Is the NY Times a legitimate news source?

[Orwellian_Ghost]

I've seen nothing but disinformation, half-truths, historical revisionism, pro-Pentagon tripe in addition to the usual outright lies emanating from the primary megaphone of The State. Why is such an obviously pathetic propaganda organ considered legitimate?

[DainBramaged]

1. Didn't you get the message? The Reich wing HATES the NYT for it is a Libural truthiness teller

[HEyHEY]

4. What the fuck are you squaking about, they've been flogging your bailout

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. Which one?

In any case how is it the NY Times is considered legit when they have been proven to be liars on the grandest of scales time and again. And that doesn't even get to the obvious distortions of historical fact.

[DainBramaged]

10. Are they as bad as the Wall Street Journal? Fox News? The NY Post

The Washington times? Or is this just a new crusade here on DU?

[HEyHEY]

2. Yes, it is legitimate moreso than the zeigeist blog bullshit half of DU swears on every fucking day

The NYT is a good paper.

[JeffR]

9. Yes, it was.

Yes, it was.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

12. It's a good newpaper

in the sense that it serves the apparatus of The State with a continual stream of lies and outright distortions when not simply doing it's best propaganda work which is silence. The stories they won't cover are then not deemed important as they are the official paper of record. So in that sense they do their job well.

[HEyHEY]

13. If I believed for a second you knew what you're talking about, I might care

What's funny is that no matter how many news conferences I go to for work, I never see these "media conspiracy" fucks there asking their own questions.

[DRoseDARs]

24. Honest question: How many of these "news conferences you go to work for" require press credentials?

Can Cindy the Indy from JoeSchmuckConspiracyNewsCorp.com just waltz right in? Is anyone even going to call on her? Or are all the questions going to be fielded by people from contextually recognized new outlets? A local presser in Reno might field questions from KOLO (ABC affiliate) or the Reno Gazette Journal (local newspaper) or Hora (Spanish local newspaper), maybe even the News & Review ("alternative" or Indy newspaper, has iterations in Sacramento and Chico, CA, and Northern Nevada), but methinks Cindy is SoL.

[HEyHEY]

42. I'm rarely asked for credentials

Many times news conferences are held outside, or in lobbies, places like that. The only time I need credentials is going into the police press room or, depending on the situation, a high profile politician. Even then I just sign my name and media outlet on a little table then get handed a pass.

[cali]

27. What nonsense. what a a string of silly sloganeering.

I doubt you read it. The NYT is a mixed bag, but it sure the hell doesn't "serve the apparatus of the State"- at least not as a policy and not on a regular basis. Were what you're claiming true, it wouldn't publish over half of what it does publish. You make accusaations without a single example. And before you start, yes they bear a great deal of responsibility and blame for Miller. But the NYT is the only major paper that's called for the investigation and prosecution of bushco. It's the paper that's broken story after story that's adverse to bushco and repukes.

[HEyHEY]

44. Wait, ONE example was used down thread

Only it was an editorial.... something you're sometimes gonna agree with and you're sometimes not going to agree with, but according to these people the NYT should be printing their viewpoint ALL THE TIME.

[TreasonousBastard]

32. I agree, but I bet a hundred crickets just...

put you on ignore.

After all, you're in the business-- so what could you possibly know?

[Richard Steele]

3. Looks like you've answered your own question.

If I disagreed with you, I would post a response.
But since I don't, I won't.

No response necessary.

[JeffR]

6. Not for many years.

Ditto the Washington Post. They both threw their credibility away. Two more casualties of the Bush Era.

[EFerrari]

7. They have to be fact checked just like everyone else. n/t

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. Does Rupert Murdoch own it?

[cali]

28. no.

