Why the New York Times Gets Everything Wrong: It’s the Left-Wing Bias
The wonderful parody in Slate today, “The New York Times: The Final Edition,” got me to thinking about the “paper of record” once again. The parody deftly captures its irrelevance, the pomposity of its reporters’ stories, the grandiosity of its op-ed writers, and what undoubtedly the paper would be like were they running their very last edition!
If William McGowan has to write a new chapter for the paper edition of his book Gray Lady Down, he won’t have one bit of trouble coming up with lots of new material. As the paper steadily moves downhill, its editors and writers keep coming up with new material, which they will be handing to him on a silver platter.
There’s no secret anymore as to why the paper has become worse than it ever was. The editors and writers are on the political left; and they are pompous enough to think that since everyone they know thinks the same way, what they are writing is objective. This is not to say that its bias is a relatively new thing. It’s just that in the paper’s heyday, you could find relatively straightforward top-notch reporting. But even then, on certain issues, there was very little difference between the editorial side and that of the reporters.
There are two main examples of this. First, of course, is Walter Duranty, whose falsehoods on the Soviet famine in the Ukraine got him the paper’s very first Pulitzer Prize. The second is the reporting on Castro and the Cuban Revolution by Herbert Matthews. New Yorkers remember the billboard ads taken by National Review of the magazine’s famous cover of Castro with the heading, “I got my job through the New York Times.” As his biographer wrote in his book The Man Who Invented Fidel, the paper let Matthews both report and write editorials on the subject of his reporting, without even the pretense of a separation between the two departments of the paper. (You can find my review of the book here.)
The past week, there have been more than a few good examples of how the paper’s bias appears. The first is in an amazing dispatch in the new issue of The Weekly Standard, in which the editors point out that “if you get your news only from the New York Times, the self-styled newspaper of record, you would have read on Wednesday that information from enhanced interrogations played only a ‘small role at most’ in finding bin Laden.”
As they explain:
The Times is heavily invested in this storyline, having claimed repeatedly over the years that such interrogations are ineffective. Never mind that the CIA’s own declassified assessment of the interrogations demonstrates the opposite: Some 70 percent of what the U.S. intelligence community knows about al Qaeda came from detainees subject to enhanced interrogation, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad willingly gave “terrorist tutorials” to his interrogators after he was broken.
The editors also point out that the two reporters for the NYT story were Scott Shane, whose articles “would fit comfortably in the pages of The Nation,” and Charlie Savage, author of a comfortably left-wing book about national security issues. The editors write:
The authors pitted Bush administration officials against “human rights advocates” and former intelligence officials. They quoted Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative. Carle did not speak directly to the piece of intelligence that set the CIA on the trail to bin Laden, but he did share his opinion that coercive techniques “didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information.” Such procedures, he added, were “un-American.” The next day, Carle continued his campaign against enhanced interrogation on a conference call conducted by the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress.
What the Times story does not point out are the contrary assessments of both former CIA director Mike Hayden and Leon Panetta. Panetta “confirmed that intelligence obtained through enhanced interrogations helped the agency find bin Laden.” This means that our president won his victory partially on the basis of information gathered by the Bush administration through “enhanced interrogation techniques,” obviously including waterboarding. The Standard editors conclude: “The Times, however, did not find this news fit to print. They ignored it.”
That, sadly, is becoming par for course at the once-admired newspaper.
The Times has followed a procedure of deciding on the preferred conclusion before writing the story for many years now. Then it slants the coverage and trims its reportage of observable facts to fit that conclusion. The more blatant this becomes, the less influence the “paper of record” will exert over American public opinion.
At this point it seems appropriate to ring in another, well known case of this procedure:
The times specialize in embellishment of Leftist horrors around the world…very similar to W. Duranty results of terrible famine by the communist in Ukraine. After years of combat, Sidney Schanberg (Pulitzer 1976) wrote in The New York Times the departure of the Americans and the coming regime change, writing about the Cambodians that “it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.” Far from the real situation.
The Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975 and killed approximately two million people. A dispatch he wrote on April 13, 1975, written from Phnom Penh, ran with the headline “Indochina without Americans: for most, a better life.”
Like to call now as Arab Spring…the next disaster the Left is building.
All the news THAT FITS, we print…
If not, we make it up.
Or “All that news that fits our narrative gets printed ….”
“All the news that fits our views”
…or “All the News That’s Sh*t to Print”. (Especially as the Editors realized that WaPO was starting to move to the left of the NYT.)
There was a lot of liberal flapdoodle in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties about the convergence of the social-economic systems of the US and USSR. Instead there has been an odd convergence of the liberals, the socialists and the communist remnants in the West. Even Castro has mastered American liberal-gabble when it suits him. Nationalization of industry is little spoken of anymore. Homosexuality is no longer a product of bourgeois degeneracy. The vanguard is no longer the proletariat, it is composed of the radical rich, bureaucrats and dependents on government. All united by a common hostility to freedom.
It’s less that the Times tells progressives “what to think”, than that it simply never tells them anything they don’t want to hear.
In the hothouse culture of the left, the “message” is very restricted, and groupthink reigns supreme. “Right-thinking people” are less concerned with getting at the facts than they are with not saying, or even thinking, anything which is in any way different than their associates. To do so is considered offensive.
