JAYSON FITS IN WELL WITH THE TIMES' LEGACY [Readers recall NYT's support of Hitler and Stalin]

The NY Post ^ | May 16, 2003 | various readers

[summer]

May 15, 2003 -- Your recent editorial "It's Not Just Jayson" (May 13) states, "The self-proclaimed 'paper of record' [The New York Times], you see, has credibility problems on at least two levels."

Make that three.

In an article, "Turning Away From the Holocaust" (Nov. 14, 2001), The New York Times admitted, "And there was failure, none greater than the staggering, staining failure of The New York Times to depict Hitler's methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe."

[summer]

[JulieRNR21]

Jay Leno remarked recently that the NY Times changed it's motto from "All the news that's fit to print' to 'We have to fill up these pages with something.'

[WorkingClassFilth]

Perhaps some FReeper can correct me here...

I believe there was a Black woman writing for the NYT within the last 20 years or so, that wrote an award winning (Pulitzer?) series of articles on the plight of an eight year old heroin addict.

Turned out to be totally bogus and made big news at the time. Anyone remember this?

[summer]

NY Post Columnists re Jayson Blair and The NYT:

Steve Cuozzo: Calcified Minds

From above link: "...The guy made stuff up on a regular basis; that he did so was widely known among Times staff and even among top editors. Yet with each new atrocity he was given more, not less, responsibility and assigned to cover stories of ever-greater national importance.

Blair was the elephant in the newsroom, like the family alcoholic whose boozing and brawling no one has the guts to interrupt. Even readers willing to give the Times the benefit of every doubt are going to ask why a newspaper so dysfunctional - so aloof from basic regard for truth - should be taken seriously. "

------------------------

William Raspberry: Scapegoating Diversity

From above link: "...Was I hired because I was black? Promoted because I was black? Who knows? What I do know is that scores of people, black, white, Asian and Hispanic, have come and gone over the years I've been at the Post - and that not all have gone willingly.

Oh, one more thing I've been around long enough to have seen before: the expert schmoozer, the colleague who uses some combination of charm, wit and ambition to worm his way into the affection of his seniors. I don't disparage the practice - indeed I recommend it to those capable of bringing it off. Isn't it obvious that it helps your career if the boss likes you? Or if your boss' boss is seen laughing and chatting with you?

Blair, by all accounts, was a first-rate schmoozer, and I don't doubt that it helped keep him afloat. It wouldn't be necessary to say any of this if the miscreant were white.

But Blair is black, and for too many of my colleagues that fact trumps everything else. If his credentials weren't checked, if he was promoted beyond his level of competency, if he ended up lying and stealing to support the image he worked to sell, and if his bosses believed the lies longer than they should have - don't you see?

It's because of affirmative action. "

-----------------------------------

[summer]

From the 2nd link in my above post:

...You see, I was around in the early 1980s, when Janet Cooke embarrassed The Washington Post with her made-up account of an 8-year-old heroin addict. Then, as now, the after-the-fact questioning proceeded along two main tracks: 1) How could the reporter have deceived so many smart people for so long? 2) What impact will the deception have on the prospects of other young black journalists?

One interesting point is the difference in the answers, then and now. In the days after Cooke had to give up her 1981 Pulitzer Prize, I found myself reassuring young black journalists and journalism students that they needn't worry about the Cooke affair. Janet, I told them,was one of a kind. She was a con artist who lied to advance her career, I said. It wasn't about race. ...

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

And this is the newspaper that Dan Rather had the audacity to tell Bill O'Reilly was "middle of the road"!!! Middle of the road to hell!

[summer]

This entire Jayson Blair matter reminds me of the following play, which was based on a true series of events in Manhattan:



The following info is from HERE.

According to the Small World Research Project, the phrase "Six Degrees of Separation" began after Harvard social psychologist Stanley Milgram sent 300 letters to randomly selected people in Omaha, Nebraska in 1967 with the instruction to get the letter to a single "target" person in Boston using only personal contacts. For the 60 letters that found their targets, Milgram gound that the average number of steps a letter took was around six.

In 1983, 19-year-old David Hampton [a black male]talked his way into the homes of well-off New Yorkers, including the Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, the President of New York's public TV station and Leonard Bernstein, by claiming to be the son of Sidney Poitier. (Actor/director Poitier has six daughters and no sons.) During his exploits, he promised people positions in an upcoming film production of his father's, accepted spending money from his hosts, and burgled items from their homes.

John Guare [a NYC playwright] learned of Hampton's ruse through friend Osborne Elliott, who was also one of Hampton's victims.

Published seven years later, "Six Degrees of Separation" explores issues of identity, privacy, race, homophobia and celebrity status. The fictionalized account of Hampton's imposture was well-recieved, packing theatres in New York and London as well as winning a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, an Obie Award (Best Play) and Hull-Warriner Award (Best Play).

