Posted on 04/14/2020 11:39:39 AM PDT by richardtavor
When prominent people die, the press publishes "obituaries," reports of their deaths and a summary of their lives. I recently read a New York Times obituary that accidentally summarized the last years of The New York Times, a once great newspaper.
The Times obit was meant to be about Dr. S. Fred Singer, a noted scientist, prolific writer (including at American Thinker), and prominent critic of popular climate change models that contend that man has heated up the Earth.
The entire N.Y. Times report including a snooty and biased headline was not a factual account, but an ideological argument meant to discredit the life and work of Fred Singer, once the chief atmospheric scientist at NASA and a man who had penned a book of more than 1,000 pages critiquing popular climate theory.
"A leading climate change contrarian." That is how The Times headline describes Singer. The article never mentions that Singer was chief atmospheric scientist for NASA, a science-based organization not known for employing quacks. In fact, the article never mentions NASA or quotes anyone from NASA who knew Singer.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I used to read a lot of his stuff in the Washington Times back in the day.
RIP Dr. Singer.
Too bad it wasn’t PETER SINGER from Princeton who wants parents to be able to KILL their CHILDREN UP TO 2 YEARS OLD!!! EVIL!!!!
Dang it, I thought the NYT was shutting down. Misleading headline.
I was planning on throwing a big party for the death of the SF Chronicle. That was 15-20 years ago. They’re still around so I’m not counting on the big fish going down.
Ahhhhh.....
The New York Times.....
The old grey underwear.....
Hitler, Stalin, Castro ... the Times has always been a tyrant’s friend.
There is a ticking time bomb the Times - along with the rest - should be scared to death of:JUSTICE SCALIA: THE 45 WORDS AND ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE FIRST AMENDMENTThat article states in part:Scalia argued his view on textualism was the ultimate defense of the First Amendment. In March 2012, an Associated Press report said he told an audience at Wesleyan University that the Courts early justices would be astonished that the notion of the Constitution changes to mean whatever each successive generation would like it to mean. In fact, it would be not much use to have a First Amendment, for example, if the freedom of speech included only what some future generation wanted it to include. That would guarantee nothing at all.The Sullivan decision claimed thatThat opinion didnt prevent Scalia from harsh criticism of what is widely viewed as one of the essential court rulings protecting free speech and a free press the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
At the Newseum in the Aspen Institute 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, Scalia said the landmark ruling meant you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether its true or not.
Now the old libel law used to be (that) youre responsible, you say something false that harms somebodys reputation, we dont care if it was told to you by nine bishops, you are liable, Scalia said. New York Times v. Sullivan just cast that aside because the Court thought in modern society, itd be a good idea if the press could say a lot of stuff about public figures without having to worry. And that may be correct, that may be right, but if it was right it should have been adopted by the people. It should have been debated in the New York Legislature and the New York Legislature could have said, Yes, were going to change our libel law.
But in Times v. Sullivan, Scalia said the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, simply decided, Yes, it used to be that George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we dont think thats a good idea anymore.
". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendmentbut, as Scalia noted elsewhere, the whole point of adding the first ten amendments to the Constitution was to reassure the public that the Constitution did not subvert any of their rights. It was no part of the agenda of the ratifiers to change a thing in that regard, because that would have invited controversy - the very opposite of the framers objective. Scandalous as it sounds, IOW, the First Amendment thru the Eighth Amendment are overrated. Overrated, in the sense that they never assayed to or pretended to create rights, only to state those rights within the Constitution.The Ninth Amendment says that the enumerated rights are not the only rights which are to be respected. Meaning, that the first eight amendments went without saying and the Federalists thought they were unexceptionable but unnecessary. The First eight amendments enumerate only those rights which had historically been abused by tyrants. They could almost be described as being there for show - because their precise meaning was and is a matter of common law.
The bottom line is that, unanimous or no, Sullivan is bad law - and now that the Warren Court is ancient history, the Sullivan decision should be history, too. George Washington had the right to sue for libel. Donald Trump, rightfully, does too. And does he ever have a case!!!
I am with you. I thought this was about the NYT closing
Fred Singer never worked for NASA.
These idiots posting at American Thinker are getting out of hand. I know it's a click-based revenue model for the authors but they could try to maintain some minimal standards.
Aside from the most basic factual error on Singer's career this guy mis-characterizes the NYT obit. Their rundown of his professional career wasn't bad:
"Before he was a vocal climate-change contrarian, Dr. Singer had an illustrious scientific career. An early rocket scientist whose work was important to the development of earth observation satellites, he was a professor at the University of Maryland, the University of Miami and the University of Virginia, among other institutions, alternating with positions in government.From 1962 to 1964, he was director of what was known as the National Weather Satellite Center. He was the deputy assistant secretary for water quality and research at the Department of the Interior from 1967 to 1970 and then, until 1971, the deputy assistant administrator for policy at the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency. From 1987 to 1989, he was chief scientist at the Department of Transportation."
Wishful thinking.
NYT = Walking Dead.
Just doesnt know it yet.
Wow, what is a reliable source? This could be the Achilles heal of the lying democrat activist media! Shouldn't the statement defaming a public figure be required to be true?At the Newseum in the Aspen Institute 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, Scalia said the landmark ruling meant you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether its true or not
See, thats a point that Scalia was condemning the Sullivan decision about.Proper interpretation of the Bill of Rights says that neither you nor anyone else has the right commit libel. The bastardized interpretation of the Warren Court in Sullivan basically turns the journalism cartel into a priestly class.
The author of the link I provided was outraged that Scalia didnt think that journalists rightly are a privileged class.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.