As the Paper of Record boasts of its own diversity, the range of opinions it airs continues to shrink.
Controversy erupted on April 14 over the New York Times’s hiring of neoconservative climate-skeptic and anti-Arab polemicist Bret Stephens as the paper’s newest Op-Ed page columnist, hired away from the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing op-ed page. But just two days after it unveiled him, the paper’s op-ed page, with much less fanfare, announced that it had also hired a carbon copy of Stephens named Bari Weiss, also from the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, to “write and commission the kinds of quick-off-the-news pieces” that will “amplify the section’s already important voice in the national conversation.”
Exactly as she was doing a decade ago as a “pro-Israel” activist at Columbia and thereafter at various neocon media perches, her formula is as simple as it is predictable: She channels whatever prevailing right-wing grievance exists about colleges, Arabs or Israel critics (ideally, all of those) into a column that’s supposed to be “provocative” because it maligns minority activists or fringe positions that are rarely given platforms on the New York Times op-ed page.
She was first cheered for using this highly valuable journalistic real estate to attack organizers of the Chicago Dyke March for excluding flags that contained the Star of David on the grounds of similarity to the Israeli flag, followed by a crude guilt-by-association attack on the minority women who organized the Woman’s March based on their praise of various Muslims we’re all expected to hate, and then yesterday mocked campus critics of “cultural appropriation,” taking time — in advance — to celebrate her own courage and martyrdom by including this line: “I will inevitably get called a racist for cheering cultural miscegenation.” (Weiss loves to declare her own brave martyrdom in advance of reactions to what she writes; “I’ll be accused of siding with the alt-right or tarred as Islamophobic,” she proclaimed in her column attacking the Women’s March organizers, concluding: “If that puts me beyond the pale of the progressive feminist movement in America right now, so be it”).
Weiss, standing alone, isn’t worth spending much time on: She’s just another thoroughly mainstream writer who thrives on cheap, easy, and superficial “controversy,” who sees herself as a brave intellectual dissident as she is continually celebrated by and gets promoted within the most mainstream media circles — all for spouting conventional and power-flattering critiques of largely powerless figures. But she is worth examining for what it says about the New York Times, its understanding of “diversity,” and the range of opinions it does, and does not, permit.
In the wake of the controversy prompted by hiring Stephens, the Times justified its decision by appealing to precepts of intellectual diversity. The paper “has proclaimed a public commitment to reflecting a broader range of perspectives in its pages,” Public Editor Liz Spayd wrote, citing “the general principle of busting up the mostly liberal echo chamber around here.”
On CNN, the paper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, chided critics of the Stephens hiring this way: “Didn’t we learn from this past election that our goal should be to understand different views?” He claimed that “the New York Times has a history of trying to bring in different voices,” asking rhetorically: “Don’t we want to surface all ideas?”
Few things are more laughable than watching the incomparably homogenized New York Times op-ed page justify itself with appeals to the virtues of diversity. If your goal were to wage war on media diversity in all of its forms, and to offer the narrowest range of views possible, it would be hard to top the roster of columnists the paper has assembled: Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Nick Kristof, Paul Krugman, Roger Cohen, Ross Douthat, Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni, David Leonhardt, Charles Blow, Gail Collins, Bret Stephens, with Bari Weiss as a contributor and editor.
Beyond the obvious demographic homogeneity, literally every one of them fits squarely within the narrow, establishment, center-right to center-left range of opinion that prevails in elite opinion-making circles. Almost all of them, if not all, supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election, and now have politics close to that neighborhood. None is associated with or supportive of the growing populist left or the populist right; they all wallow in the vague, safe, Washington-approved middle ground, members in good standing of the newly overt neoliberal-neoconservative alliance. As long as Stephens avoided talking about climate change and Douthat steered clear of abortion, most if not would all be capable of giving a speech that would be cheered at a so-called #Resistance rally, or at an AIPAC conference.
In writing about the controversy over the Stephens’s hiring, Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone summarized the glaring joke of the NYT Op-Ed page — of all places — claiming the mantle of viewpoint diversity:
But as far as embracing views far to the left or right, the Times’ full-time opinion writers have never represented a particularly wide range. The paper has never had a Pat Buchanan or Steve Bannon, a strident right-wing populist arguing against free trade, immigration and U.S. intervention abroad. Nor has it played host to a regular columnist from the anti-war left in the vein of Michael Moore, or an anti-capitalist like Naomi Klein.
And several of its left-leaning voices on the op-ed page are often aligned with conservatives on foreign policy. Stephens, like [Bill] Kristol before him, backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But so did Tom Friedman. And like Stephens and Kristol, both Friedman and Nick Kristof supported Trump’s decision last week to strike Syria in response to a chemical attack.