Hampton filed a $100 million civil suit in 1992 against Guare, the Lincoln Center Theatre, producer Bernard Gersten, publisher Random House, and film rights owner MGM-Pathe Communications for compensatory and punitive damages. The courts did not rule in Hampton's favor, but did place a restraining order against Hampton for repeatedly threatening Guare.

[summer]

ANd, only the NY Post has reported that Jayson Blair had a "gal pal" at the NY Post who has since left her position on the photo staff, and this woman's mom was close personal friends with none other than: the NYT's Howell Raines.

[summer]

I meant to type the NY TIMES here:

And, only the NY Post has reported that Jayson Blair had a "gal pal" at the NY TIMES -- who has since left her position on the photo staff, and this woman's mom was close personal friends with none other than: the NYT's Howell Raines.

[summer]

From: Accounts of Imposters Since the 16th Century:

DAVID HAMPTON

20th century

In the early 1980s, 19-year-old David Hampton passed himself off as the son of actor Sidney Poitier, first using the ruse to gain entrance to Studio 54, an exclusive Manhattan nightclub. As David Poitier, Hampton told a number of Connecticut College students that he was casting a film version of Dreamgirls to be directed by his father. The students let Hampton stay in the dorms.

A few weeks later, Hampton used one of the students' address books to contact a couple in New York, telling them he was a friend of their daughter and that he had been mugged. They put him up for the night and gave him some money.

The next day he repeated the story to another couple with the same results. Hampton was arrested after his hosts discovered the next day that he had gone out during the night and brought back a friend, whom he tried to pass off as the son of Malcom Forbes.

[RAT Patrol]

I heard Jay Leno say it's now called the New York Once Upon a Times. ROTFL!

[Libloather]

Readers recall NYT's support of Hitler and Stalin...

I've heard that Henry Ford was against taking out Hitler.

Blixey Chicks philosophy...

[DPB101]

there was failure, none greater than the staggering, staining failure of The New York Times to depict Hitler's methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe."

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said this himself at a banquet for the 150th anniversary of the New York Times. C-Span covered it.

It is a stunning claim because the Times did cover the plight of Jews in Europe, just not as much as Sulzberger thinks the paper should have. On the other hand, the Times had two reporters, Walter Duranty and Harold Denny, who flat out denied Stalin was murdering millions of Soviet citizens. Pinch had to know this. His comments are, therefore, despicable. The full text of Duranty's 1933 article is here.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

NY Times = Useful idiot(s)

Useful idiots = "believers" who do not understand the truth

NY Times = "believers" who do not understand the truth

[nutmeg]

ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ping list.

[jscd3]

I believe there was a Black woman writing for the NYT within the last 20 years or so, that wrote an award winning (Pulitzer?) series of articles on the plight of an eight year old heroin addict.

You are thinking of a series written by Janet Cooke for the Washington Post. She won the Pulitzer prize. It was bogus, she had to return the prize, and she was banished from journalism. Different paper, same liberal principle...

[WorkingClassFilth]

Thanks for the prompt reply and factual information!

In addition to all of the troubles the NYT is having recently, they have, for some time, been running sufficient errors and bias to the point where their newsroom editor last summer instituted new policies aimed at restoring their flagging reputation for accuracy by insisting on double checking and vetting all source facts and quotes - worked well too. Anti-NYT websites dissect them daily and correct their errors. Episodes of bias are manifold and concrete to all but the most ardent NYT lackeys.

The broad middle of America is becoming much more than casually aware of the scope of bias and disinformation in our media. I suspect that the same kind of reactionary complex the Leftist media fostered among the populace to deride and dismiss politicians as corrupt in the wake of Nixon is finally taking root against them as well. Unfortunately, the broad-brush work they did in creating an apathetic votership went against them in the Krinton years as journalists and the White House rodents constantly bemoaned the popular notion that Krinton was a low-life opportunist. I can recall many articles that bristled at the shallow branding and pseudo-sophistication of a scandal-jaded populace that saw all politicians, including Krinton, as criminals and opportunists; like they hadn't been sold that formula for 25 years? The entire show 'West Wing' was created as a curative for that very problem - the desperate need to restore Leftists in the eyes of the common folk.

Conservatives, of course, have been tearing our hair out over media bias for years. This is our day in the sun and a chance to drive home some points with the folks of America - if - we don't misplay our cards. I don't buy Mr. Buckley's blithe dismissal of this episode and I wouldn't invest in NYT stock hoping for a bounce when this one blows over. I would, however, seek to find ways to inflict maximum damage on the Left through these scandals without creating spillage onto Conservative outlets.

[summer]

Yes; also see my post #5.

[summer]

Re your post #17 - Very interesting commentary. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And, you're welcome! :)

[DPB101]

Allen Myerson, an assistant business editor, took a dive out the paper's 11th floor Times Square office last August. Earlier in the year, financial reporter Agis Salpukas too a dive off a bridge into the Hudson River. Know why these two might have killed themselves?