{"id":1459807,"date":"2024-02-28T18:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T23:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1459807"},"modified":"2024-02-28T18:25:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T23:25:00","slug":"we-dont-do-that-here-former-ny-times-editor-blasts-the-gray-lady-for-bias-and-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/we-dont-do-that-here-former-ny-times-editor-blasts-the-gray-lady-for-bias-and-activism\/1459807\/","title":{"rendered":"“We Don’t Do That Here”: Former NY Times Editor Blasts The “Gray Lady” For Bias And Activism"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We Don’t Do That Here”: Former NY Times Editor Blasts The “Gray Lady” For Bias And Activism<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jonathan Turley,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Former New York Times editor Adam Rubenstein\u00a0has a lengthy essay at The Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0that pulls back the curtain on the newspaper and its alleged bias in its coverage. <\/strong>The essay follows similar pieces from former editors and writers that range from\u00a0Bari Weiss<\/a>\u00a0to Rubenstein\u2019s former colleague\u00a0James Bennet<\/a>. The essay describes a similar work environment where even his passing reference to liking Chik-Fil-A sandwiches led to a condemnation of shocked colleagues.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

An opinion-section editor, Rubenstein was involved in the controversy over publishing Sen. Tom Cotton\u2019s (R., Ark.) op-ed where he argued for the possible use of national guard to quell violent riots around the White House.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was one of the\u00a0lowest points in the history of modern American journalism<\/a>. Cotton was calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House.\u00a0 While Congress would \u201ccall in the troops\u201d six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful. <\/strong>Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence. One year later, the New York Times published a column by an academic who had previously declared that there is nothing wrong with murdering conservatives and Republicans.<\/p>\n

Rubenstein noted:<\/p>\n

On January 6, 2021, few people at\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>remarked on the fact that liberals were cheering on the deployment of National Guardsmen to stop rioting at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., the very thing Tom Cotton had advocated.<\/p>\n

Instead, he describes an environment in which the staff routinely rejected conservative viewpoints, subjected conservatives to added demands and editing, and faced staff opposition to working on such pieces. <\/strong>He noted:<\/p>\n

Being a conservative\u2014or at least being considered one\u2014at the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0was a strange experience. I often found myself asking questions like \u201cDoesn\u2019t all of this talk of \u2018voter suppression\u2019 on the left sound similar to charges of \u2018voter fraud\u2019 on the right?\u201d only to realize how unwelcome such questions were. By asking, I\u2019d revealed that I wasn\u2019t on the same team as my colleagues, that I didn\u2019t accept as an article of faith the liberal premise that voter suppression was a grave threat to liberal democracy while voter fraud was entirely fake news.<\/p>\n

Or take the Hunter Biden laptop story: Was it truly \u201cunsubstantiated<\/a>,\u201d as the paper kept saying? At the time, it had been substantiated, however unusually, by Rudy Giuliani. Many of my colleagues were clearly worried that lending credence to the laptop story could hurt the electoral prospects of Joe Biden and the Democrats. But starting from a place of party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn\u2019t journalism. Nor is a vague unease with difficult subjects. \u201cThe state of Israel makes me very uncomfortable,\u201d a colleague once told me. This was something I was used to hearing from young progressives on college campuses, but not at work.<\/p>\n

What emerges from the interview is all-too-familiar to many of us on this blog.<\/p>\n

I have long been a critic of what I called \u201cadvocacy journalism\u201d as it began to emerge in journalism schools. <\/strong>These schools\u00a0encourage students<\/a>\u00a0to use their \u201clived expertise\u201d and to \u201cleave[] neutrality behind.\u201d Instead, of neutrality, they are pushing \u201csolidarity [as] \u2018a commitment to social justice that translates into action.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, we previously\u00a0discussed<\/a>\u00a0the release of the results of\u00a0interviews<\/a>\u00a0with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly:\u00a0\u201cObjectivity has got to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saying that\u00a0\u201cObjectivity has got to go\u201d is, of course, liberating. <\/strong>You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your \u201cbase\u201d like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view is now dismissed as \u201cbothsidesism.\u201d Done. No need to give credence to opposing views. It is a\u00a0familiar reality<\/a>\u00a0for those of us in higher education, which has been increasingly intolerant of opposing or dissenting views.<\/p>\n

Downie recounted how news leaders today<\/p>\n

\u201cbelieve that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading \u201cbothsidesism\u201d in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today\u2019s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a time when all journalists shared a common \u201cidentity\u201d as professionals who were able to separate their own bias and values from the reporting of the news.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared \u201cIt\u2019s objective by whose standard? \u2026 That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0The Stanford Daily<\/em>, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to \u201cfree itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.\u201d He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views \u201cjournalists as activists because journalism at its best \u2014 and indeed history at its best \u2014 is all about morality.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, \u201cJournalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it\u2019s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a Biased Journalist and I\u2019m Okay With That<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Former New York Times writer (and now\u00a0Howard University Journalism Professor<\/a>) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for\u00a0advocacy journalism.<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared \u201call journalism is activism<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is easy to see how\u00a0 this was a \u201cstrange experience\u201d for Rubenstein.<\/p>\n

He objects that \u201cour goal was supposed to be journalistic, rather than activist,\u201d but he found reporters actively working to advance the political interests of the Democrats and Joe Biden.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a strange, not a unique, experience. It is another account of the orthodoxy of American media, which increasingly functions like a de facto state media.<\/p>\n

In his description of the sandwich controversy, Rubenstein describes how he was introduced to the culture of the New York Times at his orientation meeting. When asked about his favorite sandwich in the group meeting, he committed the offense of naming Chick-fil-A\u2019s spicy chicken sandwich.<\/p>\n

That led to a shocked hush before the rep leading the orientation said: \u201cWe don\u2019t do that here. They hate gay people.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>That statement was met with the snapping of fingers from the staff in agreement in a communal condemnation.<\/p>\n

It is clear from the account that, at the Times and other major outlets, there is much of traditional journalism that they \u201cdon\u2019t do . . . here.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 02\/28\/2024 – 13:25<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bRead More<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We Don’t Do That Here”: Former NY Times Editor Blasts The “Gray Lady” For Bias And Activism Authored by Jonathan Turley, Former New York Times…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}