Thursday, February 8, 2007
"Reliable" Newspapers
A comment to the "Princess of San Francisco" post a few days ago proposing that the New York Times and the Washington Post are America's most reliable newspapers was probably a bit of a tease, but I always enjoy replying to reader ideas. "Reliable" ... hmmmmmm ... I doubt that. Let's turn to some facts. Bunkerman has a good memory. Remember Jayson Blair who plagiarized stories for the New York Times (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair )? How about Janet Cooke, who won a Pulitzer Prize for fabricated stories for the Washington Post (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Cooke )? The most notorious is Walter Duranty, an apologist / defender of Stalin (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty ). Writing for the New York Times and winning the Pulizer Prize, he denied the Stalin-created famine in Ukraine that murdered millions and defended the famous show trials. My favorite book, "I Chose Freedom", by Victor Kravchenko, contains first hand experiences of that horrible period. Duranty appears to have been a racist in his denigrating view of Slavs. I think these counterexamples mean that the hypothesis that those two newspapers are "reliable" is false. QED.
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2 comments:
Bunkerman you need to read my posts a bit more carefully. I said they are the 'most' reliable. These two newspapers have employed thousands of reporters for over a century...of course there are going to be a couple bad apples. No one is perfect. But in the history of american journalism the New York Times and the Washington Post particularly stand out for their trustworthiness and accuracy. But if you are a conservative or republican any criticism of the US government ( and it's policies ) is strictly prohibitted. Thankfully the founding fathers weren't consulting the extreme right wing of the GOP when writing the first amendment. And I definitely wasn't teasing before ( or now).
Actually, Bud, the founding fathers did follow the extreme right wing policies - that's why we have a first amendment (and a second amendment) and the other eight (actually, nine now). Restricting government power is at the core of the Bill of Rights. It's too bad the ninth and tenth amendments are mostly gutted by activist courts. The New York Times and Washington Post are "reliable" proponents of an expansive government imposing its authority on the people. That is one reason they are so gullible sometimes and fall for frauds & liars who give them what they want, namely reasons to increase government power.
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