This is much like the similar phenomenon often observed in fundamentalist religious groups of any stripe. They have a “true belief”, and pointing out things which conflict with it in the real world is seen as not merely incorrect, but blasphemous. The irony here is that the group in question for the most part eschews religion, believing themselves too “enlightened” to indulge in what they regard as “superstition”.
Well, they’re wrong. They have simply substituted their own mystical belief system for the ones they despise.
The Times is a perfect example of this on all counts. If someone is capable of thinking, or saying, anything which conflicts with the orthodoxy, the simply won’t get hired to begin with. Thus the orthodoxy remains pristine.
Don’t expect this to change any time soon. In 1922, the Times printed a scathing editorial on Dr. Robert Goddard’s early liquid-fuel rocket work, in which they seized on one line in his Smithsonian pamphlet, “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes” relating to sending an unmanned probe to the Moon, and excoriated him for his ignorance of science because “everybody” knew that rockets couldn’t work in space because there was nothing for them to “push against”. (No, they did not understand Newton’s Laws, especially not the third one.) They also said that Dr. Goddard “lacked the scientific knowledge ladled out every day in our public schools”.
They did finally retract the statement. On 21 July 1969, the day after Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed in the Sea of Tranquility. Saying, “we seem to have been in error”.
If it takes them that long to figure out that they don’t understand gross physics, don’t expect them to ever comprehend how wrong they are about everything else.
clear ether
eon
As a longtime liberal, I used to read the Times from cover to cover (and do the crossword puzzle in pen, back when Gene Maleska was editor).
Nowadays, I just do the dumbed down crossword puzzle (on Monday and Tuesday, all you need to finish it up are either the “down” or the “across” clues) and look at the ladies’ undie adds. I SWEAR I don’t read the articles. I have my blood pressure to consider.
The three greatest lies in history (all of it) are as follows:
Number Three: Torture is ineffective.
Number Two: Wars never solve anything.
Number One: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
(“The check’s in the mail,” is ‘way down the list.)
But I did not conclude this from the editorial pages of the New York Times. (Or from my interval at Columbia, where I got my MA in History).
P.S., Those on the left will inevitably aver that, “Torture works,” translates directly as, “I approve of torture,” won’t they, the poor dears.
‘Those on the left will inevitably aver that, “Torture works,” translates directly as, “I approve of torture”….’
Who would presume to know what the right really believes? We just sit back and enjoy the show. This from today’s Slate:
“More Than Half of GOP Voters Still Doubt Obama Born in U.S.”
http://www.thepowerhour.com/news4/obama_kenyan_birth_certificate.htm
maybe this is why they are still saying that. Do I believe this? Honestly it looks just as good and valid as the one the White House released. My son has a masters in graphic design and it is dumbfounding what they can do with programs, a good printer, and the right paper. I am in no way saying that I am a birther, only that this link was sent to me recently and I find it interesting–less so if you can tell me what’s wrong with it.
I’ve always believed he was born in America. But I also KNOW he is not a Natural Born Citizen, since he has a parent who was a British Subject.
Big difference, you know….
Had he produced mroe compelling proof from the beginning, then this 50% number (doubtful that it is true by the way) would be much much lower and about the same as Democrats. What was that all about anyway? Near as I can tell it was the equivalent of a stopped motorist refusing to produce a drivers license simply because he/she is a minority and therefore has a “right” to question the cop’s motives for asking. That attitude is getting so tiresome and obnoxious.
http://www.thepowerhour.com/news4/obama_kenyan_birth_certificate.htm
maybe this is why they are still saying that. Do I believe this? Honestly it looks just as good and valid as the one the White House released. My son has a masters in graphic design and it is dumbfounding what they can do with programs, a good printer, and the right paper. I am in no way saying that I am a birther, only that this link was sent to me recently and I find it interesting–less so if you can tell me what’s wrong with it.
Yeah, if that were true, the U.S. must be one of the most generous nations on Earth, as the poor have not yet starved to death on the streets.
The horrible left-wing slant of the New York Times is becoming more and more obvious as the months go by, which is why they are losing readers at an alarming rate (at least for them, anyway). I’m really not sure why we even still have paper newspapers given the Internet, with most people getting their news there now. But it’s the arrogance that gets me about the New York Times. Remember how they screamed against our involvement in the war in Iraq, saying that it’s “A war of choice,” and that it’s taking our eyes off of the real war that’s in Afghanistan? Remember those days? And their pet son, Obama, used to parrot the exact same words. Now we are knee deep in another war of choice, Libya, which also seems to have no end in sight. Where is the outrage from the Times? Where is their self-righteous indignation at a president NOT getting the full approval from Congress to fight this new war? And where are all the demands for “exit strategies,” like the ones we were forced to listen to when we went into Iraq? Where did all that go?
It just shows you what a bunch of hypocritical political hacks the New York Times has become. The funny thing is, nobody seems to dispute it anymore. As for it being the “Newspaper of record,” I think that title died years ago, when people actually started getting their news from the Internet. The Times may survive in part on the Internet (liberals always need a home to go to), but the paper version will fold soon, perhaps in a year or two. They can’t keep losing money at this rate for much longer.