[Enrique]

11. I feel I can usually count on what's in there being true

while keeping in mind examples of what you describe. My favorite is their editorial "Hugo Chavez Departs," lauding the 2002 coup.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

14. Sadly typical

Hugo Chávez Departs

Published: April 13, 2002

With yesterday's resignation of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chávez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona. But democracy has not yet been restored, and won't be until a new president is elected. That vote has been scheduled for next spring, with new Congressional elections to be held by this December. The prompt announcement of a timetable is welcome, but a year seems rather long to wait for a legitimately elected president.

Washington has a strong stake in Venezuela's recovery. Caracas now provides 15 percent of American oil imports, and with sounder policies could provide more. A stable, democratic Venezuela could help anchor a troubled region...

<snip>

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E1D8153CF930A25757C0A9649C8B63

The interests of the NY Times dovetail with those of the Corporate State. They are one and the same.

[onenote]

64. OMG!! The NY Times ran an editorial!! Shock! Horror!!

You realize how silly you sound?

[EFerrari]

17. My favorite is when they called us conspiracy theorists for questioning Ohio

WHILE they sat on the wiretapping story.

[seemslikeadream]

21. They were the first to report on Don Sieglman............

NOT

[EFerrari]

25. They reported that the Venezuelan referendum would not be monitored

except it was. And the story went viral.

[Judi Lynn]

55. They have used three different reporters on Venzuelan stories, 3 who are ALL slippery.

One had to quit fairly early when he was outed as someone who's totally involved in the opposition politics in Caracas. To the hilt. Simon Romero. He also belongs to several US-taxpayer-funded NGO's there. Now he writes his own virulent blog, after spending some time working for a British newspaper briefly.

Juan Forero, now with the Washington Post, has been a constant source of pro-fascist spew for ages, including his Colombia reporting.

Francisco Toro is the third completely untrustworthy "journalist."

NY Times reporter quits over conflict of interest
By Al Giordano

Jan. 14— The New York Times’ Venezuela problem continued to snowball yesterday as its Caracas correspondent Francisco Toro resigned.

Toro acknowledged, in a letter to Times editor Patrick J. Lyons, “conflicts of interest concerns” regarding his participation in protest marches and his “lifestyle bound up with opposition activism.”

Toro’s obsessive anti-Chavez position in Venezuela was publicly known after last April’s coup when he began sending emails to Narco News and other journalists whom he placed on his own mailing list attacking Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. That the Times hired him in the first place was a violation of the Times’ own claims to objective and disinterested reporting. But regarding Venezuela, it was not the first.

Toro’s resignation is the latest in a long series of missteps and misdeeds by the New York Times and its reporters regarding the newspaper’s one-sided and inaccurate Venezuela coverage.

Last April, the Times editorial board had to issue a public apology — sent to journalist Jules Siegel by editorial board member Gail Collins. She said, “Nobody should ever cheer the overthrow of a democratically elected government. You’re right, we dropped the ball on our first Venezuela editorial.”

Also last April, New York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had “resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on Apr. 13, wrote a puff piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona — installed by a military coup — as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution and sent his shock troops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office.

Forero — who allowed US Embassy officials to monitor his interviews with mercenary pilots in Colombia, without disclosing that fact in his article — was caught again last month in his unethical pro-coup activities in Venezuela. Narco News Associate Publisher Dan Feder revealed that Forero and LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller had written essentially the same story, interviewing the same two shopkeepers in a wealthy suburb of Caracas, and the same academic “expert” in a story meant to convince readers that a “general strike” was occurring in Venezuela. The LA Times Readers Representative later revealed that Forero and Miller interviewed the shopkeepers together. Neither disclosed that fact.

More:
http://www.theglobalreport.org/issues/210/mediawatch.html

[seemslikeadream]

15. Some move up to FoxSnooze

[Gwendolyn]

16. Film and book reviews; and the occasional editorial to keep it balanced. That's about it.

[cali]

29. occasional editorial? try nearly every day. And it's one of the few papers

left in the entire country that still does investigative reporting.

