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Preface
I've never met Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the current publisher of the New York Times. In fact, I hadn't even really heard of him until three months after I began writing this book. I'm certain he is a thoughtful, caring, talented person who thinks he is making the right decisions for the institution over which he, by birthright, has been given plenary control. But no one is immune from error, and Sulzberger, in my view, as documented here, is making the blunder of a generation.
I have been an avid reader of the New York Times ever since a daily subscription was offered to me at a discount in the 1960s when I was a pupil in the New York public school system at P.S. 169 in Queens. I would today consider myself a typical reader of the Times, though my political beliefs are far to the right of the Times' editorial page—which, in the minds of many, might mean I am a moderate.
For many years, I have enjoyed my morning coffee with the breadth of wonders presented in the New York Times, from its extensive coverage of international news to always interesting articles on the arts, media, business, and the latest developments in science and technology—though, in recent years, I've been skipping each day's editorial page offerings because I can no longer stomach them.
But it is not the editorial pages of the Times that have prompted me to write this book. While traveling with my wife through New England last summer, my vacation was punctuated each morning with a copy of the New York Times. With my daily task being merely to navigate us to the next used bookstore, diner, or motel, leisure provided me with that rare pleasure of slowly perusing the morning paper—even during the work week—wringing out as much information and entertainment that the Times may afford a happy tourist while at breakfast. What I found, however, was something more disturbing than entertaining.
Quite simply, I began to notice a fundamental change in the way in which the Times has been reporting the news. I'm not referring to the substance or tone of its editorial views, but to the way the paper has been expressing those views—specifically, to the way the Times has waged editorial crusades, not on the paper's editorial pages, but within "objective" news stories appearing on the front page and other news pages. With my wife at the wheel, I started memorializing my observations in my Palm Pilot. By the time we got home, I had twenty pages of notes and a determination to carry on. I continued to read the Times carefully each morning, very carefully, and organized my observations on a new laptop computer. After many trips to libraries, including a visit to the New York Public Library, the result was this book.
Suffice it to say that it pains me to watch the New York Times lose the ´eputation that so many honest journalists have worked so hard to build over its 152-year history. It is not an overstatement to say that if the current publishing policies of the Times continue, the "newspaper of record" will become indistinguishable from the "tabloid" publications the Times seems fond of deriding.
I state this not as an expert but as a consumer, and I know there are many who are beginning to feel the same way. According to published reports, even some of the reporters and columnists who work at the Times are becoming increasingly concerned about the changes we are witnessing.
One need not be an insider or a professional critic to take note of the changes threatening the demise of the Times. I am not an historian or journalist, and I have not interviewed anyone for this book. The criticism presented here is derived solely from the pages of the newspaper, combined with my training as a lawyer and the education of journalism classes I took in school.
Though the criticism in this book may in some places be severe, I've worked to carefully document every fact. As for the tone, I've tried not to be too academic, striving for the balance of gravity and passion typifying that of the editorial pages of the Times—no less objective, no more "mean-spirited."
I am just a guy who reads the Times carefully each morning, and I believe I am speaking on behalf of tens of thousands of like-minded readers. Many of us had hoped to be reading the Times during our retirement, enjoying the well-written prose on a variety of political and cultural happenings with our morning cups of coffee.
It is the sad prospect of losing that little pleasure that has driven me to complete this book. It is my earnest hope that those to whom this preface is addressed will read this as they would a customer complaint letter. The response I hope to evoke, howover, is not a refund of my money but a genuine change in the editorial attitude of the publisher, drawing the Times back to the reverence for impartiality it demonstrated over half a century ago. Only in that way will fervent fans be able to imbibe their daily dose of the Times, comforted by the thought that the same pleasure may be enjoyed by their children some day.
I am not suggesting that the Times change its editorial views—its editors are free to crusade against all the "wrongs" they believe are fit to print on their editorial pages. I'm just suggesting that the editors of the Times limit their crusading to their editorial pages and leave the news gathering and reporting function to those who appreciate their responsibility to report accurately that which happens—to report the news "impartially, without fear or favor."
Unfortunately, I have no insight into the likelihood that this advice will be heeded. I can only hope the following pages will provide the spark of understanding necessary to reverse the steady decline in the Times' reputation and value as a credible source of news.
"The only end in writing," said Dr. Samuel Johnson, "is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better able to endure it." If little else, it is hoped this book will enable frustrated readers of the Times to better tolerate their few minutes each morning with the ailing "Grey Lady."
Sincerely,
Bob Kohn
June 6, 2003
One
Bias, Slander, and Fraud
For more than a century, men and women of The Times have jealously guarded the paper's integrity. Whatever else we contribute, our first duty is to make sure the integrity of The Times is not blemished during our stewardship.
— From "Code of Conduct for the News and Editorial
Departments of the New York Times" (January 2003)
Times have changed, and with it, regrettably, so has the Times. What was once considered the "newspaper of record"—a moniker reportedly coined by an early advertising manager for the New York Times—is quickly losing its reputation as a reliable source of news.
The aim of this book is to convince the publisher of the Times to reverse the ideologically tainted news reporting practices that are destroying the integrity of his newspaper. The means is simple: By providing examples taken directly from within the four corners of the news pages, this book exposes the pronounced liberal bias that pervades the news pages of the New York Times. This book does not concern the political positions taken in the editorials or opinion columns of the Times. Nor is it about media bias, insofar as that term has been used to describe perceptions of an overall liberal bias in the mainstream media. This book is about editorial opinion disguised as objective news and what can be done to stop it.
The crux of this book is best illustrated by a joke that has been circulating around the Internet:
The Pope was visiting Washington, D.C. and President Bush took him out for an afternoon on the Potomac, sailing on the presidential yacht. They were admiring the sights when, all of a sudden, the Pope's hat—his white zucchetto—blew off his head and out into the water. The secret service guys started to launch a boat, but Bush waved them off, saying, "Wait, wait. I'll take care of this. Don't worry."