Speaking of “slant”, when is your “History of Western Civilization” coming out where the footnotes are all “Sheer arrogance/Ibid”?
If you’ve been reading this site at all, its pretty much been posted already….footnotes and all.
The question is, Mr. May, when will YOU ever post something accurate, interesting or meaningful.
A hot-house liberal, AND a rock thrower?
Wow..thats impressive.
Really.
Apologies for the harshness James, I confused your comments with someone else, who is a troll, and let fly without realizing (seeing)it was you.
Mea Culpa, Responsa Arroganto
(I just made that up, but it sounds fancy)
So really, what WAS inaccurate in “The Ships” assessment of the Times?
You know, Mr. May, for some reason you’ve decided to pick a fight with a person who simply comments on the principle posts that are put up on this web site. I really don’t know what animal has infiltrated your behind, but, hey, if you want a fight, have at it, boy. The day I stand down from the insults of a turd like you is the day I stop writing. If far-left trolls like you think you can silence debate simply by insulting people, you are horribly wrong.
Not only did your assault make no sense, it’s stupid, too. And when talking about “sheer arrogance,” why don’t you take a good, hard, look in the mirror, chum. All of your endless, unsubstantiated, rants are nothing but a supreme display of YOUR arrogance. Who died and made you king of opinions? You are a sick little toad that has nothing better to do in life than to insult people. Well, son, go back under that little rock you call home. Crazy people like you belong there, away from thinking people.
I’ll be as clear as I can which in your case is really not clear enough since there must be different Libertyship46s on different threads which you don’t read although none of them can parse English.
Your idea that every opinion is equal is not so. That’s the cultural relativism people like you bitch about so much.
The idea that people an ocean and a sea away from Tahrir Square can see things better than people actually in Tahrir Square is what is arrogant and that is much worse when they run around telling everyone what they “predicted” while unable to say what it is they predicted.
To me, that is the very definition of arrogance and they are begging to be taken down. When I ask for sourcing or proof or show them wrong with links, all I get back is sidling to one side, or non-answers – no rebuttal, no facts, no reasoning, no logic.
Okay, fine. Then you can take satirical needling instead. When people relegate facts to “obsure minutiae” and you support that view then you can take it and like it.
The idea that actually all people are some kind of experts on pretty much everything is as I have stated, it’s like dissecting a frog with one’s eyes.
Thus your non-existant footnotes, links, sourcing, logic, and reason are really just sheer arrogance coupled with personal chife passed off as some kind of reporting and prediction and some kind of innate genius that finds facts annoying which is no surprise since they are so rarely at your disposal.
Any one who’s read my posts knows I contribute thoughts that are based on personal knowledge and not the classic keyboardist in a bathyscape scenario. Everyone is entitled to an opinion but they are not entitled to equal respect. Make inflamatory and self-serving comments that are demonstrably false and don’t be surprised when you’re called out.
If someone says no one was arrested and almost 200 people are arrested and I link to it then they are wrong. Supporting that view where no one ever admits they are wrong and they are just making stuff up based on ego will tend to draw negative responses – especially when I am being asked to hold to a standard I already do hold to and you and your chums are not.
You seem to prefer polite lies to tough truths. Tough. The things I say are not unsubstantiated but the opposite. The fact that you say I am far left is a complete vindication of your skewed views of the most obvious things and also a clear indication that you have a reading problem.
I’m selling the fact that you are quite insane. You said a few fun things, like “Your idea that every opinion is equal is not so.” Yes, I’m sure YOU are the only person in the world who judges which opinions are valid or not. I don’t know whether to laugh at that kind of egotistical and paranoid behavior, or just run and find a doctor for you.
Then you had this little “gem,” where you said, “The idea that actually all people are some kind of experts on pretty much everything is as I have stated, it’s like dissecting a frog with one’s eyes.” Yes, and of course you are the only “expert” out there who should be allowed to have an opinion, right Jimmy? Talk about ego and arrogance. Jimmy, your “opinion,” for what it is (and it isn’t much), is no better or worse than anybody else’s. You seem to have this strange view of the world where only YOUR opinion counts. Newsflash to you, Jimmy, you’re an annoying boil on the butt of the world and people here see you as such.
You go on to babble, “Any one who’s read my posts knows I contribute thoughts that are based on personal knowledge and not the classic keyboardist in a bathyscape scenario.” So I guess YOUR “personal knowledge” is worth much, much, more than anyone else’s personal knowledge, right? Have you seen a psychiatrist lately? Anybody with that much egotistical baggage really needs some help.
But you DID say, “Everyone is entitled to an opinion but they are not entitled to equal respect.” Now that’s the first true thing you’ve said. You have an opinion and I have precious little respect for you, so you must be right!
You also went on to say, “Make inflamatory and self-serving comments that are demonstrably false and don’t be surprised when you’re called out.” Another good point, Jimmy. You are always making inflamitory and self-serving comments, so here I am calling you out on them. Good boy. That’s a good little boy.