[Gwendolyn]

34. The way they capitulated to the party line before the Iraqi occupation...

was unforgivable to me; they aided and abetted in the spreading of lies and propaganda when the entire world knew what was going on, and I will never trust the NYT to bring the truth again. I should've specified it was my personal opinion.

[Warren Stupidity]

18. They engaged in a pack of 'purpose driven lies' on Iraq.

And do not expect much better from them on Israel/Palestine reporting. In some areas they are the best there is, but when they decide to go bullshit, they go bullshit all the way.

[Mudoria]

19. Yes it is..

[New Dawn]

20. NYT only represents the economic and political interests of the richest 10%.

That is why right-wingers (i.e. the so-called "centrists") claim that is a "legitimate news source."

[emilyg]

22. Not in a long time.

[TreasonousBastard]

23. Even the sports section? Do you have some examples, or...

am I, who reads the Times daily, to simply disbelieve everything in there on your sayso?

(There are times when the news of the day is not what you wish it to be.)

[cali]

30. The OP is someone who thinks Counterpunch is a shining example of journalism

By and large the NYT is a solid paper with thoughtful editorials and decent reporting. Yes, they've had some major screwups- most notably, the Miller debacle, but beyond that, it's not bad at all.

[TreasonousBastard]

31. The OP seems ot have a lot of friends...

believing the same thing.

I read Counterpunch, and a lot of the rest of the alternatives but it's interesting that much of their "reporting" is simply editorializing on (and complaining about) stuff they picked up from the Times or WaPo.

[HEyHEY]

52. EXACTLY, that's why I laugh at them

They read real news outlets, form an opinion, that leads to a theory, look up information in a biased way to support that opinion (Usually from other newspapers) then call it journalism.

[EFerrari]

60. The "real" news outlets often have actual facts despite themselves

that someone with half a brain can use to piece together what's actually going on -- like the Prop H8 flap. Black voters did not pass it in California as all the outlets "reported". Older voters and Catholics did. In order to figure that out, you had to read all the crap for about three or four days and look at a number of polls that no one was reporting but that sat there on websites like Loyola's poll of Los Angeles County. You had to figure in that this year we had a record number of black voters and did nearly 10 pts BETTER than last time without such a big black turnout. You had to do homely things like crawl the Secretary of State's website for election results and find an accurate way to break them down. You had to look at precinct maps and their median ages. You had to follow local CA news while the information bubbled up to the surface.

So, no. The serious work isn't done as a knock off in response to propaganda, as counterspin. It actually strip mines propaganda for facts accidentally included and requires digging out confirmation from other sources.

There is a lot of crap on the net masquerading as news reporting. Then again, there's a lot of crap at the NYTs and at the WaHo masquerading as "reporting", like when they tried to tell us Bruce Ivins could be in Frederick and in Princeton AT THE SAME TIME.

[Fumesucker]

33. Other than that, Mrs Lincoln

How was the play?

The fact is that the Times cannot be trusted, and the more vital the story the less trust can be accorded to the paper.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

[Peace Patriot]

26. No. n/t

[Deep13]

35. What source are you using to establish that the NYT is lying?

Just wondering.

[bottomtheweaver]

37. How about their own admission to start with:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4710796&mesg_id=4710796

[Orwellian_Ghost]

40. Remember this?

Won't Get Fooled Again?
NYT, networks offer scant skepticism on Iran claims

2/2/07

The most important lesson about the Iraq War for reporters was perhaps the simplest one: Don't assume the White House is telling the truth. It's a lesson that many reporters seem to be forgetting now that U.S. officials are escalating their claims about Iran's role in Iraq.

<snip>

The next day, the New York Times ran a remarkably similar story (1/31/07), again relying exclusively on anonymous government officials (U.S and Iraqi). While the Times did note that "Officials cautioned that no firm conclusions had been drawn and did not reveal any direct evidence of a connection," the paper nonetheless went on at some length describing the theory that an off-shoot of the Mahdi Army connected to the Iranian government was behind the attack. The Times report relied exclusively on unnamed officials. The article's entire sourcing:

"Investigators say...according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable...The officials said...Officials cautioned... A senior Iraqi official said... An Iraqi knowledgeable about the investigation said... the Iraqi said... the senior Iraqi official said, citing information directly from the prime minister's office... Another senior Iraqi official said... the official said ...the American military has said... the military said... An American military official said... the military official said... officials say... Two American officials in Washington confirmed... One of those officials said... The second official said...."