As my colleague Zaid Jilani put it when the Stephens’s hiring was announced: “Stephens’s voice is hardly new to the media landscape — it echoes the powerful and attacks the powerless, specifically marginalized groups like Arabs and Muslims who have little representation in U.S. media. … The Times editorial page currently does not have a female minority columnist and, despite frequently writing about conflicts in the Middle East, employs no regular Arab American or Muslim American writers.”
That’s not to say there are zero differences among NYT columnists. Douthat expresses occasional social issue conservatism; Brooks and Krugman have passive-aggressively argued on elements of conservative dogma and economic policy; and Stephens’s climate views are certainly an outlier. But on the most contentious issues that divide the country, the range of opinion they offer is as narrow and stultifying as their demographic diversity is.
The old joke used to be that, for mainstream media, diversity of views spanned the range from the centrists at The New Republic to the conservatives at National Review. For the contemporary NYT op-ed page, diversity spans the small gap from establishment centrist Democrats to establishment centrist Republicans, with the large groups of people outside of those factions essentially excluded.
Bari Weiss is a caricature of all of the op-ed page’s longest-standing, worst attributes. Her relatively short career as a writer and activist has been overwhelmingly devoted to one issue: a defense of the Israeli government and a corresponding smear campaign against its critics. Her targets have tended overwhelmingly to be Muslim and/or Arab, often in the context of campus politics. She has already used her NYT space to endorse the disgusting and false Haim Saban-created smear campaign against the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, writing: “Recall that only a few months ago, Keith Ellison, a man with a long history of defending and working with anti-Semites, was almost made leader of the Democratic National Committee.”
Weiss’s admirers, such as Niall Ferguson, the right-wing Harvard professor and husband of Netanyahu-fan Ayaan Hirsi Ali (whom Weiss admires), have hailed her columns as an “amazing and welcome outbreak of intellectual diversity at the New York Times.” But while Weiss brings many things to the New York Times, viewpoint diversity is plainly not among them.
There’s not a single view she holds about Israel or campus controversies that couldn’t be, and hasn’t been, repeatedly expressed by Friedman, Stephens, and Brooks, if not also Cohen and Douthat. Hiring her didn’t add an iota of viewpoint diversity; it just replicated tendentious views about Israel and its largely marginalized critics that have been repeated for years on those same NYT pages to the purposeful exclusion of actually dissenting voices.
That devotion to Israel is the North Star of Weiss’s worldview and journalism was best demonstrated by Weiss’s own description of her career. At a 2012 Conference of the American Zionist Movement, Weiss gave a speech about what she called the “connection between advocacy journalism and Zionism.”
She explained that she “got involved in journalism through activism” — specifically, activism against Arab and Muslim professors at Columbia whom she accused of bullying Jewish and Israeli students. That was as part of an incredibly ugly campaign, launched by the film “Columbia Unbecoming” to depict those Arab professors — members of one of America’s most marginalized groups — as oppressors of Jewish students.
One of the Arab professors targeted by that campaign, Joseph Massad, described it as “the latest salvo in a campaign of intimidation of Jewish and non-Jewish professors who criticize Israel.” The New York Civil Liberties Union condemned the campaign and that film — which Weiss credits as having catalyzed her interest in journalism — as a witch hunt designed to punish Israel critics: “The attack on Professor Massad and other in the [Middle East Studies] Department is really about their scholarship and political expression.”
Bari Weiss, left, then a sophmore at Columbia Univerity, speaks at a press conference outside the university’s gates on March 31, 2005, to denounce a university report stating that Columbia University’s Middle Eastern studies professors did not engage in large-scale intimidation of pro-Israel students.
Photo:Tina Fineberg/AP
Weiss’s activism against these professors was preceded by a one-year stint in Israel. After she crusaded against these Middle East studies professors at Columbia, penning columns denouncing them, she was quickly hired by the standard organs for neoconservative opinion: the New York Sun, Tablet, then the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. She gushed that the Wall Street Journal op-ed age was perfect for her politics — it “can often be an island of sanity for those of us who care about Zionism and Israel” — and explained that she went to Tablet “because I wanted the chance to focus on Jewish issues.”
Weiss’s attacks on Muslim and Arab professors weren’t limited to the Columbia campaigns. She also participated in the campaign to destroy the reputation of Nadia Abu El-Haj, an American-born rising star in the academic world who had received a Fulbright scholarship and a fellowship at Harvard. Abu El-Haj, a doctorate of anthropology, has a Palestinian-Muslim father and an American Episcopalian mother.