And finally, how could I resist this one, “You seem to prefer polite lies to tough truths. Tough.” The most polite I can be is to suggest that you seek medical help. The toughest I can be is that you’re a silly little far-left loon sitting in some basement in his mother’s house screaming against the world because it doesn’t “understand” his genius and massive “intellect.” Well, son, you’re nothing but a bully and a troll, the two things I loath, despise, and detest in a human being. The only reason I took the time to say all of this is to put you on notice that people around here have had enough of you. So go away to the DailyKos and annoy some of the people over there. You’ll find a home there and you will be with your own kind, among the useful idiots of the world.
“The idea that people an ocean and a sea away from Tahrir Square can see things better than people actually in Tahrir Square is what is arrogant and that is much worse when they run around telling everyone what they “predicted” while unable to say what it is they predicted.”
Mr. May, do note that educations in Egypt, particularly history and classic liberal philosophy, have not improved over the decades since the country was liberated from colonial powers. I think even you would agree that sometimes an outside perspective is key to understanding what is going on. We see religious zealots pushing for revolution and power in Egypt. Do the people who live in this society see that? We see things from a secular perspective that doesn’t give religious credence to authorities. We see their actions, and do not hear as much of what they say.
I think it is entirely possible that someone standing in Tahrir square can not see the forest for the trees. If you haven’t experienced a situation like this in your lifetime you must have lived a very sheltered existence.
Making stuff up completely out of your head is not an opinion. An opinion I respect since it is usually based on at least some info.
Then, to make it worse, people like you make stuff up that has no basis in reality whatsoever, pass it off as an opinion and accompany it with remarks like “anyone could have seen this coming”. It’s almost rises to the level of abuse and the tone of arrogance which is meant to be a substitute for any kind of sourcing is laughable.
I called you out for what you are and you don’t like it. That’s not my opinion but an actual fact. Guess which is more important in your world since you cling to nonsense by now saying clicking on a button is chasing something all over the web.
And your buddy you support has also been called out for making more unfounded and completely false charges and simply disappeared when challenged because he too simply makes stuff up and then gets all surly when challenged as if the problem is me and I am then a know it all and self-important and the whole ball of wax that usually accompanies stubborn kids not allowed to have their way unchallenged. Projecting your exact problems onto me and others is not something that looks anything like truth but just a daycare center in a dark alley.
You know as well as I do that what I threatened you with is merely the same house cleaning I just did. Propaganda has no place here nor do people who can’t simply admit they went off half-cocked. It’s not an American trait nor one I admire. Obviously Pravda is your preferred default mode.
As for Mr. Gork the Robot, once more there is the moral and preaching smugness a keyboard combined with sheer intellect actually enshrining in words that he can see things better from 5,000 miles away than someone on the ground and passing it off as the wise forest for the trees mantra.
As for my “sheltered existence”, I have eaten many rounds of tear gas near Tahrir Square and risked my life to photograph the uprising, taking photos 3 blocks away and at the same time another journalist was shot and killed for taking a photo. That’s my shelter and my trees.
As for the clash in Imbaba, I am only a few miles from there right now. Go take you superior intellect which trump experience and actual knowledge and try and run it by your dog or some kid – it isn’t flying here and your dog don’t hunt.
“I’m sure YOU are the only person in the world who judges which opinions are valid or not.”
No, I’m not. I’m talking about an idea centered around “sourcing”. It is an idea neither radical or complex.
You may have noticed it in the articles you make boastful unsourced comments on. You defend your comments with not reason, but with sheer self-confidence and straw man nonsense or say I’m a Lefty which is somehow like scoring a touchdown. The truth of your comments just exist and are true.
I can see the footnotes (radical idea No.2) in a history book you write.
Page 28: Unsourced because one can prove anything on the internet.
Page 69: Ibid
Page 78: My own sheer intellect which has been well documented by me.
Page 89: My willpower combined with my well known inner strength.
Page 101: I’ve been around.
Page 110: I once willed a bird to fall out of the sky; draw your own conclusions.
Page 139: Ibid
Page 159: Ibid
Page 229: Forest/Trees (see: Plato or Aristotle or someone like that)
Man, I gotta tell ya – you guys are a frickin’ hoot.
The whole point is moot because I predicted your exact reaction by staring into my reflection in a Zippo lighter on the heavy cruiser “Montpelier” when I bunked with Jimmy Durante during WW II.
You request….
“…sourcing from a main stream respected source ”
for any/all of my “statements” that you disagree with, upon request?
Do you have any idea how impossible that is?
Take this as just the tip of the iceberg in my “provide a SPECIFIC source” dilema:
My father fought in WW2, my GRANDfather in WW1.
THEIR fathers and grandfathers go back to French and Indian War in North America.
I’ve had thousands of hours of conversations with them, from childhood to adult life, about those wars. And history in general. And politics. And how they see America, good and bad. And what they, as veterans, fathers, and Americans, thought of all the Newspaper Current Events that occurred during my shared lifetime with them….
The Bay of Pigs, the Middle East, ’68 & 72, Assasinations, moon landings, Vietnam, Berlin Wall, communism, war, death, religion, taxes, work, property rights, role of government, responsibility, freedom, obligations etc etc.
Add to that “library” of information and experiences, my OWN lifetime of reading, schooling, and my OWN experiences in the military, living in different countries in the Military and in the private sector…Firearms training, Law Enforcement, business ownership, home ownership, mortgages, debt, finance, credit and banking experiences, fatherhood, leadership, partnerships, death, taxes etc etc.. All these things TOGETHER create the overall perspective I bring to a conversation about related topics.