While some of this reporting could be accurate, it just as easily could be part of a Bush administration campaign to drum up talk of Iranian involvement in the Iraq War. Since many reporters seem conscious of that very real possibility, journalists should treat such anonymous chatter very skeptically. They should also, at a bare minimum, consult experts who could shed light on whether the claims from administration officials make any sense in the context of what is known about Iran's influence in Iraq.

<snip>

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3037

The NY Times is propaganda. Those who read it as a valid news source probably identify more closely with the status quo and ruling elites than they might care to admit.

Do you think all those high-priced advertisements and the corporations who pay for them want real news ruining the day of their readership? The Empire will have none of that.

[architect359]

36. Actually, yes, I do think that it is a good source of news. eom

[leftofthedial]

38. Hasn't been since the early 80's.

[DevonRex]

39. Nope. That's why I cancelled my subscription. The editorial

section is pretty good. I love Frank Rich. But that doesn't make up for their lazy reporting.

[SteppingRazor]

41. You mean the NY Times that listed Bush's blunders the day before the 2008 election?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04tue1.html?hp


Or the NY Times that editorialized that Bush cooked the intelligence to justify a war against Iraq just a few weeks ago?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07sun2.html


I'll grant you that some of the Times' reportage over the past eight years has been woefully insufficient (particularly under the bylines of Judith Miller and a few others), but to say you've seen NOTHING but "disinformation, half-truths, historical revisionism, pro-Pentagon tripe" only shows that you haven't actually been reading the paper.

[devilgrrl]

43. No, I think he means the Times that published Judith Miller's bullshit promoting the war in '02

How soon we forget.

[HEyHEY]

45. They printed what info they knew

Had they had something to the contrary, they'd have printed that. I can't even tell you how often I've had to file a story that I KNEW had a lot more to it, but had absolutely no way to prove it. So, you file then you get back at it. Sometimes you find something, sometimes you don't. Brown enevelopes rarely get dropped on desks and, as a friend of mine once said, they're usually bullshit.

[SteppingRazor]

46. Um ... I mentioned that in my post. Did you even read it?

The point is, he said he saw "nothing" in the NY Times other than the various synonyms for drivel and propaganda. And that's clearly not the case.

[devilgrrl]

53. no, I had just woken up. Next time I'll wait respond after coffee.

Sorry.

:hangover:

[SteppingRazor]

62. No prob. In the pre-coffee morning, I'm more half-cocked than anyone.

:hi:

[Romulox]

47. NYTimes = Corporatist shill. nt

[gravity]

48. If it pisses off the far left and right, then it probably is a legitimate news source

[GoneOffShore]

50. Ding, ding, ding!

We have a winner.

The Golden Tin Foil Hat Award for pointing out that the CT'ers live on both sides of the aisle!

[Uncle Joe]

59. What if yesterday's moderates or even conservatives are today's far left?

Today, General and President Eisenhower's farewell address sound like the utterances from a flaming liberal, his gravest warnings have come to pass.

When was the last time, the New York Times or any of the corporate media reported on our dysfunctional out sized military budget's adverse effects on the general economy, national deficit, or public/foreign policy?

[question everything]

49. More so than an Iranian one which graced the homepage of DU

yesterday.

At least, you will find letters and op-ed pieces in the NYT criticizing it. Try to find something like that in an Iranian newspaper, or a Venezuelan one.

And if you reside in any of these states and even attempt to criticize the local media, you are putting your life and liberty in jeopardy.