Bush then stepped off the yacht onto the surface of the water and walked out to the Holy Father's little hat, bent over and picked it up, then walked back to the yacht and climbed aboard. He handed the hat to the Pope amid stunned silence.
The next morning, the New York Times carried a story, with front-page photos, of the event. The banner headline read: "Bush Can't Swim."
The revelations of "frequent acts of journalistic fraud"—upon the discovery in May 2003 that a Times staff reporter, Jayson Blair, engaged in fabrications and plagiarism that may have polluted hundreds of the paper's news articles—brought to light what may be the underlying cause of the journalistic fraud addressed in the following pages. As the Times scrambled to defend its reputation in the aftermath of its startling disclosure, facts about the circumstances leading up to the scandal began to surface. Commentators in the media, including respected journalists and academicians, began to accuse the top managers of the Times' newsroom of arrogance, hypocrisy, and incompetence.
One would expect that these unfortunate events would have humbled the publisher and resulted in an earnest effort to uproot the offending practices. While the Blair scandal led to a high-level management shakeup, there are no signs of any real institutional change on the horizon. On the day the Times announced the resignation of Howell Raines as executive editor, the Wall Street Journal reported on the debacle with views from those inside and outside of the Times. "There is an endemic cultural issue at the Times that is not a Howell creation," said veteran Times reporter Linda Greenhouse in "Amid Turmoil, Top Editor Resigns at the New York Times" (June 6, 2003). "[I]t's a culture where speaking the truth to power has never been particularly welcomed."
In an editorial entitled "Turmoil at the Times" (June 6, 2003), the editors of the Wall Street Journal honed in on the broader questions of credibility still facing the Times:
[O]ur view is that what we have been seeing on the front page [of the Times] in recent years is less straightforward reporting and more advocacy journalism. In this sense, the scandal over Jayson Blair's fabrications is symptomatic of a broader credibility problem that won't vanish merely because Mr. Raines does.
Yet, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the Times, has since made it clear that readers can expect no real change in the paper's strategic vision. When asked by the New York Observer ("Sulzberger Jr. Vows to Right Times' Course," June 16, 2003) about the future of the front page after Raines' departure, Sulzberger "bristled." "That's strategy," Mr. Sulzberger said. "Things that are strategic don't change with people."
Despite the managerial shuffle, the Times' practice of distorting its news pages to reflect its ideological opinions goes on, and the reputation of the New York Times as a credible source of news has gone into a tailspin.
Much has been published on the subject of liberal media bias. Bernard Goldberg, a veteran reporter for CBS News, courageously blew the whistle on his colleagues in his book BIAS (Regnery, 2001). In that bestselling exposé, Goldberg revealed in stunning detail how liberal bias pervades television newsrooms, not by virtue of a "well-orchestrated, vast left wing conspiracy," but by a common view of the world held by those who occupy America's newsrooms.
Ann Coulter, in her book SLANDER (Crown, 2002), enlarges upon what Goldberg called "liberal hate speech" and demonstrates how the liberal media acts like a classic propagandist, using name-calling to advance their political agenda. "Progress cannot be made on serious issues," she says, "because one side is making arguments and the other side is throwing eggs."
But again, this book is not concerned with name-calling or what the Times says on its editorial page. Nor does it concern "the media," which Eric Alterman, in his book WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? (Basic Books, 2003), found to be "on the whole" more conservative than liberal. Though, arguably, purveyors of conservative commentary, such as Rush Limbaugh, have as much influence on public opinion as their liberal counterparts, such as the editorial pages of the New York Times, Alterman misses the point.
Though conservatives may strongly disagree with editorials published by the Times or with liberal columns, or other forms of liberal commentary, they don't fundamentally object to them for what they are—as long as such commentary is properly represented or labeled as such. What they object to is commentary that is misrepresented as "objective" news reporting. They object to how news organizations use their news pages to convey the same opinions that appear on their editorial pages.
Thus, the true debate is not about media bias, but about news bias. Alterman fools no one by trying to refute evidence of liberal bias by cleverly changing the playing field—from a discussion of "the news" to a discussion of "the media." You can't take a lead front-page story in the New York Times, place it alongside a Rush Limbaugh monologue, and then call them both "journalism" for the purposes of weighing whether the media is biased. The Rush Limbaugh program is pure commentary and analysis—never represented as objective news—and is therefore, by nature, biased. Under no circumstances could the same be said of lead stories appearing on the front page of the New York Times, and to suggest otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie.
This book makes no claim that "the media" as a whole has a liberal bias. It more modestly intends to demonstrate, systematically, that a liberal bias pervades the news pages of the New York Times. In other words, what this book takes aim at is not the slander, but the journalistic fraud: what Goldberg called "passing off editorial opinion as straight news" and what Coulter, from the reverse perspective, called "ostensibly objective news coated with smears."
It is not about the media, but the news—purportedly "hard" news, "objective" news, "straight" news—and how that news is distorted for the purpose of influencing public opinion, aligning it with the liberal views of the Times. This book also explores how the integrity of the Times is being destroyed under the stewardship of its current publisher and what can be done to save a great American institution from his folly.
A Tradition of Impartiality
It had been the long-standing tradition of the New York Times to strive for impartiality in its news reporting. When Adolph S. Ochs purchased the Times in 1896, the Times was widely considered to be an organ of the Democratic party. To reassure Republicans of the paper's political objectivity, Ochs published one of the only statements ever to have appeared in his paper over his name:
It will be the aim of the Times . . . to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interests involved.
Adolph S. Och's son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who succeeded Ochs as publisher (serving from 1935 to 1961), continued the Times' tradition of impartiality, through at least the early 1950s.
Sulzberger reconfirmed his father-in-law's promise—to report "the news impartially, without fear or favor." That promise, he once wrote, "continues to be the role of the Times in the community." On the division between reporting the news and publishing editorial opinions, Sulzberger added:
We are anxious to see wrongs corrected, and we attempt to make our position very clear in such matters on our editorial page. But we believe that no matter how we view the world, our responsibility lies in reporting accurately that which happens.
