August 26, 2002

2:22 PM

What is going on at the New York Times?
More than 100 years ago, the New York Times, under owner Adolph Ochs, adopted the slogan: "All the news that's fit to print". But, critics are now asking if the New York Times only prints news it considers ideologically fit. What has been happening at the Times is far more ominous than just veering to the support of one party or one ideology. There is a type of liberalism, pioneered in America, which tries to be fairer than fair. But trying to be better than fair is like trying to bend over backwards to be straighter than vertical or defining "objective" as being neutral between good and evil. That path leads straight to moral equivalence. Perhaps the slogan should be re-written: "All the Newspeak fit to print".
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood (39 comments total)

usrname: [e-mail]
pass: metafilter
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:25 PM on August 26, 2002

All the NYTimesFilter that's fit to print
posted by matteo at 2:28 PM on August 26, 2002

From today's Tapped (the weblog of The Amer Prospect):

...beating up on The New York Times has come to rival obsessive Clinton-bashing in the conservative psyche. Times bashing, after all, has all the standard characteristics: it's obsessive, it's repetitive, it's quibbling, it's scandal-mongering. Indeed, because the day-in, day-out criticism is frequently so completely out of proportion to the paper's various offenses and betrays such a strong animus, it makes one inevitably sympathize with the Times -- which, despite its inarguable shortcomings, is not exactly evil incarnate. Kind of like Clinton.

posted by goethean at 2:36 PM on August 26, 2002

I can't help noticing the baited syntax of this post, and would like to voice my disapproval for the record.

Thanks very much.
posted by atavistech at 2:37 PM on August 26, 2002

Steve -- slow down a second.

There may be a legitimate point or two buried within this tract, but it is a tract, and your (very long) post is a fairly wide-eyed and exact recapitulation.

There's not much substance here, frankly. Their charges amount to: NYT falsely characterizes Henry Kissinger as a dove; they printed a picture of Palestinian demonstrators when a photo of Israeli demonstrators might have been more appropriate, then apologized; they use incorrect jargon in describing the players in the Middle East (who doesn't?).

The rest of this "think"-piece amounts to generalities of this level of quality:

Because super-liberalism has no reality behind it, the truth has to be distorted.

Aside from being semantically tortured (try to think, very carefully, through that sentence), it's a fairly clear sign that the author is writing from just as ideologically extreme a position as he claims the NYT occupies -- only I assume that he believe the far Right has "reality" on its side.

Then there are the sorts of summaries that only a British reader with a slight understanding of American history would swallow without choking:

By 1972, the paper had reached a position where it could endorse George McGovern in the presidential election. McGovern's platform had such highlights as the distribution of America's wealth to the population by giving $1,000 handouts to every citizen.

Yep, that pretty much summarizes the whole McGovern-Nixon election right there. Who needs to know anything more?

In other words, you might want to save your Orwell cannons for an essay with a bit more substance to it. As it is, it just reads as a right-winger complaining about his "enemies."
posted by argybarg at 2:38 PM on August 26, 2002

perhaps the times has simply decided that the only way to fight the Big Lie is with Bigger Lies. politics business as usual.
posted by quonsar at 2:38 PM on August 26, 2002

(And, for the record, I'll agree that heavily-editorialized posts are the enemy of free and interesting discussions.)
posted by argybarg at 2:39 PM on August 26, 2002

Soo-oo-o, lemme get this straight: a commercial rival's spouse (Barbars Amiel is married to Conrad Black, who owns The Daily Telegraph & has shares in the NY Sun) writes a dirty little attack job from atop her tory charger. This does not a thread make.
Next!
posted by dash_slot- at 2:40 PM on August 26, 2002

Barbara Amiel => Lady Mrs Conrad Black => New York Sun.
posted by riviera at 2:41 PM on August 26, 2002

on a side note, it worries me that alot of posts about america come from english newspapers.

does america worry about the media stranglehold?
posted by triv at 2:45 PM on August 26, 2002

Oh fer chrissake, it's Babs. Next you're going to post the latest Mark Steyn screen and ask us to take it as dry and unopinionated.
posted by mcwetboy at 2:51 PM on August 26, 2002

First off, this is was not posted to bait any one. NYT is a large source of information for many people here at "NYTimesFilter" and I thought that the paper deserved some honest discussion on its bias, because all news sources have them. This is not left vs right, I belive that almost all news has a slant to it. It appears to me that as of late, the Times has gotten quite extreme with it, and I was wondering if any one else has noticed it, especially people from the left. I do hail from the right more than the left, and I have just as much distaste for extremism from the right as the left.