THIS is where I get my “opinions” from.
It doesnt make me better than you, it just “is”…
Its who I am, what I’ve learned in life, and why my beliefs are what they are.
But realize, I will never have a “source”, by page number, internet link, author or article, available for you to corroborate them.
I simply would not know where to even begin looking.
I left a linked, sourced and quoted present for you on the Rubin thread and believe me you ARE standing down.
Don’t forget to wipe and don’t ever challenge me again on things I know the truth of and can show with multiple sourcing.
You don’t like my attitude or reality itself – typical political correctness calling the pot far left.
So, again: what are you selling?
Hey Jimmy, I’m not chasing you all over a web site. Your opinion just isn’t THAT important. In fact, I rank your opinions somewhere between garbage and road kill. But, hey, here I am still calling you insane, which is what your comments are.
But you did say, “Don’t ever challenge me again on things I know the truth of and can show with multiple sourcing.” Don’t EVER challenge you? Are you threatening me, you far-left turd? And only YOU “know the truth?” Are you acatually listening to the insane things you’re saying, or do you only listen to that dark voice in the back of your worn and fetid mind that says that only YOUR opinions matter.
Don’t threaten me, son. I’ll be your worst nightmare on this blog. Count on it. Go back to playing in your sandbox, mamma’s boy.
James. I will ask again: Are you bipolar or suffer from differentiated personalities? Either that or you have too way much time on your hands. Sitting day after day looking for an opportunity to spout off with your drivel that for the most part seems cogent but upon closer examination is just that, drivel. Cliched and a patch work of lefty talking points.
I do hope MM or CAP pays you well.
Don’t disagree with this this one. He’ll start himself on fire. For attention.
Check this out.
James May
Oh my, did the wrong president kill the bads man snookums and rub some feathers? There, there, little man. Don’t think about it and it’ll all go away and maybe mommy will give you a nice sucker and backpack with George Bush’s face on it and a George Bush teddy bear you can hug ever so tight and maybe some George Bush pajamas and Chewbacca slippers and an Obama bobble head doll you can pour your Juicy Juice on to grow chia hair and maybe a nice healthy hair Barbie lunch box and Johnny Quest cotton briefs with matching stretch socks and a little Republican elephant bank to put your school vouchers in and Count Chocula/Obama vampire jelly bean counter and a Harmon Killebrew glo-in-the-dark nautical clock and a Harry Potter notebook with Hermione Granger in a little school girl outfit with pigtails on the cover casting a wizard’s spell on a tree with a face with big droopy lips that chocolate gold coins fall out of like a Las Vegas “Happy Days” slot machine.
May 9, 2011 – 8:06 pm
James,
You are Bi-polar, schizophrenic, or someone else is posting with your name here. I’ve read many coherent and thoughtful comments here from “you”, as well as alot of absolute nonesence…I get confused sometimes about who “you” are….the smart, detailed thoughtful one thats spot-on, or the rediculous Lefty Troll with the stupid, meaningless comments.
Its difficult to believe same singular mind can(sanely) hold the contradictory political/social/historical opinions I read as “James May”
Hense my apology earlier, I had “you” momentarily confused with the likes of Proreason or CFbleachers.
I simply have no idea who you are, or what your “stance” is…on anything anymore.
As for your demands we post links providing proof, evidence and the like to support our arguments, its nonesense. A red Herring. The internet is almost infinite. I can find “proof” of anything if I look enough. “Proof’ GWB personally flew the planes on 9/11 is available, as well as “proof” Sadam is still alive. Its tiresome and difficult, not at all worth the effort to “Link to” any “proof” when the exact polar opposite will be “counter-attached” 10 seconds later.
Keep in mind, many of us here are older guys who are not as tech savy as the young’en with instant attachements, links and the like.
But what we do have are DECADES OF LIFE EXPERIENCES IN WARS AND NEAR WARS, and we have read millions of PAPER PAGES IN BOOKS on History, civilizations, politics and war….A lifetime of reading Memoirs, Diaries and various accounts of world events in (and before) our lifetimes.
In many cases, we have the advantage of LIVING THROUGH THESE EVENTS, and reading about them a generation later. The personal, up close experience, and the wide angle historical narrative often TOGETHER form a perspective and opinion. We say, with as much detail as possible, WHY we have the opinions we do, and sometimes call them ‘Truths”. It is simply not Impossible to “link” to any ONE particular electronic internet source confirming it, and say “look, there it is”.
We rely on the reader to have a reasonable amount of knowledge of the subject, honesty, fairness, and logic to make reasonable counterpoints. Demanding we PROVE the sky ISNT green is not a valid argument.
Imagine the following:
T.J.: We hold these truths to be self evident
J.M.: What truthes? How many? Define “self”, your self or my self? Held Where?
T.J.: That we are endowed by our creator
J.M : Endowed?, Given? Wheres the receipt? Proof please!
Some things are just TRUE and others FALSE.
Some LIKELY and others NOT
Usually, a mere sentence or two to a reasonably HONEST person is enough to distinguish the differences…
But some political systems are BASED on nothing BUT lies.
And lies about the lies
Just Ask Mohammed.