Sometime before the end of Sulzberger's reign as publisher in 1961, the Times began to abandon its tradition of impartiality. In 1969, Herman H. Dinsmore, a 50-year veteran of the newspaper business—as a reporter, editor, and college
professor—published the book All the News that Fits: A Critical Analysis of the News and Editorial Content of The New York Times (Arlington House, 1969). Dinsmore joined the foreign desk of the New York Times in 1929, rising to the position of editor of its international edition from 1951 through 1960. After thirty years as a reporter and senior editor for the New York Times, Dinsmore retired to teach journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He, like Bernard Goldberg, knew firsthand what he was talking about.
Reflecting on the transformation of the Times from a "great newspaper" prior to the end of World War II to what it had become by the end of the 1960s, Dinsmore unabashedly introduced his 1969 book with the following blunt disclosure:
The New York Times today is deliberately pitched to the so-called liberal point of view, both in its news and editorial columns.
His book proceeded to expose the worldview of his colleagues, the paper's editors of that time, and provided specific evidence of the bias employed by the Times during the 1950s and 1960s. As just one example, the book makes a serious and convincing case that the New York Times, through a series of editorials and news articles, was influential in bringing Fidel Castro and his Communist regime to power in Cuba.
It was a Times reporter in Havana who reported that Fidel Castro's Cuba was "free, honest, and democratic" as thousands suffered and died in Castro's political prisons. Similarly, in the 1930s, Walter Duranty, a Times correspondent in the Soviet Union, assured readers that there was "no actual starvation" in the Ukraine while Stalin was mounting his campaign to "collectivize" the farms in the region. The West later discovered that Stalin's actions resulted in a famine that claimed the lives of millions of people. For his deceptions, Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize, an award that has been challenged and is now under review by the Pulitzer board.
In terms of their human dimensions, these distortions of the truth tower over the startling but relatively minor accounts of lies and plagiarism by Times reporter Jayson Blair. Yet, the Times calls this most recent affair "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper." No doubt Blair's actions represented "a profound betrayal of trust," as the paper's mea culpa stated, but the journalistic fraud regularly engaged in by the Times goes far beyond the unethical conduct of a solitary reporter whose transgressions are merely symptomatic of a more endemic problem.
While the Times engaged in damage control in response to the Blair scandal, it failed to address the journalistic fraud that had long been spreading through its news pages like a virus. The New York Times may have emerged from the intensive care necessitated by the lapses of this one reporter, but its ultimate credibility will depend on whether its publisher recognizes the full extent of the problem and, by addressing its causes, implements its cure.
The Changing Times
On May 22, 2001, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the grandson of A.H. Sulzberger and current publisher of the New York Times, announced the appointment of Howell Raines as the new executive editor of the paper, effective September 6, 2001. For nearly nine years prior to that appointment, Raines had been the Times' editorial page editor, what may be considered the chief opinion officer of the New York Times. Now, as executive editor, Raines assumed the role of chief news officer, responsible for reporting the news, with the news division's staff of about 1,200 people worldwide at his disposal.
Upon the announcement of Raines' appointment to head the news division, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. wrote in an internal memo to the Times' staff:
What to say about Howell? Well, most of you know him as our esteemed fire-breathing, take-no-prisoners editorial page editor.
Howell Raines is what the Times would call an "unabashed liberal." A profile of Raines in the New Yorker entitled "The Howell Doctrine" (June 10, 2002) stated:
[Arthur Sulzberger Jr.] knew that Raines, like him, took liberal positions on affirmative action, capital punishment, abortion rights, health insurance, welfare, the environment, and the role of an activist government. Sulzberger said that he saw the editorial-page editor and the executive editor as partners in the Times' future.
In an autobiographical book published in 1993, FLY FISHING THROUGH THE MIDLIFE CRISIS (William Morrow & Co.), Raines wrote about his disgust for President Ronald Reagan:
In 1981, shortly before the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, my family and I arrived in Washington. . . . I had arrived in our nation's capital during a historic ascendancy of greed and hard-heartedness. . . .
Then one day in the summer of 1981 I found myself at the L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine. I was a correspondent in the White House in those days, and my work—which consisted of reporting on President Reagan's success in making life harder for citizens who were not born rich, white, and healthy—saddened me. . . .
Reagan couldn't tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it.
Even after he assumed his post as head of the news division, Raines continued to wear his extreme left wing political views on his collar. On November 30, 2001, Raines appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," hosted by Brian Lamb. Regarding President Clinton and his policies, particularly the ill-fated attempt to introduce socialized medicine in the United States, Raines said, "We had editorially supported virtually every aspect of his program, and were particularly evangelical, I would say, about his medical care reform package."
On August 6, 2002, Raines appeared on "The Charlie Rose Show," broadcast on PBS. When asked how history would judge Bill Clinton, Raines steered clear of the fact that Clinton was only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached, and replied:
Huge political talent. Huge political vision and I suspect—none of us, I can't predict who's going to win the next election, much less what history is going to say about anyone. But I think President Clinton's role in modernizing the Democratic party around a set of economic ideas and also holding onto the principles of social justice. And presiding over the greatest prosperity in human history. Those would seem to me to have to be central to his legacy.
Shortly before Raines assumed control of the newsroom, a few solitary words of concern were being expressed about the propriety of Raines' selection as chief editor of the Times news division. In a piece published in the Washington Post, "A Liberal Bias?" (August 29, 2001), columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote:
We in the press are routinely self-righteous, holding others—politicians, public officials and corporate executives—to exacting standards of truthfulness, performance and conflict of interest. But we often refuse to impose comparable standards on ourselves, leading some (or much) of the public to see us as hypocritical. A troubling example involves the recent promotion of Howell Raines from editorial page editor of the New York Times to executive editor. . . .
