Free Republic

William McGowan, author of Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America, spoke to American Rattlesnake about immigration and how it has been covered by the newspaper. He explained the basic premise of the book, and how the New York Times has betrayed its long journalistic tradition as the paper of record.

Tuesday night I had the pleasure of attending a discussion held at New York City’s Penn Club, sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies, which featured one of my favorite journalists/media critics, William McGowan. The author of Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America, Mr. McGowan delivered a speech outlining the largely negative contribution New York’s “newspaper of record” has had on the immigration debate, both in the past and during the current nationwide battle over controversial measures such as amnesty and the DREAM Act. McGowan’s talk divided the journalistic crimes...

The Center for Immigration Studies provides an extended excerpt from William McGowan’s most recent, incisive analysis of the news media, Gray Lady Down, on its weblog this month. It’s worth reading in its entirety, simply because it illustrates the failure of the mainstream news media-and particularly the New York Times, which has heretofore been the standard bearer of professional journalism in this country-to accurately and fully cover the damage done to this country by our government’s lax enforcement of immigration laws, and counterproductive, overly generous immigration policies. It is a long read, but well worth the time, especially since so...

Facing shareholder dissent and getting flak for bloated executive pay deals, The New York Times is frantically searching for crisis p.r. experts as the company gears up for a public battle over the future of the newspaper giant. Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. and other top management have been criticized for putting off the concerns of Morgan Stanley portfolio manager Hassan Elmasry and for a share price that's plummeted 50 percent since 2002. Soon after Morgan's attack last week on The Times, the publisher's spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, was phoning Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon seeking advice, sources familiar with the...

5/30/03 Maureen Dowd not wanted hereBy MARC R. MASFERRER The New York Times' considerable credibility problem is now our problem, as well. But unlike the Times, which has been engaged in a torturous exercise of naval gazing and self-flagellation, with its accustomed arrogance, since it was revealed that one of its younger reporters had committed all sorts of journalistic sins, we are doing something about it, and fast. Until she explains to our satisfaction her own ethical transgression -- an apparently deliberate distortion of a comment by President Bush — you will not find the work of Times columnist Maureen...

In the town where I live, you can turn in a criminal by calling (800) 898-TIPS. The New York Times now offers a similar service to its readers. They can finger crooked stories by sending an E-mail to The Times at retrace@nytimes.com. Jayson Blair is the proximate cause of this humiliating hotline. But some of the TIPS coming into The Times aren't about Blair. Nobody knows exactly who's under investigation. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg was suspended last week for letting an uncredited intern do his reporting. He's quitting. And at least one other internal review is taking place. It...