For years I would often buy a copy of the New York Times, on my way to
the drapery factory. I liked to cross check the stories printed in
the Seattle Times and the Oregonian. But never in my wildest
imagination did I believe that the NY Times, or any of the major daily
papers, came close to being "liberal". Certainly the NY Times did not
speak for all of Corporate America, but nonetheless, it was answerable
to a segment of the Ruling Class. Just as is the Wall Street Journal.
Probably the closest to publishing straight, unbiased news was the
Christian Science Monitor. But I haven't read it in many years.
But newspapers depend upon advertisements to survive. And if you want
your enterprising paper to grow, you look to put your paper in front
of as many of the area's influential readers. This means that you
slant your reporting to favor that segment of the population. By
pleasing your targeted readers, you also attract the volume of
advertisers who cater to those folks.
Hence, there is no such a thing as straight, unbiased news.
When I was 9 years old I carried a paper route for the Seattle Star.
The Star was considered the Working/Union Man's paper. While the
paper had a decent number of subscribers, although not close to either
the Times or the PI, it could not sell enough advertising to sustain
itself. The ads were only a fraction as large as the same ads in the
two conservative papers. The Seattle Star went out of business in
1945, and the Working Class has not had a region-wide "voice" since
then. As long as we need to depend upon news that has been filtered
through our business world, it will reflect the views of that Class.
What bothers me is that so many Americans fail to understand that
their daily news, paper or radio or TV, is censored news.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/16/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The New York Times Shamefully Smears Bernie Sanders in Its Latest Lurch
Right
Friday, June 16, 2017
By Paul Blest, AlterNet | News Analysis
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks during Scott Gottlieb's confirmation
hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee,
on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 5, 2017. (Photo: Eric Thayer / The New
York Times)
After Donald Trump's stunning victory last November, major media outlets
have enjoyed a surge in donations from concerned citizens hoping to restore
a Fourth Estate that buckled and finally collapsed under the weight of the
2016 election. "Trump is the best thing to ever happen to the Times'
subscription strategy," executive editor Dean Baquet told CNN in February.
"Every time he tweets it drives subscriptions wildly."
It's a not a little dispiriting, then, that the New York Times has used its
new appointment as a leader of the #Resistance to run some of the most
reactionary opinion writing this side of the Weekly Standard. With its new
subscription dollars, it's hired a known climate denier and racist in Bret
Stephens, published a conspiracy theorist in Louise Mensch, and started an
ill-fated column asking people to say something nice about Donald Trump, to
offer just a few examples.
By and large, these takes have been confined to the paper's op-ed page. But
Wednesday's shooting in Alexandria, which left Republican whip Steve
Scalise
of Louisiana critically injured, has produced one exceptionally
irresponsible piece of reporting.
In a piece titled "Attack Tests Movement Sanders Founded," journalist
Yamiche Alcindor suggests that Sanders' supporters, if not the Vermont
senator himself, have somehow invited this kind of violence. (The shooter,
James Hodgkinson, had volunteered for the Bernie Sanders presidential
campaign in Iowa):
But long before the shooting on Wednesday, some of Mr. Sanders's supporters
had earned a belligerent reputation for their criticism of Hillary Clinton,
the Democratic Party and others who they believed disagreed with their
ideas. Sanders fans, sometimes referred to derogatorily as "Bernie Bros" or
"Bernie Bots," at times harassed reporters covering Mr. Sanders and flooded
social media with angry posts directed at the "corporate media," a term
often used by the senator.
The Times also quotes Harlan Hill, a Trump surrogate who has called
Sanders'
attacks on the president a "passive justification" for the shooting,
despite
the fact that his preferred politician has urged the NRA to assassinate
Hillary Clinton, audiences to beat up protesters at rallies, and so on. But
in her piece, Alcindor devotes just a single sentence to the many instances
Trump has encouraged acts of violence.
What Alcindor doesn't note, interestingly, is that Hodgkinson alluded to
Trump's Russia problems in several posts on his now-deleted Facebook page,
and called the president a "traitor." There's obviously considerable
overlap
between Sanders supporters and Democrats who are especially preoccupied
with
the Russia scandal, but Sanders himself has been critical of the focus many
in the party have placed on the issue. If Hodgkinson's heinous act is
somehow representative of Democratic socialism, isn't the same true of
those
who think (not without some merit) that Russia intervened on Trump's
behalf?
The ideological sibling to this argument, of course, is a curdled,
right-wing definition of the "left" best expressed by the National Review's
Kevin D. Williamson, who wrote that the "only thing resembling a genuine
totalitarian movement in American politics is the progressive camp from
which emerged the man who shot Steve Scalise." (Of course, in the immediate
aftermath of the shooting of Gabby Giffords in 2011, Williams used his
column to shill for gun manufacturers and lament that liberals like Keith
Olbermann would dare to blame Sarah Palin.)
The same criticisms being lobbed at so-called "Bernie Bros" were launched
at
Barack Obama supporters in 2008, Clinton backers during the same race and
again last year, and at Howard Dean devotees before both of them. On the
other side, mainstream Republicans have long been dismissive of Ron Paul
supporters for similar reasons. These fierce intra-party battles go back
generations-Taftbros physically fought Eisenhowerbots at the 1952
Republican
National Convention.
When actor Wendell Pierce attacked a Sanders supporter last year, there
were
no thinkpieces about the ferociousness of Clintonistas. Nor should there
have been; Pierce is just one man. Ascribing his actions to Clinton or the
nearly 17 million people who voted for her in the primary would be
spectacularly wrongheaded. Human life is politics, and as such, people
sometimes let their emotions get the best of them; that doesn't mean the
politics they got swept up in is at fault.
A mass shooting is something else altogether; any attempts to tether it to
a
political movement are as myopic as they are disingenuous. It's imperative
for the press to cast a critical eye on politicians, and Sanders is no
exception. But linking him, Clinton, or any politician to the violent
actions of their supporters does a disservice to readers hoping to
understand Hodgkinson's crimes.
The real takeaway, as Katie McDonough argued at Fusion on the day of the
shooting, should be that people who commit domestic violence should not be
able to buy guns. As has been the case in so many other mass shootings,
Hodgkinson had a history of abusing women, including partners and his own
daughter.
"We live in a country that lets domestic abusers keep their guns," she
wrote. "We are a country that never learns its lesson, and we are letting
them kill."
Hodgkinson may have loved Bernie Sanders and hated Republicans. But his
personal history sheds more light on his actions than a few memes and
Facebook posts ever will.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Paul Blest
Paul Blest is a freelance writer based in Raleigh, North Carolina. His work
has appeared in Vice, Salon, Noisey, New Republic, Indy Week and Deadspin.
Follow him on Twitter: @pblest.
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