In many ways, he seems superbly qualified. Raines, 58, has been a Times bureau chief in both London and Washington. In 1992, he won a Pulitzer Prize. But what ought to disqualify him is his job as editorial page editor, where he proclaimed the Times' liberal views. Every editor and reporter holds private views; the difference is that Raines' opinions are now highly public. His page took stands on dozens of local, national and international issues. It was pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-campaign finance "reform." Last year, it endorsed Al Gore. In general, it has been critical of President Bush, especially his tax cut.
Does anyone believe that, in his new job, Raines will instantly purge himself of these and other views? And because they are so public, Raines' positions compromise the Times' ability to act and appear fair-minded. Many critics already believe that the news columns of the Times are animated—and distorted—by the same values as its editorials. Making the chief of the editorial page the chief of the news columns will not quiet those suspicions. But asked about possible conflicts, publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.—who selected Raines—dismissed them with a short statement: "The brilliant and honorable tenure of Max Frankel as executive editor of the Times (1986-94), following his years as editorial page editor (1977-86), stands as a testament that a great journalist knows the difference between these two roles. Howell is certainly a great journalist." In other words: Get lost.
Concerns that Raines would aggressively use the news division to advance the editorial positions he had driven in his previous position were soon confirmed.
The bias had gotten so bad that, within a year after assuming control of the news division, Raines found himself dealing with a minor revolt among the rank and file news reporters at the Times'. The Times reporters were becoming gravely concerned that Raines' use of the front page to crusade editorial causes was beginning to reflect poorly upon the reputation of the professional reporters associated with the paper. Some of these reporters even began talking to other members of the press about their disenchantment with Raines' aggressive use of the front page for editorial purposes.
As we have seen, critics have long charged the Times with bias, but if the Times' own staff was taking notice, something very unusual was happening. From all appearances, when Raines took charge of the news division, he simply pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor. As a result, the exploitation of the news division for advancing the editorial positions of the Times had become brazen and obvious.
On September 11, 2001, with the attacks against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, the nation found itself suddenly at war. Soon after launching its military response against the Al Qaeda terrorist organization and factions in Afghanistan accused of aiding them, the Bush administration considered the unthinkable consequences of weapons of mass destruction finding their way into the hands of terrorists. Given that one potential source of such weapons was Iraq, President Bush quickly pressed the United Nations to resume its inspections of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and suggested that if Iraq balked at those efforts, force may be necessary to open Iraq's borders to UN inspectors or to disarm the regime.
To no one's surprise, the New York Times immediately declared its opposition to the use of military force against Iraq, beginning with an editorial entitled "The Wrong Time to Fight Iraq" (November 26, 2001). What few saw coming, however, was how Howell Raines was about to set in motion one of the most extensive crusades against an administration's wartime policy ever to appear on the front pages of any newspaper.
Over the following several months, the Times rolled out an unprecedented series of news articles calculated to advance the Times' political agenda and oppose the Bush administration policies on Iraq. (This remarkable use of the front page of the Times to crusade for the paper's editorial views is more fully described in Chapter Nine.) The more Bush talked about potential military action against Iraq, the more vociferous the Times' opposition became—on both its editorial pages and its news pages.
The campaign against Bush administration policies on Iraq conducted by the news division reached a crescendo in August 2002 when an especially egregious front-page story in the Times prompted Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer to declare in the Washington Post (August 18, 2002):
Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled his correspondent in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines' New York Times. Hearst was for the Spanish-American War. Raines (for those who have been incommunicado for the last year) opposes war with Iraq.
Krauthammer, in that column, went on to expose how the Times—in a front-page article entitled "Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq" (August 16, 2002)—distorted the views of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to sensationalize a fabricated rift between Dr. Kissinger and President Bush on Iraq policy. (The details of this story are set forth in Chapter Five.) The Times later printed a half-hearted retraction, but its front-page campaign against the way the United States was carrying out the war on terrorism continued.
A few weeks later, Raines and Sulzberger were the subjects of a taped interview sponsored by the journalism department at the University of California, Berkeley. The forum, held on November 18, 2002 and later broadcast on C-SPAN, was entitled "Business and Editorial Policies of the New York Times."
Mark Danner, a U.C. Berkeley journalism professor, and occasional op-ed writer for the Times, confronted Raines with Krauthammer's column. While the professor read Krauthammer's first paragraph aloud, Raines shifted nervously in his seat; the audience anxiously awaited his reply.
Without missing a beat, Raines made Ann Coulter's case for her. Rather than intelligently replying to the criticism, he grabbed a figurative grade A egg and threw it at Krauthammer:
I can't explain why Charles took leave of his senses. He'd be the best witness on that.
The ad hominem attack was poignant in the way it alluded to Krauthammer's former profession: he was a psychiatrist—a slap that many of Krauthammer's friends and associates would not miss. Clearly not happy with that response, the journalism professor pressed further:
How do you stop from over-compensating, as it were, when you get that kind of criticism? That is, the Krauthammer quote was just the tip of the iceberg. It was a great stir, and that the perception has persisted that the Times is conducting a campaign against the war at least in conservative circles. Indeed, you can sit here and say here's Arthur Sulzberger, he eats lunch every week with the editorial page editor, and they're against the war, and here is Howell Raines, and he was editorial editor an eye-blink ago, and they're publishing these leaks in the paper, and so and so. How do you stop the conservative criticism from hitting some way what you're publishing?
Raines was getting visibly uncomfortable. The suggestion that he was employing his news division to conduct an editorial campaign was apparently getting under his skin. But Raines knew the drill well and prudently stuck to his strategy by grabbing hold of several more eggs and tossing them, albeit indiscriminately, in the hope they would somehow strike the right target:
One, you put any kind of criticism in an intellectual framework. The latter connections that you just ran through is from a Weekly Standard editorial. . . . The Weekly Standard is a publication that was founded to promote Rupert Murdoch's political ideology in the United States. So, when one hears that vein of criticism one considers the source, and I don't mean that as an insult.
