“What this book shows is that the journalistic failure explored in each chapter occurred when politics, ideology, or institutional self-interest played too great a role in the shaping of a news story. Rather than fitting the pattern to the facts, the Times too often gave in to the temptation to fit the facts to a preconceived pattern.” - The Gray Lady Winked
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do, you’re misinformed.” This often-repeated quote, misattributed to Mark Twain, rings true. From time immemorial, people have sought out sources to become more informed about topics and issues affecting both the world and their lives. In America, the first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet, began in 1784, to meet such needs. But to whom and where to go to receive accurate information today is becoming increasingly difficult. For the paper of record, The New York Times, which was once a standard bearer of truth, has lost its neutral credentials long ago.
Claiming “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, the New York Times was founded in 1851 and has been run by the Ochs/Sulzberger family since 1896. While not the largest paper in the world, the New York Times ranks 18th based on circulation, and 3rd in the US. Although circulation figures are down over 55 percent over the past 20 years, the New York Times still has over 5 million digital and print subscribers. Nonetheless, the New York Times is still considered America’s premiere newspaper and holds enormous sway over what American elites think and believe. And what American elites think and believe today, often becomes policy that will affect you and me tomorrow.
Like most news organizations today, the New York Times caters to a particular demographic of left-leaning, college-educated, and wealthy clientele. In fact, readership statistics revealed that 91 percent of the paper’s subscribers identify as Democrats, with the highest readership numbers in California and New York. These partisan readers of the New York Times likely read the paper to have those biases confirmed.
For the casual reader of the New York Times and other publications, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect keeps readers in the dark. The term, which was coined by author Michael Crichton after a conversation with physicist Gell-Mann, explains the chronic misreporting by the media. The phenomenon occurs when a newspaper reader recognizes serious flaws in a particular story on a subject or topic they know well, but then turns the page and assumes the rest of the stories are factual and without error.
In Ashley Rindsberg’s 2021 book, “The Gray Lady Winked”, Rindsberg demolishes the narrative that the New York Times is a neutral player in the reporting of news. Chapter by chapter, Rindsberg outlines the misreporting and editorializing of several significant events going back as far as the Holocaust, the Ukrainian famine, the Vietnam War, and the bombing of Japan. For instance, the New York Times report on the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945, after years of obvious atrocities, was located on page 12 and ironically didn’t include the word, “Jew”. Rindsberg suggests ideology is the main driver with distortions and outright fabrications fit to reflect a growing progressive slant.
This narrative-driven reporting hit a recent low point with the launch of the 1619 Project in 2019. In a weak attempt to rewrite the history of the founding of America, the project hoped to tie slavery to the country's core principles. Yet not even their own political allies could save this turkey of a story. A diverse group of historians objected to the plethora of errors and misstatements and blasted the project’s hubris in presenting opinion as fact. Worse, the misinformation presented was not accidental or even a result of shoddy work by its author, but by design and with the deliberate intent to deceive.
The original mission of the founder of the New York Times was to uncover the truth, without fear or favor. Now, a newspaper that once limited its editorials and op-eds to a few pages, appears to encompass the entire edition. Making the New York Times more akin to the National Enquirer than the reputable periodical of the past.
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