'NY Times' Editor Rips Book Review in Own Paper (whines a lot)

Editor and Publisher ^ | 08/20/05 | E&P Staff

[Pikamax]

"In this, Posner the polemicist is sadly consistent with Posner the federal appeals court judge, who has been notably hostile to the idea that the First Amendment affords journalists special protections."

There is why he hates him, the judge doesn't think that reporters are special people.

[T Lady]

Judge Posner must've really touched a nerve, especially for all the Major League Whiners to be pig piling him.

[Uncle Hal]

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

[popdonnelly]

If Mr. Keller is trying to convince us that various segments of the news media are not biased and prejudiced, he is wasting his time and ours.

[agite rem mente]

Bill Keller is one of the most biased and rabidly anti-catholic persons on the scene today. In an article on the opus ed page in May about 3 years ago, he ranted on and on about John Paul II and his various sins - the usual litany - abortion, homosexuality, married and women priests etc. He should recuse himself for writing anything about or for catholics.

[Doug Loss]

the idealism of reporters who think they can make the world better,

Reporters aren't supposed to be idealistic and to make the world better. They're supposed to report what's going on to the public and let the public make their judgments accordingly.

the quest for peer recognition

And there we have another major failing, although a human one. Everyone wants to be liked. For "journalists" it appears to trump the truth.

He makes no allowance for the possibility that conscientious reporters and editors are capable of setting aside their personal beliefs or standing up to their advertisers (and the prejudices of their readers) to do work they believe in.

Facts not in evidence. Well, I suppose if the work you believe in is to see your political ideology destroy all others, it may be true. But if you mean fair and unbiased reportage this is a milk-through-the-nose statement.

[ncountylee]

So whose fault...the Jews or Bush?

[NathanBookman]

" the editor of The New York Times has written a letter to the editor ripping a recent book review in his own paper."

I wonder if he stamped the letter and mailed it, or just put it in his Out box and immediately moved it to his In box. And I wonder if he threatened to cancel his subscription?

By the way, I am sure the editor has written to himself before, but he previously would sign it with a fake name and then publish it. He must have forgotten this time.

[ClearCase_guy]

the idealism of reporters who think they can make the world better

The problem in a nutshell. And he thinks it's the solution.

[Fenris6]

Ah yes, the New Yorks Times - so professional...

[Enchante]

"...he “weirdly” makes almost no distinction “within the vast category of American media, between those that are aggressively partisan and those that strive to keep opinion sequestered from news, between outlets that invest in serious reporting and those that simply riff on the reporting of others, between the sensational and the more high-minded, between organizations that hasten to correct errors and those that could not care less, between the cartoonish shout shows on cable TV and the more ambitious journalism of, say, the paper you are holding in your hands."

Keller is such a farcical excuse for an editor. He thinks his NY Times falls on the "high minded" side of each of the dichotomies in the quotation above. In reality, his own paper is so 'aggressively partisan' and biased and 'sensational' (when it suits their left-liberal causes)... etc. It is downright HILARIOUS when he (implicitly) characterizes his NY Slimes as among the media organizations which "hasten to correct errors" since anyone who has followed the Slimes even slightly knows it is very difficult to get them to correct even egregious errrors and of course the corrections of major front page errors are always buried in small print on the inside.

I'm glad Posner got under this skin - he must be feeling very defensive and inadequate to need to respond in this extraordinary way that's almost unheard of in the newspaper business.

[FOXFANVOX]

This is just too funny. Perhaps, Bill Keller should use the wonderful journalism he is touting to review his own paper's reporting. I am a former Democrat, not a "crazy far right conservative" who was raised on Long Island reading the NYT as gospel. It has fallen far from those haughty years. The bias of the Times can be seen as much in the stories that they refuse to report as it can in the ones that they do. Further, any time I see agreement from Bill Moyers, I can only presume the opinion is tainted. Moyers has been revealed as an idealogue himself and exposed as using NPR to his own economic advantage.