The first problem with this is, while Krauthammer does write for the Weekly Standard, the article he wrote criticizing the Times was actually published by the Washington Post. Raines might have been a little more careful about where he aimed his eggs.
As to Raines' misdirected remark about Murdoch, if the Weekly Standard, a magazine that consists almost entirely of editorial content—which positions nothing its editors or any of its writers profess as objective news—can be dismissed as merely a means of promoting its owner's ideology, what, using the same logic, can be said about the New York Times?
The thought may not have occurred to Raines that the New York Times has been strictly controlled and operated to promote the political ideology of the Ochs/Sulzberger family. The "newspaper of record" remains very much a mouthpiece for the Sulzberger family. That family, for generations, has maintained the contractual right to elect nine out of thirteen members of the board of directors of the New York Times Company, which assures them the right to appoint the company's chairman and CEO and the publisher of the New York Times newspaper. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who is the chairman of the company and the current publisher of the Times, is one of eight Ochs/Sulzberger family members who get to select those nine board members. The family holds this right for as long as they desire to maintain it.
Later on in the Berkeley interview, Sulzberger reinforced how much his family continues to influence the paper:
It wasn't until I got the job as publisher that I really began to see how the Ochs/Sulzberger values are inculcated in the New York Times.
Slowly, but surely, both media watchers and common readers of the Times began to notice something odd was happening. Since the 1960s, the Times has been a stalwart promoter of the liberal agenda, but now—with its blatant use of its news division to advocate that agenda—it was becoming obvious to even casual readers that the reputation of the Times as an accurate source of news was in jeopardy. Had Sulzberger and Raines taken leave of their senses? Worse was yet to come.
The Agenda Is Everything
In the midst of its campaign to oppose military action against Iraq, the Times began to wage another crusade on its front pages. This time, the New York Times had set its sights on a 300-member golf club. Beginning in July 2002, the Times published over forty articles and editorials over a four-month period criticizing the Augusta National Golf Club, host of the Masters golf tournament, for not admitting women as members.
In an editorial entitled "America's All Male Golfing Society" (November 18, 2002), the Times called upon Tiger Woods to boycott the Masters tournament. When Tiger refused to submit, the Times turned its turret toward CBS, who had the broadcast rights to the Masters tournament.
But, instead of writing an editorial calling for CBS to boycott the Masters, the Times reserved room on its front page to report to the world what CBS had not done: "CBS Staying Silent in Debate on Women Joining Augusta" (November 25, 2002). The next day, a coy Times editorial staff responded to this "news" with an editorial entitled "The Masters Business" (November 26, 2002), which called on CBS to boycott the 2003 Masters tournament.
The Times' behavior on this occasion was loudly criticized. What was
striking and different about this criticism, however, was that much of it originated not from conservative critics, but from within the Times' own staff of reporters.
An article published in Newsweek magazine entitled "The Changing Times" by Seth Mnookin (December 9, 2002) broke the news about the turmoil within the ranks of the New York Times. Newsweek published the following remarkable statement by an unnamed Times staffer in reference to the November 25 article on CBS:
That was shocking. It makes it hard for us to have credibility on other issues. We don't run articles that just say so-and-so is staying silent. We run articles when something important actually happens.
The Newsweek article revealed a growing recognition, especially among news reporters, that the Times was losing its reputation by disguising its editorial positions in the form of front-page news stories. Another Times staffer suggested to Newsweek that the "chorus of complaints" among the Times staffers was growing so loud that Raines was "in danger of losing the building"—i.e., many Times reporters were apparently ready to quit over the issue.
Then, a few days later, all hell broke loose when news surfaced that the Times refused to print two pieces written by its sports columnists—a column by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Dave Anderson and a column by Times sportswriter Harvey Araton—because they disagreed with the views expressed in the Times' editorial pages on the Augusta National matter.
The online edition of Newsweek (December 4, 2002) reported the story as follows:
Newspapers are supposed to foster healthy debate, raise conflicting points of view and present all sides of a story. Aren't they? It's a question employees at the New York Times are asking after the New York Daily News' Paul Colford reported that Times editors recently spiked two sports columns that disagreed with the paper's editorial stance on Augusta National's ban on female members. The paper's thinking seemed to run something like this: we're against this horrible discrimination, and we're going to resort to censorship to make our point.
The same day, Times managing editor, Gerald M. Boyd, circulated an internal memorandum—which was immediately leaked by a Times employee to the Internet—defending the paper's position on both its coverage of the Augusta National question and its spiking of the two sports columns. As to its 33-article crusade against the golf club: "There is only one word for our vigor in pursuing a story—whether in Afghanistan or Augusta. Call it journalism." And the censorship of its sports columnists? "Recently we spiked two sports columns that touched on the Augusta issue. We were not concerned with which 'side' the writers were on. A well-reported, well-reasoned column can come down on any side, with our welcome."
It's doubtful that the Times' own front-page articles on the Augusta issue could have met that very test. What's more, the Times' managing editor failed to adequately apply that test to the two spiked columns. As to the first, it was rejected merely because it disagreed with the Times' editorial page:
One of the columns focused centrally on disputing The Times' editorials about Augusta. Part of our strict separation between the news and editorial pages entails not attacking each other. Intramural quarreling of that kind is unseemly and self-absorbed.
As to the second, Boyd took a slap at his own columnist, asserting that his logic did not meet the Times' "standard":
The other spiked column tried to draw a connection between the Augusta issue and the elimination of women's softball from the Olympics. The logic did not meet our standards; that would have been true regardless of which "side" the writer had taken on Augusta.
Boyd was "silent" on whether the writings of other regular Times' columnists— such as Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and Frank Rich—have their logic scrutinized against the same "standard."
