Sunday, November 13, 2016

NY Times: "We're sorry, please buy our rag"

The New York Times--it's great for lining your parakeet's cage or getting the fire started in the hearth, but as a harbinger of honest journalism, don't count on it.

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. (his friends call him "Junior") the publisher of the daily that is handy for picking up after your dog, wrote a letter to readers Friday. He promised the paper would "reflect" on its coverage of this year's election while rededicating itself to reporting on "America and the world" honestly.

This implies that up to now, the Times did not cover this year's election honestly and their so called 'reporting' was as slanted as the deck of the Titanic an hour after the collision. 


Sulzberger inadvertently begged readers to continue buying the rag so that he could continue his current lifestyle.

"We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers," he wrote. 

He would have been more honest with writing "We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism like we used to anymore, but please hang in there and we will try to sound unbiased."

New York Post columnist and former Times reporter Michael Goodwin wrote "because it (The Times) demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump's supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn't have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president."

Sulzberger wrote the letter after his public editor Liz Spayd went after the paper for its crappy election coverage. She pointed out how Upshot, its polling feature gave Clinton an 84 percent chance of winning as voters went to the polls. 

That turned out to be as accurate as the Chinatown chicken predicting the Lottery. (For those who don't know, the chicken is only good a playing checkers.)

Spayd compared stories The Times ran that went negative on Trump and made Clinton look functional and organized. Trump was painted as a disorganized incompetent. 

"Readers are sending letters of complaint at a rapid rate," she wrote. "Here's one that summed up the feelings succinctly, from Kathleen Casey of Houston: 'Now, that the world has been upended and you are all, to a person, in a state of surprise and shock, you may want to consider whether you should change your focus from telling the reader what and how to think, and instead devote yourselves to finding out what the reader (and nonreaders) actually think.'"

She told of another reader who requested the rag focus on the electorate rather than "pushing the limited agenda of your editors."

"Please come down from your New York City skyscraper and join the rest of us."

But Sulzberger pulled "a Hillary" insisting the fireplace kindling Times covered both candidates fairly, but still he had to send a note of reminder to staffers to "give the news impartially, without fear of favor."

Artie, if you have to tell them how to be journalists at this point, they aren't journalists and you and your liberals have totally ruined the reputation of The Gray Lady.



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