goethean: Just because people who don't like Clinton, don't like the Times, does not mean there is no merit to such claims. That is side stepping the issue.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:54 PM on August 26, 2002

Can we talk about the bias of the Telegraph, which has its own reasons for taking the piss out of the NYT, then? You're not bolstering your argument by citing a columnist well known for her neocon views, and whose arguments do not normally sway those who don't share those views.
posted by mcwetboy at 2:58 PM on August 26, 2002

I get all my New York Times-directed vitriol from the source. Snide, baby! But without the taint of opinion!
posted by UncleFes at 2:59 PM on August 26, 2002

Since when did questioning the governments actions become Newspeak?
posted by Espoo2 at 3:02 PM on August 26, 2002

Wow. The NYT extreme? Please.
posted by mapalm at 3:11 PM on August 26, 2002

Pretty soon everything blamed on Bill Clinton will be blamed on NY Times. Good thing I get all my news FAIR AND BALANCED from Fox News - like a good American. Ari says so.
posted by owillis at 3:22 PM on August 26, 2002

*laughing uncontrollably at owillis*
posted by Wulfgar! at 3:25 PM on August 26, 2002

Wow. The NYT extreme? Please.

*snarling*
Yeah, man, they're a bunch of hippie bomb-throwers...

It's amazing how the simple fact of not being a total foam-at-the-mouth right-winger makes you a Naderite, these days.
They're a conservative paper who'd never dream of questioning some very basic conservative dogmas, but nevertheless they get roasted for things like not wanting to totally bomb/nuke/detain-as-enemy-combatant 1.25 billion Muslims if a less Armageddonish option is available

You know, SteveLinwood, they're not exactly Mother Jones
posted by matteo at 3:26 PM on August 26, 2002

So I see that no one is interested in actually talking about something like adults, but more interested in pithy one-liners.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 3:26 PM on August 26, 2002

Owillis,

yeah man, they report, we decide!!!
posted by matteo at 3:28 PM on August 26, 2002

Fox News gets bashed all the time, and it has hurt their reputation as an unbiased source. Times bashing is working, too, because once you can peg something as conservative or liberal, you can dismiss whatever it says...I know I do that with Fox, so why can't they do it with the Times?

I actually love the Times and only bash them for class reasons--assuming everyone who reads it has a country house and sends their children to private school, etc.
posted by amberglow at 3:32 PM on August 26, 2002

Forget all this complicated journalistic bias stuff, how about an old fashioned grammar flame? Where does the New York Times get off thinking the plural of "DVD" is "DVD's"? There's no apostrophe in plural nouns! Argh!
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/26/technology/26DVD.html
posted by Nelson at 3:40 PM on August 26, 2002

Steve:

Perhaps you missed my enormously long post. Care to re-read?

Perhaps you decided before you began posting that your "enemies" were going to put up unsubstantial arguments -- because any argument that disagrees with your reasoning must be insubstantial, right?

This is not a factual piece, Steve; this is a very thinly researched Op-Ed piece that is overwhelmed with its own fairly routine ideological agenda -- it is, in fact, exactly what it claims the NYT to be. If no one is responding substantially, perhaps it's because the entire debate was framed without substance to begin with?

Give us a coherent, detailed set of charges to debate and you'll find the intelligence here burning white-hot. Give us a screed and your own squared-off opinion, and what do you expect?
posted by argybarg at 3:46 PM on August 26, 2002

Here at NYTimes filter? I thought it was GuardianFilter. Steve, do you have an agenda here mate?
posted by Fat Buddha at 3:59 PM on August 26, 2002

So I see that no one is interested in actually talking about something like adults, but more interested in pithy one-liners.

Steve, you're wasting your time, and our time, trying to get people discuss that which has been discussed ad infinitum, with zero result and no minds changed. The Times holds positions! The Times seeks balance! The Times reflects its city! Big shockers! As someone who reads that paper daily (and many others, from many poltical leanings and several countries), I must say to you: Who cares?
posted by Mo Nickels at 4:19 PM on August 26, 2002

More liberal bias? Puh-leaze. Heaven forbid that anyone would bash the Times on bias for a reason.
posted by ed at 4:19 PM on August 26, 2002

Steve, you're wasting your time, and our time, trying to get people discuss that which has been discussed ad infinitum

On the contrary, I think Steve got exactly what he wanted out of this thread. Nobody would choose such an obviously extreme link or use such reflexively partisan language if they were trying to initiate thoughtful discussion. Picking a fight is more like it.
posted by jjg at 4:59 PM on August 26, 2002

Aw, horseshit.