Criticism of the Times spread quickly. Slate columnist Jack Shafer wrote (December 6, 2002):
Did New York Times Managing Editor Gerald Boyd read Richard Nixon's memoir RN before penning his memo to the staff defending his decision to spike sports columns by Dave Anderson and Harvey Araton that dared to take issue with a Nov. 18 Times editorial? The hubba-hubba self-congratulation and extreme defensiveness of the memo sounds like something Nixon might have composed to blot out the din of anti-war protesters chanting outside the White House gates.
The same day, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists issued the following statement:
While the Times may well be taking a principled stand on the issue of whether women should be admitted to Augusta National Golf Club, it should also recognize the important principle that a newspaper informs its readers best when it provides a diversity of opinion.
An article published in the online edition of Editor & Publisher magazine entitled "Editors Weigh In on 'NY Times' Augusta Issue" (December 6, 2002) reported that "most editors at a cross-section of major newspapers said they would not object to a columnist who criticized the paper's editorial position, saying columnists are hired specifically to tell readers what they think." One editor stated, "Our columnists have such wide latitude it would never be a consideration here. They can do what they want. It has never been an issue for us."
This last statement was from Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of the Washington Post, the newspaper that the Times considers to be one of its main rivals. Perhaps this quote, or the overwhelming negative accumulation of editorial opinion, was the proverbial straw; within hours, the Times backed down and agreed to run the two spiked columns in the following Sunday edition of the Times. Apparently, the "logic" of the columns now met the Times' "standards."
The Times' use of its news division to crusade for its editorial causes continued unabated. In April 2003, the Times stepped up its war against Augusta National, even as U.S. troops were advancing on Baghdad. Not only was the Times quick to criticize CBS for daring to cover the 2003 Masters tournament, the Times did not hesitate to ridicule CBS for how they covered it ("CBS Is Planning to Stress Golf, Not Protests," April 7, 2003). Meanwhile, the Times never called upon its own sportswriters to boycott coverage of the 2003 Masters tournament. On the contrary, Times sports columnists began writing pieces aligned with the Times' editorial views, criticizing the Augusta National Golf Club for maintaining its policy against women membership.
One Times Sports page staffer told Sridhar Pappu of the New York Observer in "Off the Record" (May 11, 2003), "Howell [Raines] and Gerald [Boyd] are running our department right now, it's pretty clear."
As much as the Times had been keen to celebrate those who resigned as members of Augusta National in protest of the club's membership policies ("Former Top Executive at CBS Resigns from Augusta," December 3, 2002), it has been reluctant to criticize, at least publicly, John F. Akers (former CEO of IBM), a member of Augusta National and also, since 1985, a member of the board of directors of the New York Times Company.
The Low Point
On Sunday, May 11, 2003, the New York Times used the real estate of a lead front-page article to announce a stunning admission that would cast a long shadow over the trustworthiness of the once venerable institution:
Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception
A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation by Times journalists has found. The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.
The four-page, 14,420-word article was billed as an accounting of the dozens of known journalistic deceptions perpetrated by 27-year-old Times reporter Jayson Blair, who had worked for the paper for nearly four years. Blair had resigned just ten days earlier, shortly after he was first confronted with evidence that he had plagiarized the work of another journalist. The article laid out in excruciating detail how, in at least thirty-six fabricated stories and possibly hundreds more, Blair made up quotes, copied material written by other journalists, and wrote stories under the pretense of being on the scenes of the events when he was really in his apartment in Brooklyn.
The article primarily addressed what happened, but to many it fell short by failing to address the question on everyone's mind: how could it have happened? Even an "Editor's Note" accompanying the story failed to provide an adequate explanation. Written presumably by Howell Raines, the short note simply explained why the Times was running the cover story and closed with a terse apology to the paper's readers.
Ultimate Responsibility
Since the Blair scandal broke, highly respected journalists and commentators, with no apparent axe to grind, had become increasingly critical of the Times. Typical of the criticism was the following comment published in the Newsday article "Report Details Reporter's Fraud" (May 11, 2003):
"This is the worse thing that can happen to a newspaper," said Paul Levinson, chairman of the communication and media studies department at Fordham University. "Howell Raines should have been keeping a more careful eye on these things." After reviewing the Times report, Levinson described it as "self-serving" and failing to disclose "that the Times did something wrong. . . . They need to do a lot more."
Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at The Poynter Institute, a journalism school, told the New York Post ("Times Trickster Falls Sick," May 12, 2003), "I am very disappointed that the New York Times' checks and balances system didn't work."
Andrew Sullivan formulated perhaps the most ironic and damning analogy of all (AndrewSullivan.com, May 12, 2003):
How does a reporter whose former editor had written a memo demanding that he be removed from writing for the Times altogether get reassigned without his subsequent editor being informed of his record? Forget the affirmative action dimension. This is just recklessly bad management. It reminds me of the Catholic Church reassigning priests to new parishes without telling the parishioners of the priests' past. It smacks of a newsroom in which everyone is running scared of the big guy's favorite new hire, and so no one is able to stop a disaster from happening until it's too late. . . .
The New York Times' reputation is not the responsibility of new hires in their twenties. It's the responsibility of the editors, just as the responsibility for bad priests lies ultimately with the cardinals and bishops who hire them. In this instance, Raines is the Times' Cardinal Law. His imperial meddling, diversity obsessions, and mercurial management style all made Blair possible.
Raines was losing respect from all quarters, but most important, he was losing the respect of his staff and perhaps all hope of ever regaining that respect. As the New York Daily News reported in "Staff Trust Eluding Raines" (May 16, 2003):
[I]t is clear that the everyday behavior of Raines—widely viewed as arrogant and aloof, even by those who admired his work as a reporter and editorial page editor—has supplanted Blair as the hot topic inside and outside the Times.