Mr. Root, here’s why I like you humorless demi-gods so much. Listen to this:
“Its difficult to believe same singular mind can(sanely) hold the contradictory political/social/historical opinions I read as ‘James May’ I simply have no idea who you are, or what your ‘stance’ is…on anything anymore.”
It’s called an open mind and without an agenda. Of course it utterly unrecognizable to you. And then there’s this:
“As for your demands we post links providing proof, evidence and the like to support our arguments, its nonesense.”
Why would you think anyone is fooled by deflecting a simple request for sourcing from a main stream respected source with credibility and making it seem like you can actually prove anything cuz of the vast and crazy internet. If you can actually do that then find me a source that’s states no one was arrested in Imbaba.
Do you actually think this stuff out in between trying to defend defenseless boasting and passing it off as opinion? Editorializing is one thing but making definitive statements about well known areas that are simply false and adding stupid comments that anyone could have predicted it is moronic. It becomes doubly so when repeated attempt to actually state what is happening right now that was predicted cannot be answered. You can’t do it – why not just admit instead of coming up with Byzantine arguments?
I like this:
“The personal, up close experience, and the wide angle historical narrative often TOGETHER form a perspective and opinion.”
Well, if they’re so damned informed then lay out an argument. I do it if challenged, can’t you? You can’t.
Hey Blotto, you’re talking about grown men who talk about respecting “LIVING THROUGH THESE EVENTS” and then giving me forest for the trees talk and not respecting a person who is actually “LIVING THROUGH THESE EVENTS” and who can’t source anything cuz they don’t know anything.
They think they can act as if knowing what a “salafi” is immaterial when in fact in you don’t, you can’t talk about Egypt politics, period, and have not right to an opinion that anyone will respect. That’s why they don’t like facts. It why they predict and comment based on sheer intellectualism combined with superior judgment and interior thoughts that are so complex, obvious and self-evident that they need no defending.
Now that’s bi-polar.
They in fact DO dissect frogs with their eyes and know what’s inside just because they put their shoes on in the morning. I admit I haven’t laughed this hard in weeks because they’re as easy to light up as lava in a gasoline can.
“Tough.” “Any one who’s read my posts knows I contribute thoughts…”
Honest? Gee, where’s Carly Simon?
Hmmm. The classic “you people”. Along with multiple posts. And constant yelling.
33. James May
Well, nice to see you people are all going to be voting on the ISSUES.
May 9, 2011 – 6:27 am
Wow, such a Favorite Thing. As if Boy James is immune from all that he preaches.
James May
My favorite thing is when they directly contradict one another in their editorials in the same week.
May 11, 2011 – 8:33 pm
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Like this May Be Something Else?
James May
Any one who’s read my posts knows I contribute thoughts that are based on personal knowledge and not the classic keyboardist in a bathyscape scenario.
May 11, 2011 – 2:39 pm
James May
…mommy will give you a nice sucker and backpack with George Bush’s face on it and a George Bush teddy bear you can hug ever so tight and maybe some George Bush …
May 9, 2011 – 8:06 pm
Boy James screaming Like a May Day. So consistent.
Yeah, words do have meaning. Like, mmm, mmm, mmm!
Certainly.
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things
There was probably no more pernicious news organization outside of the USSR or Red China.
The New York Times is our Pravda. The Washington Post is our Izvestia.
Ans AP is our TASS. Now we owe an apology to the good ole reds for the comparison. Reading Pravda at least made some laugh. Pravda contributed to hygiene by becoming the most popular toilet paper in the USSR, especially in the Gulags. It was also a great way to wrap those eels caught in Moscow’s sewers, and the occasional rat.
Once a man who had been homeless in Paris after the war told me that the warmest thing to cover oneself while sleeping on a park bench was L’Humanité. Yessir those commies know how to serve the masses.
A front page story in the NYT yesterday revisited the Eichmann trial and raised the question about the sincerity of German regret for crimes commmitted under Hitler. From the objective and moral tone of the article no reader would know that at the time, the NYT and its publisher–father of the current publisher–did everything possible to suppress and conceal stories coming out of Europe about what was being done to the Jews even as they were being pushed into gas chambers and their corpses shoveled into ovens.
The Germans have officially apologized for their crimes and paid substantial restitution to individual survivors as well as the Jewish State. The NYT and its (now fashionably Christian) publisher have neither acknowledged nor apologized for their wartime complicity in mass murder and genocide. Moreover, they have done everything in their Power to demonize the Jewish State
The Grey Lady is a syphilitic old whore. Her demise could not come too soon
Indeed, if I can add to Evan Jones “three greatest lies”, the NYT – relying on reporter Bronner and columnist Friedman – proffers yet a fourth lie: that it’s Israel’s fault there’s no peace in the region and that Israel alone must be pressured to make yet more concessions.
Friedman has been most egregious in his campaign, even slamming Israel for not more enthusiastically embracing the changes taking place in the Arab world, especially in Egypt. Yet with Egyptians now calling to modify or abandon its peace treaty with Israel, cutting off gas supplies, and even threatening war with Israel if Israel acts against Gaza, it seems Israel’s concerns were well placed. Friedman has yet to retract his foolishness.
