/t Instapundit.)
At least they ran the correction. Won’t see anything like that about Romney’s “lies”. That’s their narrative, and they’re sticking to it.
As a businessperson it always shocks me to see (with the full flowering of their financial illiteracy) how these smart reporters and editors cover their own insolvency.
Here we have the Times selling its own building to a Mexican in order to make payroll. There we have the WashPost down 20% year-over-year in display advertising. Can you imagine how this would be reported if it happened to a real business? These are very steep going-out-of-business curves.
If a publication won’t report on itself, accurately, it’s reason #139 not to attend to their reporting on politicians or public figures that they (socially) disdain.
Maybe the inflection point is being achieved now with the Times unionists doing their sympathy walkout. Cognitive dissonance can only take you so far. “Unions for thee, but not for me” would seem to rattle even the liberal/prog cage.
When your resident “conservative” is David Brooks, you’ve gone over to Pravdaland. Safire and Baker must be rolling over in their graves.
If you’re referring to Russell Baker, he’s still around and occasionally writes superb essays for the New York Review of Books.
Speaking of lies, falsehoods, incompetence and narcissism, Paul Krugman writes for the New York Times.
I completely agree with you about Paul Krugman. What a shameless sycophant and LIAR the guy is. Some people will do anything for money
All the news that fits their narrative.
You have failed to understand New York Times logic
If the Rev James P Wellman had not died but married, he would certainly have kicked his wife downstairs and hurled a kerosene lamp after her. But it cannot have been in the New York Times – that organ would never have corrected a piece of mendacious news. Remember Stalin’s Walter Duranty – they still have not taken his Pulitzer prize away
Ponderous, self-regarding, ignorant and myopic, with that middlebrow, half-educated conviction that any other point of view is not just wrong, but illegitimate and discreditable.
The vices of the “quality” press writ large in that risible, worthless rag, the New York Times.
“The Times is still a great paper.”
When someobody says something like that qualified with the word “still”, the implication is that there is good reason to think the opposite is true. And that implication is likely correct.