In 2002, she published a book anthropologically examining Jewish claims to a biblical entitlement of Israel, and it won numerous scholarly awards, along with critical praise from her academic colleagues at the University of Chicago, where she was teaching. As a New York Times article described, the book documented that as “Israeli archaeologists searched for an ancient Jewish presence to help build the case for a Jewish state … They sometimes used bulldozers, destroying remains of other cultures, including those of Arabs.” Abu El-Haj’s book questioned their anthropological conclusions designed to bolster Israel’s current political posture.
Though the petition ended up being ultimately discredited, and Abu El-Haj was eventually given tenure at Barnard, the ensuing controversy was toxic, tarnishing the reputation of this young professor. “She is a scholar of the highest quality and integrity who is being persecuted because she has the courage to focus an analytical lens on subjects that others wish to shield from scrutiny,” Michael Dietler, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, told the Times, “and because she happens to be of Palestinian origin.”
A senior professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at Barnard, Alan Segal, ultimately led the on-campus campaign against Abu El-Haj. “He was used to being consulted on anything at Barnard involving ancient Israel,” said the New Yorker. In the campaign, Segal breached academic protocol by publicly attacking and maligning her scholarship, telling the New York Times: “There is every reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason against it — her work.”
One of the media leaders stoking the flames against this accomplished young American-Palestinian academic was Bari Weiss, living in Jerusalem at the time. With no training or expertise whatsoever in anthropology, a deficiency she made up for with her ample passion for publicly smearing Israel critics, Weiss attacked Abu El-Haj in the Israeli daily Haaretz, arguing that “this is not just another round between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists,” but instead, “is about the nature of truth, and the possibility of, well, facts themselves.”
Depicting Abu El-Haj as a disciple of another Weiss target, the late Columbia Middle Eastern studies Professor Edward Said, Weiss claimed that Abu El-Haj, in her book, “is forced to abandon the methodology of science altogether.” Of the award-winning and highly praised work, Weiss said: “She has written a book condemning the notion of facts themselves.” Weiss’s sudden outburst of concern for academic and anthropological rigor and the scientific method seems to find expression only as a tool for smearing people who happen to be critics of the Israeli occupation and/or scholars of Arab descent.
It’s truly amazing: Weiss now postures as some sort of champion of free thought on college campuses. Yet her whole career was literally built on ugly campaigns to attack, stigmatize, and punish Arab professors who criticize Israel. And that’s because, as she herself has said, she regards her journalism as merely a form of “Zionist activism.”
So that’s Weiss’s overwhelming preoccupation: defending Israel, primarily by vilifying its critics. Why the New York Times op-ed page — in the midst of feigning a devotion to diversity — decided that this is what it needed more of is mystifying indeed, given that her views on her central issue are already shared by many, if not the large majority, of her colleagues on that page.
Just review her own list of views that she believes converted her into a brave and “politically homeless” dissident on college campuses, “in which being an outspoken Zionist made you fascist, supporting the war in Iraq made you an imperialist, and believing that some cultures are indeed more enlightened than others a hegemon.” Those beliefs are not the hallmark of a dissident but rather the prevailing views of the New York Times op-ed page where she now works.
Indeed, at the time of hiring, Weiss heaped praise on Stephens. And that makes sense: They are virtually indistinguishable, particularly when it comes to Weiss’s obsessive focus on Israel and its critics. Though it got little attention amid the controversy over his climate change denialism, Stephens has expressed blatant anti-Arab bigotry in the past: “The Arab world’s problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism,” he once wrote, adding that this “Arab mind” has produced few achievements: “Today there is no great university in the Arab world, no serious indigenous scientific base, a stunted literary culture.”
Weiss’s most celebrated NYT column thus far — her attack on Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour for praising Muslim extremists and expressing anti-Israel ideas — was just a rehash of a similar column she wrote earlier this year at Tablet that asked in the headline, referring to Sarsour: “Do Jews have to make common cause with people who want to kill them?”
Others have dissected the glaring fallacies of that particular Women’s March column, as many have done with Weiss’s celebration of cultural appropriation yesterday, so we can leave those to the side. But let’s apply one of Weiss’s favorite smear tactics that she used against Sarsour — finding someone who her target has praised, and then finding their worst comments to attach to her target — to Weiss herself.
Judging by the praise she dishes out on her Twitter feed, Weiss’s favorite people are all part of that insular, highly homogenized clique of war-loving, “pro-Israel” neoconservative American writers: John Podhoretz, Jamie Kirchick, Bill Kristol, Eli Lake, and Stephens. And they all adore her. But, to use her words in maligning the Women’s March organizers, she sure does “have some chilling ideas and associations.”