But, hey, DUers happily criticize the government and the media in this country, taking for granted than nothing will ever happen to them or to their families.

Not that they do not deserve criticism, but some perspective can help. Especially when places like Iran and Venezuela (and Hamax and Hezbollah) are put on a pedestal.

[HEyHEY]

51. Actually, venezuelan papers knock they government all the time, man

Iran, not so much.

[Judi Lynn]

56. If you only bothered to learn anything at ALL about the Venezuelan media, you wouldn't have

to keep repeating your fantastically twisted, bogus comments:

Venezuela's Media Coup
lookout
By Naomi Klein
This article appeared in the March 3, 2003 edition of The Nation.


In Venezuela, even color commentators are enlisted in the commercial media's open bid to oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chávez. Andrés Izarra, a Venezuelan television journalist, says that the campaign has done so much violence to truthful information on the national airwaves that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. "I think their licenses should be revoked," he says.

It's the sort of extreme pronouncement one has come to expect from Chávez, known for nicknaming the stations "the four horsemen of the apocalypse." Izarra, however, is harder to dismiss. A squeaky clean made-for-TV type, he worked as assignment editor in charge of Latin America at CNN en Español until he was hired as news production manager for Venezuela's highest-rated newscast, El Observador on RCTV.

On April 13, 2002, the day after business leader Pedro Carmona briefly seized power, Izarra quit that job under what he describes as "extreme emotional stress." Ever since, he has been sounding the alarm about the threat posed to democracy when the media decide to abandon journalism and pour all their persuasive powers into winning a war being waged over oil.

Venezuela's private television stations are owned by wealthy families with serious financial stakes in defeating Chávez. Venevisión, the most-watched network, is owned by Gustavo Cisneros, a mogul dubbed "the joint venture king" by the New York Post. The Cisneros Group has partnered with many top US brands--from AOL and Coca-Cola to Pizza Hut and Playboy--becoming a gatekeeper to the Latin American market.

Cisneros is also a tireless proselytizer for continental free trade, telling the world, as he did in a 1999 profile in LatinCEO magazine, that "Latin America is now fully committed to free trade, and fully committed to globalization.... As a continent it has made a choice." But with Latin American voters choosing politicians like Chávez, that has been looking like false advertising, selling a consensus that doesn't exist.

All this helps explain why, in the days leading up to the April coup, Venevisión, RCTV, Globovisión and Televen replaced regular programming with relentless anti-Chávez speeches, interrupted only for commercials calling on viewers to take to the streets: "Not one step backward. Out! Leave now!" The ads were sponsored by the oil industry, but the stations carried them free, as "public service announcements."

They went further: On the night of the coup, Cisneros's station played host to meetings among the plotters, including Carmona. The president of Venezuela's broadcasting chamber co-signed the decree dissolving the elected National Assembly. And while the stations openly rejoiced at news of Chávez's "resignation," when pro-Chávez forces mobilized for his return a total news blackout was imposed.

Izarra says he received clear instructions: "No information on Chávez, his followers, his ministers, and all others that could in any way be related to him." He watched with horror as his bosses actively suppressed breaking news. Izarra says that on the day of the coup, RCTV had a report from a US affiliate that Chávez had not resigned but had been kidnapped and jailed. It didn't make the news. Mexico, Argentina and France condemned the coup and refused to recognize the new government. RCTV knew but didn't tell.

More:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030303/klein

[question everything]

63. From 2003? A lot happened since then

A hostile political atmosphere under the government of President Hugo Chavez has continued to affect the largely pro-opposition private media. One result has been a steady decline in press freedom over the past several years-a trend that continued in 2005-reflected in the government's enactment of legislation prohibiting the broadcast of certain material, its intimidation toward and denial of access to private media, and the continued harassment of journalists, directed primarily at those employed by private media outlets.

