Newsweek Takes Note of New York Times Crusading (Even Liberals Note Howell Raines' Bias)

Media Research Center ^ | December 3, 2002 | Brent Baker

[PJ-Comix]

New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines has gone so over the top in using the paper to advance his own political agenda that even this week’s Newsweek took notice in a two-page piece by Seth Mnookin headlined, “The Changing 'Times.’” The subhead: “A hard-charging editor’s crusading style is coloring the Gray Lady’s reputation.”

     It took Mnookin until the ninth paragraph to mention the word “liberal,” and that came only after Mnookin noted how “Al Gore recently attacked Fox News and the Washington Times as being shills for the Republican Party,” but his hook for the story sprung from how Raines has run 32 stories on whether the Augusta National Golf Club will admit women, a display of advocacy journalism so over the top that an unnamed Times staffer told Mnookin: “It makes it hard for us to have credibility on other issues.”

     Though Mnookin did not cite the MRC, he did pick up on a Raines quote highlighted repeatedly by the MRC: “He once said the Reagan years 'oppressed me because the callousness and the greed and the hardhearted attitude toward people who have very little in this society.’”

     Indeed, as reported at the time in the MRC’s MediaWatch newsletter, Raines uttered the insult during a November 17, 1993 appearance on Charlie Rose’s PBS show. For more and a RealPlayer clip of his comments, refer to the May 22, 2001 CyberAlert: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010522.asp#3

     For additional examples of Raines expressing liberal views, including the hailing of Bill Clinton for “holding onto the principles of social justice,” see the August 8 CyberAlert: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020808.asp#3

     Mnookin uncovered how after the Times in August “printed two consecutive front-page stories incorrectly including Henry Kissinger among the 'prominent Republicans’ opposing war with Iraq (Kissinger had expressed realpolitik reservations but stopped far short of arguing against an attack),” the Times “assigned a media reporter a story on how the American press was increasingly seen as driving the debate on Iraq.”

     Mnookin humorously discovered that the story was killed because the reporter determined no other media outlet made itself into the opposition party: “According to a number of sources at the Times, the reporter, David Carr, went back to his editors and told them the media, per se, weren’t driving anything: the only publication injecting itself into the policy debate was the Times itself....The story never ran. An editor’s note, explaining the Times’s mistakes, was printed instead.”

     Apparently Carr doesn’t watch Peter Jennings.

     Actually, the correction itself needed a correction, though none ran. As noted in the September 5 CyberAlert: Three weeks after their mis-reporting of Henry Kissinger as amongst Republicans opposed to going to war against Iraq, in an “Editor’s Note” the New York Times still managed to distort Kissinger’s position. See: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020905.asp#3

     For more about the initial story misconstruing Kissinger: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020819.asp#2

     Now, an excerpt from Mnookin’s story on pages 46-47 in the December 9 Newsweek:

On Nov. 25, the New York Times ran a front-page story headlined CBS STAYING SILENT IN DEBATE ON WOMEN JOINING AUGUSTA. It was the 32d piece the Times had run in just under three months on the issue of whether the Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts the Masters Tournament, would admit women as members.

The story spanked the TV network that has a contract to air the Masters for “resisting the argument that it can do something to alter the club’s policy,” although it was unclear who -- other than the Times -- was making the argument; as the piece eventually noted, “public pressure on CBS to take a stand has been glancing.” “That was just shocking,” one Times staffer said on the condition that his name not be used. “It makes it hard for us to have credibility on other issues. We don’t run articles that just say so-and-so is staying silent. We run articles when something important actually happens.”

A certain amount of griping is to be expected in any newsroom, but the chorus of complaints at the Times has been getting louder. The Masters coverage is so overheated, one staffer says, that executive editor Howell Raines is “in danger of losing the building.”...

It’s not just the newsroom that’s concerned. From conservative activists to everyday readers, many people around the country are noticing a change in the way the Old Gray Lady covers any number of issues, from the looming war with Iraq to the sex-abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church to the New Jersey Senate race. Raines, the hard-charging executive editor, has an almost religious belief in “flooding the zone” -- using all the paper’s formidable resources to pound away on a story. But increasingly, the Times is being criticized for ginning up controversies as much as reporting them out. “This is certainly a shift from The New York Times as the 'paper of record’,” says Alex Jones, a former Times media reporter and coauthor of “The Trust,” a book about the paper. “It’s a more activist agenda in terms of policy, especially compared to an administration that’s much more conservative.”...

