May 30, 2003

May 30, 2003

NEW YORK TIMES OR MINISTRY OF TRUTH ?

Yale Kramer

Yesterday’s New York Times had a piece buried on its back pages which tells us that Rick Bragg, one of Howell Raines’ hottest correspondents, Pulitzer Prize winner, and teacher’s pet, has resigned because it was revealed last week that he submitted stories written or largely contributed to by others as though they were his work alone. He was suspended with pay last week, pending an investigation, and when the Washington Post interviewed him he told them dang blast it everybody does it, what I done. Besides, boo hoo, I have diabetes.

Whereupon the whole National Desk, dozens of outraged correspondents rose up in arms and shot off emails to each other, especially crabby old Peter Kilborn who says Times reporters are noble and pure and good and true and hardworking and Rick Bragg is the only rotten apple in the barrel.

As you would expect, what the Times printed today was the children’s version of the story and of Peter Kilborn’s email. If you want the x-rated version click on a Newsweek Web exclusive by Seth Mnookin.

It is not hard to see, reading the lines and what’s between them, that the reason for the outrage is not that Bragg degraded the Times standards, but that his practices were tolerated and rewarded—just as with Jayson Blair—by the big boss Howell Raines. Prejudice and favoritism in the newsroom:

Kilborn’s e-mail also touched on a number of other long-simmering complaints about the culture at the Times….Within minutes of being sent to about 20 other national correspondents and two editors, replies started to come in. Tim Egan wrote, “Glad to hear you say what I have been feeling …. The problem is we’ve had a two-tier system that has allowed Bragg to carve out one system for him, (cutting corners, using a huge stringer network, telling people he can’t be edited) and another for everyone else ….What will come of this infighting, cannibalism, and soul-searching? Hopefully, we’ll go back to valuing what we have: people who care about the drift of this country, and are given the time and respect to tell it right.”

Come again? What was that you said, Tim Egan? “Hopefully, we’ll go back to valuing what we have:people who care about the drift of this country, and who are given the time and respect to tell it right.” Sometimes in moments of high passion bits of the unvarnished truth slip out.

“The drift of this country"? What can he possibly mean by that? Is there any doubt that what he means is the drift towards conservatism. What he means is that the people of this country have been rethinking their views about a number of things and now have values which are different from the values of the New York Times. And we reporters must all work together and “tell it right,” which means tell it left. What he means is that it is his mission to change the mind of the people not by telling the straight facts and letting the people decide what they mean, but by “telling it right” and since the Times, or rather, Howell Raines and Pinch Sulzberger alone knows what is right, the facts have to be screened, selected, polished, spun, and nuanced in order to print—“all the news that fits, we print.”

How do they do it without lying or grossly distorting—which if you do and get caught at it you get fired? It’s called nuanced reporting and editing. Editors do it by selecting some stories and spiking others; by placement in the paper and size—a story they don’t like gets buried on the obituary page and is reduced to an inch of space, a story they like gets front page treatment; by headline—an important but editorially unpleasant fact can be left out of a headline, or an opposite meaning can be given to a headline than what the story implies.

Reporters have their own methods of nuancing their stories so that they come out “right.” Some of these are: the use of subtly shaded meaning to give a slightly negative tone, such as “parents who are immaculately coiffed”; or identifying someone whose opinion they don’t like as a “conservative” or as working for a “conservative think tank,” which is Timestalk for saying discount this opinion, because if the reader were simply told the opinion without the qualifying label, he or she might accept it as having merit. Another method is to counter an unkosher opinion with an anonymous contradictory a opinion—“others, however, do not agree with Mr. X.”

The net result is a “Ministry of Truth” with a social and cultural agenda that wants to subsidize pacifism, idealize blacks, feminize men, masculinize women, normalize homosexuality, socialize the country, anti-semitize the middle east, demonize southern and mid-western Christians, and canonize victims. Did I leave anything out?

Today’s Times illustrates some of these trends and methods. One third of today’s front page, front page mind you, the most valuable real estate in America, is devoted to a story about two Palestinian murderers. It’s a pseudo-introspective story whose headlines suggest that we’re gonna find out what makes these two handsome people tick. The stories depict the two murderers as deeply religious, courageous, intelligent, studious, victimized, and admirable in every way. And the major thrust of the story is not that they are either bad or deranged but that they are martyrs.

Now let’s move on to the Metro section, front page. There you can’t miss a story which is ostensibly about a new kind of career or business called “party motivators.” These are firms or individuals who work for businesses or independently. These people assist party givers—corporations, wedding caterers, etc. The trend is not local but nationwide so the story didn’t have to be a Metro story, and it could even have been a business story. But the story got its juice from the fact that according to its author, Elissa Gootman, many of the parties that these party motivators work at are Bar or Bat Mitzvahs. It’s not exactly an anti-semitic story, after all, the reporter is probably Jewish herself, but, but….

It doesn’t describe any of those corporate parties that motivators work at, and surely there must be a couple of examples of non-Jewish weddings around, but no, the story is about Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of the rich and vulgar. It’s a kind of reverse Nazi view of Jews. Instead of showing them as rat-like, dirty, physically ugly specimens, in Ms. Gootman’s story they are morally unattractive, shameless practitioners of wretched excess. The teenagers are depicted as over-privileged, bored, over-sexed, over-indulged, by parents who are bored, over-sexed, competitive, hyper-materialistic, immaculately coiffed, and eager to spend tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand dollars on their kids,’ shall we say, spiritual life.

Ms. Gootman says “You can have a good party without Mr. Hughes [party motivator]. But whether you can have a successful Bar Mitzvah without at least a handful of motivators is debatable.” I guess she means that Jewish parents aren’t intelligent, imaginative, or motivated enough to create a celebration for their kids without black actors flown in from the Coast or blond shiksas.

Did the Times editors create this invidious racial comparison for today’s edition consciously—knowing that readers might make a connection? No, probably not. But in view of the Times’ anti-rich, anti-bourgeois, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian biases, it was bound to happen and will doubtlessly happen again. Anyone, please call me when you see a front-page story in the Times about an attractive, idealistic Israeli youth murdered by Arab fanatics (oops, sorry, idealists) or about a bar mitzvah with spiritual authenticity in a modest synagogue celebrated by everyday people.