The legal environment for the press deteriorated in 2005 owing to two new restrictive laws that have increased the severity of punishments for desacato (disrespect) and expanded the "social responsibility" constraints for radio and television. The Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, signed into law in December 2004, contains vaguely worded restrictions that could be applied to severely restrict freedom of expression. For example, the law forbids graphic depictions of violence between 5 am and 11 pm on both television and radio. Another worrying development occurred on March 16, when the so-called overhaul of the penal code took effect. The revised code makes insulting the president punishable by 6 to 30 months in prison and makes comments that could "expose another person to contempt or public hatred" subject to one to three years in prison on top of a severe fine. In July, the Office of the Attorney General invoked the new desacato provisions to investigate the Caracas?based daily El Universal for an article that allegedly criticized his office and the judiciary.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=251&year=2006

And what about Iran? It was that source that appeared in DU Homepage on Sunday, quoting a Venezuelan paper..

[Judi Lynn]

58. Clearly you don't mind embarrassing yourself. DU'ers have discussed Venezuelan media

in depth for YEARS here, and the serious ones among us know you are attempting to pass some real garbage around in place of truthful discussion.

Instead of yammering, why don't you break down and do your homework, like everyone else who intends to enter the discussion?
Take the time to find out about the subject, instead of "winging it."

Media Democracy in Venezuela

~snip~
In fact, the Chavez government has been exceptionally tolerant in its treatment of the press. Venezuela is one of the freest countries in the world. The right of freedom of expression is strongly guaranteed in Chavez’s constitution of 1999. Media is not censored. Journalists are not fined or imprisoned. This despite the fact that many journalists and media channels have been receiving massive amounts of money from the US government as part of its seven year campaign to distort the truth, destabilise and overthrow Chavez.

The real democratic deficit in the Venezuela media is the glaring contradiction between the massive majority of Venezuelan people who support the Chavez revolution and the overwhelming majority of the media who oppose it. Even after the non-renewal of RCTV’s terrestrial licence, 79 out of Venezuela’s 81 television stations will remain privately owned along with 94% of radio stations and 98% of newspapers. Indeed RCTV will still be able to pour out its vitriolic attacks through cable and satellite.

What explains this drastic contrast between public support for Chavez and the media opposition? Quite simply that the Venezuelan media is owned by a few rich men who despise the actions being taken by the Chavez government to share the wealth of the country with all Venezuelans rather than just with the elite who have monopolised it since Simon Bolivar’s time.

More:
http://www.democracyunlimited.org/mediademocracyinvenezuela.html

[EFerrari]

61. You obviously don't read the Venezuelan press

which savages Chavez every day. lol

[EstimatedProphet]

54. Would you know a legitimate news source if you saw one?

[aldo]

57. Of course not, Judith Miller didn't even report to her editors

She spat at them. Her true boss was Cheney and her job was to impersonate a journalist. The journalism side of the NY Times is mere window dressing for its true mission, propaganda.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

65. The New York Times and Gaza: Justifying genocide

The New York Times and Gaza: Justifying genocide

31 December 2008

On the fourth day of the Israeli aerial blitz against the population of Gaza, the New York Times, the mouthpiece of US establishment liberalism, weighed in on the subject for the first time on its editorial pages.

In a lead editorial, the Times made its position clear in short order. "Israel must defend itself," it began. "And Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory."

There is little to distinguish the "newspaper of record's" version of events from the mendacious account being peddled by the American media in general: the Palestinians are the aggressors and Israel the victim. Never mind the grim and unequal equation of the conflict: roughly 100 Palestinians killed for every Israeli.

The Times' potted explanation of the war, presented as though it were common knowledge and irrefutable fact, conveniently ignores that it was the Israeli military which broke the cease-fire with a provocative cross-border raid into the Gaza Strip in which six members of the Hamas security force were killed. The date of the raid was November 4, not by coincidence Election Day in America. The timing is an indication that the attack was a politically calculated provocation by the Israeli regime, which it held in abeyance until after the electoral contest in the US, its indispensable patron, had been concluded.


<snip>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/pers-d31.shtml