Re: Sweden -- A few reactions on the N.Y. Times article

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dennis R Redmond wrote:

>On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Per Gunnar Berglund wrote:
>
>> I was under the impression that
>> the N.Y.T. was a first-class paper, but after reading this, I am no
>> longer very confident about that.
>
>Sad to say, the NY Times has been degenerating since the 1970s; its
>coverage of Central America in the Eighties gave new meaning to the term
>"abysmal", and its international news coverage can't hold a candle to the
>Wall Street Journal. I'll never forget my shock at discovering that even
>the regional paper in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, provided more
>sophisticated commentary and pointed analysis than the Times (this is
>even more true for TV and radio).

The NYT reflects whatever the U.S. high bourgeoisie is thinking, spun to
reflect how the high bourgies want the middle bourgies to think. And before
anyone jumps on me for "conspiracy" thinking, ask yourself if you know how
journalism is practiced. Look at the sources for news stories - government
officials, mainstream think tanks, consecrated academics. Journalists,
according to American ideology, are supposed to have no opinions or
expertise of their own; they're supposed to be neutral conduits for the
opinions and expertise of opinionated experts. Besides, journalists know
that the way to get ahead is to please the boss, and the further you go up
the boss chain, the closer you get to the middle and then the high
bourgeoisie.

So, the NYT was liberal in the 1960s and 1970s; took a sharp right turn in
the late 1970s and 1980s, under managing editor Abe Rosenthal ("a very
stupid and right-wing man," in Alexander Cockburn's accurate phrase), and
has moved towards the Clintonite center in the 1990s. Their news reporting
under Rosenthal was a disgrace; they gave front-page space to the scary
Claire Sterling to write her KGB-shot-the-pope story. With Rosenthal's
departure (to write an embarrassing column on the op-ed page) the news
reporting has improved considerably, but it's still a timid, conformist
paper.

The opinion pages are just awful. A friend of mine wanted to do an op-ed
piece on how the U.S. Constitution produced an ossified government and
social structure; they wouldn't even consider the article until they ran it
past the braindead columnist Anthony Lewis and some "expert" from the
Harvard Law School. (After Reagan left office, Lewis wrote a "How could we
have believed this stuff?" column about the Reagan years - referring to the
KGB plot to kill the pope, yellow rain, Libyan hit squads, and all the
other nonsense of the high 80s. I wrote to remind him that his own paper
had given front-page space to Sterling [even allowing her to call herself
"I," in violation of all Times standards!] and her KGB plot story. Lewis
wrote back saying, "I'd forgotten that.") Of course Lewis and the Harvard
"expert" said my friend's thesis was nonsense, so they wouldn't run it. The
page is scientifically designed so that only the most conventional thoughts
and prose will appear.

Doug