All the News That's Fit to Scrub

Wall Street Journal ^ | 6/3/11 | James Taranto

[Nachum]

"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion," Jill Abramson told the New York Times yesterday upon being designated the paper's new executive editor. "If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth." This quote prompted blogress Ann Althouse, who is a much nicer person than we are, to contemplation: Let's analyze the analogy. A newspaper is like religion, believed in, and taken, unquestioningly, as true. Then what happens when you are in charge of it?

[SanFranDan]

(Newsbusters version) Incoming NYT Editor Recalls Considering Paper ‘Absolute Truth’; Times Scrubs Quote By Lachlan Markay | June 03, 2011 | 14:49

Some time on Thursday, the New York Times scrubbed a very telling quote from its website. “In my house growing up,” said the paper’s new executive editor, Jill Abramson, “The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

Well isn’t that nice. The paper’s new head honcho was indoctrinated in Times-ology from childhood. When someone says they read the paper “religiously,” we tend to think of it as a figure of speech. No so for Abramson. The paper was apparently her veritable scripture.

Does she still feel that way? Well, since being tapped for chief editor, Abramson said it was like “ascending to Valhalla.”

The Times must have realized how this sounded. National Review’s Jay Nordlinger noticed late Thursday night that the “absolute truth” quote no longer appeared in the online version of the story. To date, readers have not been notified of the change.

[ml/nj]

Hey Jill. I used to read the NYT religiously too. (for 40+ years) Now I almost never look at it. I don't know if it was always thus and I was just naive, but now the Letters to the Editor that you would never print appear here regularly at FR. They expose what you call news as half truths, propaganda, and outright lies; just as sure as we thought of the "news" in Pravda back in the old USSR days. You're taking over a moribund operation. Good luck.

ML/NJ