Anger at Raines in the newsroom had been festering for over a year. "From the moment Howell Raines was appointed executive editor of The New York Times, there was tension in the newsroom," Seth Mnookin reported in Newsweek ("Times Bomb," May 26, 2003). One of the first to publicly write about Raines' management style was columnist John Ellis. Nearly a year before the Blair scandal broke, Ellis described on his web-log (JohnEllis.Blogspot.com, May 11, 2002) what he called the "Raines regime":
The Rainesian management model resembles a kind of anti-network; in which an ever-smaller number of people are engaged in the guidance and definition of the enterprise. As the network narrows, the center (Raines and his management team) grows in importance. At its worst, this kind of management leads to the Sun God management system, in which The Great Leader is surrounded by adoring sycophants. Raines is a prime candidate to fall into this trap, since his ego needs greatly exceed his management skills.
According to Mnookin:
Newsroom staffers also felt as if Raines led the staff on crusades, obsessing about stories—like the ban on women at the Augusta National Golf Club, host to the Masters—in a way that caused the paper to make news instead of break it. (Sources at the paper say Raines nominated the paper's Augusta coverage for a 2002 Pulitzer—which shocked some Times staffers, because the paper had come under fire for spiking two sports columns that took issue with the paper's editorial stance on the subject.)
The institutional penchant for putting ideological passion above journalistic integrity can be traced right up to the paper's publisher and CEO. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the man who "saw the editorial page editor and the executive editor as partners in the Timesý future," was quoted some years ago as having said, "Diversity is the most important issue facing our paper." As the Blair scandal has painfully demonstrated, Sulzberger lost sight of the priorities of his stewardship: The most important issue facing the New York Times must, at all times and under all circumstances, be the truth. The Times' obsession with race—along with its other obsessions, like those against the death penalty, against the membeÅship requirements of a 300-member golf club, and against the policies, any policies it seems, of the Bush administration—have supplanted the paper's dedication to integrity in its news reporting.
An Opportunity for Change
On June 5, 2003, the Times announced that Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd had resigned. Though their resignations provide a ray of hope for a new era of responsible news reporting, it remains to be seen whether the tyranny of political ideology over the Times' newsroom will really end with the Raines regime. We know that, even during the extraordinary aftermath of the Blair revelations, when Sulzberger, Raines, and Boyd were expressing contrition and asking forgiveness—from their staff, their readers, and the gods of journalism—the paper continued its quixotic war against an imagined evil.
For example, on Tuesday, May 14, 2003, the day Raines stood before his reporters and accepted blame for journalistic fraud, the Times' front page carried a "news" article—"Bush's Support Strong Despite Tax Cut Doubts"—that was a masterpiece of distortion. While reporting that the public was having "persistent reservations" about the president's tax cut proposal, the results of the poll actually showed that over twice as many people believed a tax cut would be good for the economy as those who believed it would be bad. None of the questions asked in the poll concerned whether the public had any "doubts" or "reservations" about the president's tax cut proposal.
Later in the week, in "Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights" (May 16, 2003), the Times used its front page to essentially accuse President Bush of wasting taxpayer money on public appearances and suggest that the president's policies have more form than substance.
The publisher's contrition over the Blair scandal seems entirely focused on the ethics of its reporters' news gathering activities, with not even a scant recognition of its broader credibility problem: the plunge in the reliability of the paper's news pages stemming from its zeal for advocacy journalism. We may now be sure of the whereabouts of the Times' reporters when they file their stories, but can we really trust we are getting fair and balanced reports? What has been practiced with impunity for years by the New York Times—the persistent publication of liberal views disguised as objective news—is still practiced with impunity, and there are no signs that any of the repercussions arising from the Blair scandal will result in a change in the behavior of the news reporters and their editors, at least insofar as objective reporting is concerned. Sadly, fairness and accuracy in reporting no longer seem a part of the Times' DNA.
Focus on Technique
Three hundred sixty-five days a year—day in and day out, year after year—not only on the editorial pages, but disguised as objective news, the Times has accumulated such a work of "propaganda," as Coulter calls it, that the editors of the Soviet Pravda must have marveled at not only the chutzpa of the editors of America's "newspaper of record" but also the technique those editors have employed to exert its influence.
This book is largely about that technique. We will not attempt to merely restate the evidence that Coulter so painstakingly compiled. Nor do we have any insider evidence of bias that made Goldberg's book so credible and riveting. I am just an ordinary consumer who reads the Times¸carefully every day. Using evidence derived primarily from within the four corners of the newspaper, we take here a slightly different tack on how the media can, and specifically the New York Times does, distort the news.
We make little reference to the editorials written by the Times or to any of the propaganda pieces gracing its op-ed pages (i.e., the page opposite the Times' editorial page, containing opinion articles by columnists and others). We have no issue with editorial opinion when it is labeled as such. The public knows these pieces are biased and can give them the authority they may merit. They may be slanderous, but they are not fraudulent.
Nor do we take issue with the Times' articles identified as "News Analysis," even though they often appear on the front pages of the Times and are formatted like objective news stories. Some of these "News Analysis" pieces are labeled "Economic Analysis" or "Military Analysis," providing them with a false air of objectivity. When they appear on the Internet or on wireless devices, it is often impossible to distinguish them from straight news stories. (The nytimes.com website includes the phrase "News Analysis," but it appears above the headline rather than in the story, and it is in light grey, barely noticeable. When they appear on many other websites such as Yahoo! News or on wireless devices, the "News Analysis" label is completely missing.) Though having the appearance of straight news stories, these "News Analysis" pieces (whether they are labeled "News Analysis," "Economic Analysis," or "Military Analysis") are nothing more than thinly disguised editorial opinions of the Times' reporters and editors.
To briefly illustrate the political nature of these "News Analysis" pieces, consider the opening sentence of the "News Analysis" published in the Times ("Testing of a President; Uncertainty at Next Step," December 13, 1998) days before the congressional vote to impeach President Clinton, an outcome the Times was marshalling all of its influential resources to defeat:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12—A touch of dignity and a heavy dose of uncertainty surround the capital today, as what seems to be the only city in America that takes impeachment seriously looks toward a House vote on articles calling for President Clinton to be removed from office.
