First of all, NY Times' "reporter" Suskind stole his recent "Bush's Faith" article from Village Voice writer Rick Perlstein, who ran a strikingly similar article this Summer after interviewing several FReepers.
Second, Suskind has *already* been busted for falsely portraying CIA maps of Saudi Arabian oil fields as "proof" that GWB was after Iraq's oil...because those Saudi maps also showed Iraq on them.
Third, Suskind fabricated the quote from Bush of him supposedly saying that he was going to campaign with "his foot on Kerry's throat". Suskind wasn't even in attendance, and the NY Times has no way to support their claim that they "Fact checked" that quote because the NY Times wasn't even there. At best it's a 3rd hand source.
Fourth, the NY Times has run TWO apology stories in which it "apologized" for not being more skeptical of the world's claims of Hussein having WMD's...editorials that were transparent attempts to slam the President and perhaps trigger an undeserved apology from the White House.
...And all of this is coming from a newspaper that had to fire a reporter and two editors in this last year for outright FABRICATING stories and without fact-checking them!
One night in 1880, John Swinton, a preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honor at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying: "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)
John Swinton was born in Salton, Haddingtonshire, Scotland, 12 December, 1830. He received his early education from his uncle, the Reverend Robert Currie, emigrated in 1843 to Canada, and afterward to the United States, with his family, learned the printer's trade in Illinois, and practiced it for some time in New York city. He then received a course of classical instruction at Williston seminary, Massachusetts, and afterward traveled extensively through the United States. Feeling an abhorrence for slavery, he left Charleston, South Carolina, where he resided at the time, in order to take an active part in the free-state contest in Kansas. He returned to New York city in 1857, and began the study of medicine. While thus engaged he contributed articles to the " Times," afterward accepted an editorial place on that paper, and soon became managing editor. During the absences of Henry J. Raymond he had the sole control, and wrote a large number of the leading articles. He resigned the post of managing editor at the close of the war, on account of impaired health, but continued his connection with the journal as an editorial writer till the death of Mr. Raymond. Subsequently he was managing editor of the New York "Sun." He became a leader in the movement for labor-re-forms, and in 1883 severed his connection with the "Sun" in order to expound his political and social views in a weekly journal that he called "John Swinton's Paper," which he ceased to publish in 1887.
As an aside, his brother his brother, William, was born in Salton, Scotland, 23 April, 1833, was educated at Knox college, Toronto, and at Amherst, with the intention of becoming a Presbyterian minister, and in 1853 began to preach, but adopted the profession of teaching. He was professor of ancient and modern languages at the Edgeworth female seminary, Greensborough, North Carolina, in 1853-'4, and afterward went to New York city to take a professorship in Mr. Washington collegiate institute. While in the south he contributed to "Putnam's Monthly" some critical and philosophical articles, and a series of etymological studies that were afterward published under the title of "Rambles among Words : their Poetry and Wisdom" (New York, 1859; London, 1861). Having previously contributed articles to the New York "Times," he was taken on the staff of that journal in 1858, and in 1862 went to the seat of war as a correspondent. He was equipped for this work by close study of military art, and he discussed tactical movements with such freedom that in 1864 General Ambrose E. Burnside, whom he had criticized in his letters, procured an order for his exclusion from the camps of the army. He also, at a later date, incurred the displeasure of General Grant. In 1867 he traveled through the southern states and collected material for a history of the war from the military and civil leaders of the Confederacy. Returning to the office of the "Times," he resumed the work of literary criticism, in which province he had gained a reputation before he became a war-correspondent. Before abandoning journalism, he published in newspaper articles and in a pamphlet an exposure of the machinations of railroad financiers to procure subsidies. In 1869 he became professor of belles-lettres in the University of California, where he remained for five years. Subsequently he made Brooklyn, New York, his residence, devoting himself to the composition of educational works, most of which were widely adopted in public and private schools. For a series of these, which cover most of the studies pursued in schools, he received a gold medal at the Paris exposition of 1867 "for educational works of remarkable originality and value."
In 1917, Congressman Oscar Callaway inserted the following statement in the Congressional Record:
"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States.
These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found that it was only necessary to purchase control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of these papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers...
This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests being served." Feb 9, 1917, vol 54, pp.2947-48