I always found the NYT’s logo a little bit on Der Reichste Tageblatt (sp.?) style. Obviously the liquidation of a few European Jews was not “news fit to print.”
It is unfair to compare it to Pravda. I find a closer resemblance to “The Watchtower” and “Awake.” May be they should consider a merger with those guys in Columbia Heights.
“The Grey Lady is a syphilitic old whore.”
I strenuously object to this unwarranted slur on working women, the elderly, and STD patients.
“……looking small-minded, biased, and stupid.”
That’s what I feel like when I get conned into reading any NYT articles.
They have elevated trash journalism and sensationalism to the lowest form of voyeurism and salacious composition.
No matter how enticing the heading, if it has anything to do with the NYT, I avoid it like a disease, since, they have lost their credibility decades ago.
The employee parking must be completely marked with handicapped parking spaces; Because anybody that works there has a serious limp in their cognitive ability.
Very well written, Ron. Must be miserable having to do research on the NYT for your journalism. I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.
What scares me about this attitude is that it seems to lead to sinking the ship with everybody aboard no matter what. The paper is going down and pure obliviousness reins. Apply this to everything the left supports now.
From the creation and existence of PM (the newspaper David Axelrod’s mom worked for) in the late 1930s through the late 1940s and then the creation and ongoing existence of The Village Voice starting in the mid-1950s, there’s always been a large strain of the journalistic community in New York that truly believed the Times was not liberal enough, and craved a paper with the financial wherewithal and the broad circulation to do true liberal advocacy journalism. But it wasn’t until the arrival of Pinch as the new publisher 20 years ago (at a time when the Republicans had won three straight national elections and frustrations were up on 43rd Street) that they finally got what they wanted, which was a complete dismantling of the separation between the newsroom and the editorial/opinion departments when it came to how the Times would be run.
The dilemma for the paper though is that to he ideologues, the Times can never be liberal enough, and even it’s current style of advocacy journalism is considered too timid. But when Pinch and the others in charge try to placate those demands (which in many cases they are sympathetic towards to begin with) they expose themselves in the Internet age to even more disdain and ridicule, because there are so many readily available alternative sources for information on the stories the Times deems to cover, along with facts the paper deliberately fails to give to their readers.
They’ve pretty much co-opted the ideological position of the Voice in New York with the unapologetic veering of their straight news stories to the left since the Abe Rosenthal years, but in the larger scale of things — such as profits and losses — becoming a reliable outlet for the left’s myriad of special interest groups isn’t much of an achievement. All that remains is to start taking away the ads in the back of the Voice for the massage parlors and the adult escort services while the overall circulation continues to plunge and the transformation of the Paper of Record will be complete.
Cybergeezer:
“…employee parking…”
Funny you should bring up parking in reference to the NYT. Time was, the parking lot for entire fleet of NYT delivery trucks was located on Eleventh Avenue in the West Sixties now occupied by luxury apartment houses erected by Donald Trump.
Trump’s luxury housing on the Hudson River covers fully half a mile of prime riverfront property and may be the biggest residential building project in New York City history. Inevitably, the project which for its height and density blocks air, light and views of the river for thousands was highly controversial. To the great surprise and chagrin of Upper West Siders (the UWS is the most liberal voting district in the nation) the NYT vigorously and enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s project in both its news and editorial pages.
The wide assumption among my UWS neighbors is that the NYT either owned or held long term leases on large portions of Trump’s construction site and profited handsomely from his project.
The “New York” Times is fraudulent even in its masthead. The delivery truck parking lot is gone and the paper of record is currently headquartered in New Jersey.
At a family affair, the city editor of the NYT, a lifelong New Jersey resident,once informed me blithely that he had never set foot in the New York subway. Was it true that reporters wrote their assigned stories in their pajamas then retroactively justified the locales in their datelines by taking public transportation and getting tickets punched to establish evidence of their presence at the news site? I asked. Sure. Done it himself.
Believe nothing you read in the paper of false and distorted record.
I did a little research to find out if Trump was a holder of a chunk of NYT stock or on their Board; Nothing glaringly obvious came up, but I do suspect he has some hand in their company since he is so comprehensive in New York City real estate.
That would explain their deference.
To really illustrate what irresponsible liars they are, they have a policy statement for “Social Responsibility”! As if they ever had any intention of coming close to anything that resembles “Social Responsibility”.
The employees and staff at NYT think they are as immune to prosecution as U.S. Democrat Congress persons.
Check out the reader comment boards on NY Times editorials.
These people live in my city?
Help!
Let’s not be too hard on the NYT. It does have it’s purpose. Personally, I love the smell of hipster doofus snobbery in the morning.
LOL!
Smells like……..victory!
My favorite thing is when they directly contradict one another in their editorials in the same week.
The NYT’s true motto is “All the Slant That Fits.” The Times is really a thought-conditioning system for lefties. It has no intellectual honesty whatsoever, as it has demonstrated time and time again. And that lack of honesty translates into pervasive professional malpractice. If you won’t print the facts because you can’t acknowledge them, then you’re not a “news” medium. The worst thing about it is that so many of the chuckleheads in the rest of the media — TV news, PBS, local newspapers — still take their cues from the “newspaper of record.” This is a major reason why so much of American journalism is so bad.