This "news analysis" of the country's reaction to the impeachment charges—i.e., that no one outside of Washington was taking the charges seriously— apparently failed to take into account a "straight" news story appearing in the Times just two days earlier under the headline "Citizens Left and Right Battle at the Grass Roots" (December 10, 1998), which suggested exactly the opposite in its first paragraph:
On one level, the battle over the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton is being played out in the House Judiciary Committee hearing room and in other Washington power alleys. But it is also being fought at a grass-roots level all over the country, with both those who fervently want the President impeached and those who just as fervently want him left alone trying to find ways to give weight to their wishes.
Some of these people are egged on by conservative and liberal lobbying groups, but a great deal of the outcry is arising unbidden.
Whether they contain informed analysis or not, their appearance and placement on the front pages of the Times make it unlikely that the public recognizes these "News Analysis" stories for what they really are: a clever way to sneak editorial opinions onto the front page where they can be easily mistaken for straight news. Nevertheless, they are labeled in such a way that makes it clear—to informed readers—they do not represent "objective news." For this reason, we have no more concern with these "News Analysis" pieces than we do opinions properly labeled as editorials. These pieces may be biased and intentionally misleading, but the public knows, or should know, that they do not constitute objective news.
The Power of Passing Off Opinion as News
Sneaking editorial opinions onto the front page by identifying them as "news analysis" is, to be sure, one way to couch editorial opinion as straight news, but the deception on which this book zeros in—one far more pervasive and pernicious than the antics of Jayson Blair—is the direct manipulation of the "straight" news story. We will examine precisely how the Times passes off editorial opinion as straight news—parsing the fraud to get an insight into the variety and nature of the techniques employed by the Times. We will also arrive at a better understanding of the power these techniques have over public opinion.
The particular power this passing off has on influencing readers is founded upon the following principle: The lacing of editorial opinion into what has the appearance of a straight news story lends a level of credibility to the opinion that is normally reserved for objective news.
The enhanced credibility afforded the editorial opinion when it is disguised as objective news makes the use of this deception a much more effective means of influencing the public than the mere expression of opinion in editorials and op-ed pieces.
However, the effectiveness of the deception (i.e., its usefulness as a means of influencing people) is limited by the extent to which people believe that the news, as reported by the Times, is impartial. In other words, the ability of the Times to leverage its news pages for the purpose of conveying an editorial agenda is a function of the paper's reputation for impartial reporting. The greater the reputation the paper has for impartial reporting, the more effective will be the slanting of that news as a means of influencing public opinion.
Until recently, the Times' reputation for impartial reporting "without fear or favor" had been legendary. Since at least as early as the 1960s, criticism of the Times as an arm of the Democratic party was largely limited to conservatives and conservative media watch groups. More recently, however, even the average Joe has noticed the left-wing editorial crusades masquerading as news on the front pages of the New York Times.
Opinion polls consistently confirm the public's conviction that the news is slanted (even 57 percent of Democrats believe so, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, which also reported that 56 percent of Independents and 69 percent of Republicans are convinced the press is biased). Bernard Goldberg's Bias and Ann Coulter's Slander, both of which, ironically, reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, have blown the lid off any remaining notion that the press is objective.
The Times is beginning to lose its reputation overseas as well. Andrew Sullivan, in his column for the Sunday Times of London (November 17, 2002) made this observation about media bias in the U.S.:
The classic American examples are National Public Radio and the New York Times. Virtually no Republicans work in either organization. The news stories reflect, in the case of NPR, a benevolent, well-meaning but thoroughly liberal view of the world. In the case of the New York Times, the news stories do exactly what they do in the [London] Guardian: they are designed, edited, and written to promote a political agenda.
The Times' ability to leverage its news division will continue to fade as the paper's reputation for objectivity continues to decline. Should the Times choose to continue using its news division to influence public opinion, it will have to adopt a more subtle means of deception.
Style Guide for Liberal Bias
Reporters for the New York Times, it seems, are expected not only to convey the liberal viewpoint on all political issues reported but also to impede the expression of the conservative viewpoint. This message was finally and formally revealed publicly when a Times op-ed page writer, when listing the reasons for the political losses suffered by the Democratic party in the 2002 midterm elections, admitted the following (Paul Krugman, November 8, 2002):
Talk radio and Fox News let the hard right get its message out to its supporters.
Being appalled at how other news outlets would "let" conservative messages be conveyed to the public, the Times editors are evidently committed to not "let" the same happen in their news organization.
Reporters for the Times should find the techniques detailed in this book particularly useful in currying the favor of their editors. In fact, viewed perversely, this book provides step-by-step instructions on how to disguise liberal opinions as objective news, a practice that has been raised to an art form by the New York Times and one that reporters can effectively learn by carefully studying their example.
A style guide for liberal bias, this book might also serve as a textbook at the Columbia School of Journalism if the professors there would not find it redundant. At worst, recent graduates may find it a useful reference in their daily search for the truth and for a means of twisting it to meet the political demands of their editors.
We also expect lay readers, even those who have already come to appreciate the works of Bernard Goldberg and Ann Coulter, will use this book as a tool for better understanding what they read in the New York Times.
Conservatives, for example, might replace their quality time with the Times' crossword puzzle with a new kind of daily game: exposing the fraud themselves by parsing the "straight" news stories on the front page and identifying each clever technique employed that day to influence public opinion. The bias is sometimes so laughably obvious that readers may often find this game more entertaining (and certainly easier) than completing the crossword puzzle.
If readers merely acquire a greater understanding of how the Times uses the news to influence public opinion, this book has served a valuable purpose. The Times has raised the practice of slanting the news to an art form, a brand of fraud having a subtlety the likes of which even a Jayson Blair might respect and a technique of propaganda that only a Soviet apologist could fully appreciate. It deserves to be studied, and studied carefully.
Excerpted from JOURNALISTIC FRAUD: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted © Copyright 2003 by Bob Kohn. Reprinted with permission by WND Books. All rights reserved.
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