Who dogged the living daylights out of every gossamer thread of Whitewater, covering it far out of proportion to the alleged crime? The New York freakin Times. Who carried the government's water when it wanted to blame its massive, serial intelligence failures on Wen Ho Lee? The New York Times.

Still, it's the most essential newpaper in America. Like any newspaper that tries to be smart, it will occasionally embarass itself. But I'd much rather see that than the numbing nothing-ventured-nothing-gained offerings of most U.S. papers.
posted by sacre_bleu at 5:26 PM on August 26, 2002

There is probably a good argument to be made along these lines, but the Telegraph blew it. Steve, you also delved into partisan reporter-speak, such as "critics are now asking" (when you're citing one critic, and you're projecting your own views into the editorial voice). It would have been smarter, posting this link, to find more sources, or at least to question the Telegraph's own biases.

I think it all but goes without saying that the NYT has chosen an aggressive stance wrt the administration's Iraq policy-in-formation. It's very true that the Kissinger reclassification was horseshit of a most unappetizing green color. But it's not much to hang an argument on.

So, what argybarg and jjg said.
posted by dhartung at 5:40 PM on August 26, 2002

Maybe the problem isn't that newspapers aren't 'objective', but that the old, multivocal press has been assimilated into centralized organs. How many dailies were thriving 100 years ago in New York? I think it was 4 or 5, each with a distinct style and point of view.
posted by crunchburger at 6:41 PM on August 26, 2002

How many dailies were thriving 100 years ago in New York? I think it was 4 or 5, each with a distinct style and point of view.

Well, the Times, Post, Daily News and Sun still make 4 (though maybe not all "thriving"). Not to mention the weeklies.
posted by sad_otter at 6:50 PM on August 26, 2002

At the turn of the last century there were over twenty thriving daily newspapers published in NYC. To name a few: The Times, The Sun, The Herald, The Post, The Journal, The Tribune, The American, The World, The Graphic and on. There were also many ethnic papers printed in Italian, Yiddish and German.
posted by aptain_quirk at 7:06 PM on August 26, 2002

In a front-page news story on August 16, the Times managed to change Henry Kissinger into a dove ...

Don't worry Babs, the NYT hasn't fooled me. I'm confident that Dr. K is still the power-crazed war criminal we all know and love.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:00 PM on August 26, 2002

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a news outlet having a conservative or liberal slant. However, any purportedly mainstream publication should make every effort to constrain their opinion to the editorial page.

Any person who values their prerogative to make an informed decision on an issue should object to a news outlet filtering information before releasing it to fit their particular agenda. I accept the fact that any news source will focus on certain stories supporting their point of view, so I read the news from a variety of sources. However, there's no excuse for the NY Times' gross, and purposeful, distortion of Henry Kissinger's position on Iraq, and they deserve every bit of criticism they're receiving. So what if it's coming from conservatives? Where would you expect criticism of an anti-Bush bias to come from? The DNC?

The criticism is valid, and I question anyone who would dismiss it out of hand.
posted by chazw at 6:16 AM on August 27, 2002

However, there's no excuse for the NY Times' gross, and purposeful, distortion of Henry Kissinger's position on Iraq, and they deserve every bit of criticism they're receiving. So what if it's coming from conservatives? Where would you expect criticism of an anti-Bush bias to come from? The DNC?

The criticism is valid, and I question anyone who would dismiss it out of hand.

I read the NYT piece and I read Henry's words. I was surprised to hear the old hawk say what he did. The NYT piece did not grossly distort Henry's position at all.

I would love to see Henry take an extended vacation in Chile regardless of his view on Iraq. Oops! There I go grinding my axe again but I'm certain I heard some Freeper grinding going on around here too.
posted by nofundy at 7:46 AM on August 27, 2002

sad_otter, there's also Newsday, once and possibly future NY paper, the Spanish press, consisting of El Diario and Hoy, maybe others, the Russian paper Novoye Russkoye Slovo (pardon the possibly wrong transliteration), the not-great Italian daily America Oggi, the Chinese papers, the Korean papers, and others. I'd say New York still has a pretty active newpaper publishing business.
posted by lackutrol at 9:51 AM on August 27, 2002

Plus, anyone complaining about a liberal times can just pick up a Wall Street Journal.
posted by pjgulliver at 10:38 AM on August 27, 2002

There's still nothing like a Sunday NY Times and a cup of coffee on a lazy morning. The best arts section anywhere.
posted by kevin123 at 6:15 PM on August 27, 2002