As long as the NYT continues fabricating the facts, “with a left leaning tone”,
they will remain in the running to be official gov’t news outlet.
Ala Venezuela and its battle for free speech that is factual.
At least they are good communists. They continue to shed those evil capalatilstic profits. Down another 58% last quarter.
I am surprised that anyone besides socialists read The New York Times. The last time I read some of it, I found it next to me in a chair at La Guardia Airport. I had read it frequently in the 1960s, when I was an undergraduate student and didn’t know any better. So I was pleasantly surprised to find its local stories (Man Bites Dog, Shoplifter Hit by Cab, etc) well written. I had supposed even those stories would have succumbed to the NYT socialist storyline (Man Bites Right Wing Dog, Brain-dead Conservative Hit by Cab, etc). But when I turned to politics, I was reassured: The NYT was as bad as it always had been.
So long as ambitous articles as this one are written and read by such a wide audience, the NYT itself is still very much a visible and (unfortunately) a powerful opinion-shaper. We will know the NYT has really and truly expired when the day comes such that during a cocktail conversation someone says, “oh yeah, the NYT went out of business yesterday,” and someone asks, “what is the NYT?”
I hate to quantify the time spent in reading publications over my life time. But it is necessary to learn truth. Truth is rarely obvious and normally is slanted, both by the outright lie, but more often by what is omitted. The NY Times will report an unchaperoned child shot another in a home. Fox will report the same story but add, both were 19, in a crack house, arguing over a drug deal. The omitted facts wholly drive to differing judgments.
After decades of rooting out omitted facts, that universally lead to one specific ideology, the reader looks elsewhere for truth. It is a truth that there is more printed words than anyone can read in a life time, so discernment is necessary. I do not doubt that there is some truth in the NYT, but I gave up on that publication a long time ago.
Now now, you must understand, most of the facts are wrong but they serve a GREATER TRUTH(tm). It is mearly our location in the center and farther right that makes the GREATER TRUTH(tm) to far away to see.
Indeed we are so distant from the Select who see the GREATER TRUTH(tm) that we don’t even speak the same language. Go ahead and read some of the NYT articles. They use the same words that we do but when they string them together they don’t make any sense.
The NYT is in a bind. Only committed lefties read it anymore; most people have figured it out that the rag is a ‘progressive’ propaganda screed. So if the NYT were to for some reason start reporting the truth, the libs would go elsewhere and the paper would fold. Liberalism is faux intellectualism for those who can’t debate policy on merits. In other words, liberalism is a lazy substitute for true intellectual ability. When a person finally decides to think for themselves, they are no longer welcome in libland.
Other than the crossword, the paper is garbage. Don’t use it as fishwrap though, it insults the fish.
When I ever tried to line the bottom of the bird cage, the parrot kept saying “clean up this s++t; Clean up this s++t”!
That can not be the full explanation. After all, even if it exclusively catered to lefties, there are enough of them in the tri-state area to keep them afloat.
There must be a reason why not enough committed lefties are supporting the Times.
I get a kick out of their long running ad campaign on TV with all the snooty looking yuppies talking about the Times. My personal favorites (meaning the ones that piss me off the most) are:
woman asks: How many sections are you fluent in?
man answers: I’m fluent in thre sections actually….Travel, Book Review and Arts.
The topper is the guy who states “The best journalists in the world work for the times and, there’s no debating that.”
I’ll debate you on that ANYTIME. I daresay that you are hard presed to find one actual journalist there. They are all political opinion writers.
The exact reasons that infuriate leftists about Fox News’s motto “Fair and Balanced” are what inflame the ire of so many right wingers like me. Only here it’s the “All the News that’s fit to print” motto that annoys me.
The issue here is that we have a media outlet that feels it is OK to posture as if they’re unbiased, even though anyone can see that they damned well are not. I’m of the opinion that it’s not wrong to print a paper with a liberal bias, as long as one is up-front and honest that it exists.
If the NYT wants to be a mouthpiece for leftist liberal news reporting, why I think that’s fine and dandy. BUT DO NOT PRETEND THAT IT IS UNBIASED. That is what both the left and the right call “lying” –and I don’t like to see it on either side.
What I do not understand is how the New York Times influences public opinion beyond the tri-state area.
I think the New York Times is bad¹ and stupid².
Footnotes:
[1] Me, Pajamas Media, Just Now
[2] Me, Pagamas Media, Just Now
Correction: footnote No.2 in the above comment has a “g” where it should actually have an assault team of crazy ninjas on warehouse palette jacks but dressed up like Julius Caesar.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
NYT Headline: Asteroid that will wipe-out all life on earth impacts tomorrow: poor and minorites hardest hit.
Speaking of Left wing bias, I’ve long suspected that Soros money and tentacles have infiltrated newsrooms across America.
Because Leftoids collectively can’t be as dumb as they appear, they who keep beating (and beating !) the same old stale and stupid drums.
Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?
“All the military secrets we can release” – the better to benefit our enemies.
Great post, I totally agree. If I may deviate off topic and emphasize that despite paying taxes to the federal government and sending our citizens to fight and die in every war, Washingtonians have had no voting representation in Congress and have had to seek approval from people they did not elect on all legislative and budgetary matters. That my freinds is crime against society, and America. Let’s hope it will change soon. Cheers.