An Inside Look at How NYT's Ownership Meddled with Coverage to Push Their Pet Projects

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/media/inside-look-how-nyts-ownership-meddled-coverage-push-their-pet-projects

When Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post last month, many wondered if and how the newspaper’s coverage would change. Would ownership by a right-libertarian billionaire significantly change how the paper covered, for example, tax policy? Will the paper start critically covering the for-profit education empire Kaplan, the booming business run by its outgoing owner Don Graham?

A study by Daniel Chomsky, a political scientist at Temple University (and nephew of linguist and political scholar Noam Chomsky), sheds some light on how ownership can interfere in media coverage to pursue their own interests, wealth and social status.

Chomsky looked at memos written by Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who served as the publisher of the New York Times between 1935 and 1961, to the paper's managing editor, Turner Catledge. Focusing on a six-year period starting in 1956, Chomsky examined hundreds of “blue notes”—memos Sulzberger sent to Catledge mostly on blue paper—to see how they impacted news decisions. The file Chomsky studied contained 415 of these blue notes, at a rate of about 60 a year. Although the notes are not the only way Sulzberger communicated to Times staff, they provide tangible evidence of editorial intervention. Catledge would frequently internalize Sulzberger’s complaints, and then relay them to reporters as coming from “a reader.”

As one example of how the correspondences actually changed coverage, Sulzberger complained of coverage of a civil rights bill, leading Catledge to respond the next day: “You were absolutely right about the confused nature of our summary on the civil rights bill in yesterday’s paper. I hope you liked the one we had today. It was a direct result of your suggestions.”

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. K and R. So you save your really *good* stuff for the pre-dawn hrs. Eh, X ?

[xchrom]

2. LOL! i really have to stop going to bed so early. nt

[Laelth]

3. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[Agony]

4. free press my ass

NYT's "today"
"Slim isn’t just any investor, he’s the world’s second-richest man who also happens to be the second-largest shareholder of the New York Times. He has faced significant protests over his business practices in Mexico, but those protests have not made it onto the pages of the paper of record."


aren't we the exceptional ones...