It's interesting. Traditionally, The New York Times has been considered to be,
"the paper of record", which means it was as unbiased as one could expect, and
most people, literate people, in the New York metro area, considered it to be
"liberal". People whose views were right of center, at least people whom I've
encountered, consider it to be left wing. So it wasn't until sometime after
2003, that I began to see it as an arm of government propaganda and also, a
tool of the Israel lobby. And it's possible that the paper has changed because
it did publish the pentagon papers in the 70's.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2017 11:52 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The New York Times Shamefully Smears Bernie
Sanders in Its Latest Lurch Right
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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