[I]t’s the Times that drives the nation’s news agenda -- and therefore presents the biggest target. Every day, when its editors send out a list of the next day’s front-page stories, papers around the country alter their lineups -- or just run the Times’s stories in their entirety. “The Times has so much accumulated reputational capital that stories that are really ideological are presented as accurate news stories, and can mislead the public,” says Dave Kopel, a conservative press critic with Denver’s Rocky Mountain News.

Conservatives have long complained that the Times has been an organ of the liberal elite, and Raines, with his well-documented lefty politics, is a convenient right-wing bogeyman....

If Raines is working in any tradition, it’s that of the crusading Southern populist. He began his career in Alabama, and cut his teeth at a time when the Southern papers were still charging the barricades of segregation. On the foreign-policy front, the Vietnam era helped cement his skepticism about government authority when lives are on the line. He once said the Reagan years “oppressed me because the callousness and the greed and the hardhearted attitude toward people who have very little in this society.”

Whatever changes Raines is making, he’s doing it with the blessing of the front office. His aggressiveness, as well as his news judgment, are seen as a reflection of the ambitions and philosophies of the Times’s 51-year-old publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Raines and Sulzberger have had a close relationship for years. While Sulzberger’s day-to-day contact with Raines is limited, Sulzberger, who would not comment for this article, is clearly comfortable with Raines’s activist ways....

     END of Excerpt

     To read the article in its entirety: http://www.msnbc.com/news/841753.asp

     Last week Slate’s press columnist, Jack Shafer, penned a piece on the Raines-led New York Times saturation coverage of the golf club. Citing the story about CBS “staying silent,” Shafer described it as the “40th-plus news story, column, or editorial (since July!) about the Augusta National Golf Club's refusal to admit female members. Only a five-star general like Raines could have commanded such extravagant coverage as this.” See: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074599

[PJ-Comix]

His aggressiveness, as well as his news judgment, are seen as a reflection of the ambitions and philosophies of the Times’s 51-year-old publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Raines and Sulzberger have had a close relationship for years.

Hmmmmm...... (No comment.)

[dighton]

Bump for " crusading Southern populist" Thurston Howell Raines III.

[aculeus]

Some Southerners compensate for the stereotypic "right wing red neck" image by leaning left to "prove" they are atypical: Raines, Moyers, Wicker are three examples.

[PJ-Comix]

Somebody should have a therapy session with Howlin' Raines and tell him: "It's okay, Howlin'. We know that you're not a night riding Ku Kluxer with lynch rope in hand. Now will you stop with the Bolshevik overcompensation act for crying out loud?"

[Lizavetta]

“He once said the Reagan years 'oppressed me because the callousness and the greed and the hardhearted attitude toward people who have very little in this society.’”

So when the "greatest economy in a zillion years" 1990's was going on with the Toon as President, with instant millionaires in dotcom ventures and healthy stock markets, why were these years NOT the years of greed and selfishness?

[driftless]

Howell Raines replies to Lizavetta as to why the nineties were different from the eighties: It's because it's because er ahem I mean uh um .......YOU'RE JUST A HEARTLESS HARDHEARTED EVIL CONSERVATIVE.

" I guess I told that Lizavetta person" concluded Howell talking to himself.

[an amused spectator]

I have an idea for a nation-wide Freep of the New York Times.

In libraries and bookstores across the country, Freepers need to move and/or file any copies of the Times in the Fiction section. If you're challenged, tell the challenger that "this is where this publication belongs".

[The Raven]

>>He once said the Reagan years 'oppressed me because the callousness and the greed and the hardhearted attitude toward people who have very little in this society.’”

That is so funny!!! Reagan saved all of our butts. Think where they'd be if Carter would have won reelection!!!

They don't understand that socialism pulls everyone down in the swamp.

[winner3000]

Yes...but they're all equal in the swamps!

[Grampa Dave]

The NY Slimes does not publish news stories!

The Slimes runs fabrications posing as news to justify Raines's left wing goalss and those of the other maggots in charge of the Slimes.