Perhaps, this is just an effort at the Times to pretend to be "balanced". Well, they will have to demonstrate that in their reporting, before I'll consider it.

[dighton]

“... the idealism of reporters who think they can make the world better, the intellectual satisfaction of puzzling through a complicated issue, the competitive gratification of being first to discover a buried story, the pride in striving to uphold a professional code of fair play, the quest for peer recognition and, yes, the feedback from attentive and thoughtful readers. He makes no allowance for the possibility that conscientious reporters and editors are capable of setting aside their personal beliefs or standing up to their advertisers (and the prejudices of their readers) to do work they believe in.”

These sanctimonious twits will get a clue when hell freezes over.

[JennysCool]

Here's an excerpt from Posner's piece -- no wonder they hate him!

Bad News
By RICHARD A. POSNER

THE conventional news media are embattled. Attacked by both left and right in book after book, rocked by scandals, challenged by upstart bloggers, they have become a focus of controversy and concern. Their audience is in decline, their credibility with the public in shreds. In a recent poll conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 65 percent of the respondents thought that most news organizations, if they discover they've made a mistake, try to ignore it or cover it up, and 79 percent opined that a media company would hesitate to carry negative stories about a corporation from which it received substantial advertising revenues.

The industry's critics agree that the function of the news is to inform people about social, political, cultural, ethical and economic issues so that they can vote and otherwise express themselves as responsible citizens. They agree on the related point that journalism is a profession rather than just a trade and therefore that journalists and their employers must not allow profit considerations to dominate, but must acknowledge an ethical duty to report the news accurately, soberly, without bias, reserving the expression of political preferences for the editorial page and its radio and television counterparts. The critics further agree, as they must, that 30 years ago news reporting was dominated by newspapers and by television network news and that the audiences for these media have declined with the rise of competing sources, notably cable television and the Web.

The audience decline is potentially fatal for newspapers. Not only has their daily readership dropped from 52.6 percent of adults in 1990 to 37.5 percent in 2000, but the drop is much steeper in the 20-to-49-year-old cohort, a generation that is, and as it ages will remain, much more comfortable with electronic media in general and the Web in particular than the current elderly are.

[Unam Sanctam]

he “weirdly” makes almost no distinction “within the vast category of American media, between those that are aggressively partisan and those that strive to keep opinion sequestered from news, between outlets that invest in serious reporting and those that simply riff on the reporting of others, between the sensational and the more high-minded, between organizations that hasten to correct errors and those that could not care less, between the cartoonish shout shows on cable TV and the more ambitious journalism of, say, the paper you are holding in your hands.

The New York Times makes no efforts at being objective, but spins the news to fit their liberal world view as much as anybody.

[Cicero]

Dumb move. I fail to see how this can accomplish anything but give more publicity to Posner's review and further reveal the unprofessionalism of the current administration at the Times.

The Times used to be a newspaper run by rabid leftists with professional standards. It has gradually declined into a leftist newspaper without any standards and completely lacking in professional judgment. But what else can you expect from a corporation run by the likes of Pinch Sulzberger and Bill Keller?

No wonder they fired A. M. Rosenthal and kept Maureen Dowd. Dowd did a better job of servicing her boss.

[Petronski]

There isn't anything I can add to this, Pika. Your post #1 says it all. Rush is right too: they're funniest when they're out of power.

[ozzymandus]

What a baby! He actually cites eric alterman and bill moyers as proof of an unbiased media! Talk about someone living in a hermetically sealed dream world.

[elbucko]

hostile to the idea that the First Amendment affords journalists special protections."

Serves 'em right. Those who earn their bread under the First Amendment have been loathe to even consider a minimum of respect to the Second Amendment.

[elbucko]

they're funniest when they're out of power.

And extremely dangerous when in power. Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, Bill Clinton and Al Qaeda.