One of the people Weiss most admires and most frequently praises, Podhoretz, is literally an advocate of genocide. He wrote a 2006 New York Post column wondering whether “the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything?” He added: “Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?”
Of Bari Weiss’s friend and beloved writer, Podhoretz, the foreign policy analyst Gregory Djerejian expressed shock that he “would muse so innocuously about the merits of mass butchery — basically the wholesale slaughter of a broad demographic of an ethnic group writ large — a policy prescription that is quasi-genocidal in nature.”
Another one of Weiss’s favorite writers, Jamie Kirchick, got his start in journalism working as an assistant for and protégé of long-time New Republic publisher Marty Peretz, whose own writers have exposed his countless expressions of overt anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry. Kirchick himself has his own history of ugly anti-Muslim animus, such as his defense of anti-Muslim stereotypes on the grounds of accuracy, and his invocation of Stephens’s “disease of the Arab mind” phrasing.
A tip for Muslims angry about Muslim stereotypes: stop acting like Muslim stereotypes. http://t.co/NqrLbQ5843
— Jamie Kirchick ? (@jkirchick) April 10, 2014
A disease of the Arab mind, if you will https://t.co/buCXMy9fML
— Jamie Kirchick ? (@jkirchick) June 9, 2017
Stephens himself, one of her mentors, has a history of ugly defamations against Arabs and Africans. And then there’s Bill Kristol — himself once a NYT columnist — whose record of advocating the most extreme evil and blatant deceit is too well-known to merit discussion.
So on top of her own history of crusading against Arabs, Muslims, and other assorted critics of Israel, Weiss’s own “associations” and admired figures have a long history of overt hatred against such groups and have espoused some of the most repugnant ideas to gain traction in U.S. discourse since the War on Terror began. Using her own standards of judging people by the worst views of those whom they have praised, shouldn’t this put Weiss beyond the pale of what’s tolerated in decent company?
News outlets, even the New York Times, are free to hire only those writers which espouse particular orthodoxies or ideological views — whether on Israel or any other hotly contested topic. But what they shouldn’t do is insult everyone’s intelligence by prancing around as advocates of diversity. Hiring Bari Weiss as a new op-ed writer isn’t something you do if you are committed to fostering viewpoint diversity at your paper; it’s what you do if you want to further smother it.
Top photo: People walk past the New York Times building in New York City on July 27, 2017.
Glenn Greenwald has to be one of the biggest hypocrites. He’s complaining about the NYT lacking diversity? Maybe he should look at his own masthead, Glenn. The Intercept has 40 staff members listed. Not one of them is African-American. What’s the explanation for having a segregated newsroom?
And bravely did Sir Glennwald attack the monstrous press, saving us from the terrible fate of hackneyed, sensationalised propaganda that no one believes anymore anyway; for without a press monster to fight, Sir Glennwald as a shining Knight ofTruth had no other monsters left to face. Well, none he was brave enough to anyway, but the rest of us know their gnawing teeth and rapine claws well.
Curiously, like Stephens and Kircheck and Boot and Rubin and Brooks (I could go one but I have carpal tunnel syndrome), Weiss is very liberal on immigration (into the US, not Israel).
Great article. It may well be simply stating the obvious about the NYT and its minions but it’s an obvious that lacks sufficient statement.
Courage, is what comes immediately to mind when reading Greenwald. Truth appears to be his only master. He is truly one of a kind in a field dominated by propagandists.
Thank you, Glenn Greenwald, for taking the considerable time to put this exposé together. Very informative.
This matter just leaves me painfully disappointed and angry at the constant and unrelenting inroads the Zionists/neocons continue to make in the MSM and deep state.
Glenn, I presume that you are Jewish, but I have to wonder, given the preponderance of what appear to be Jewish names on the list of editorial board members of the NYT, why readers would not come to suspect the primary allegiance of fellow Americans of Jewish heritage. This is not good! I just hope that we can keep the focus of discussion and debate on the issues of agenda, and not ethnicity and religion. Thank you for stepping forward with a credible critique for the fair minded among us to consider.
The Neocon Zionists are not making “inroads.” EVERY member of
the congress supports the same agenda in regard to Israel. Whenever
there is legislation which is designed to encourage Israeli viciousness
towards other nations and people ANYWHERE on the planet,
the legislation has overwhelming and often unanimous support.
The corporate media and the so-called government do not allow
inroads by any other viewpoints.
The NY Times love for Zionism and Israel is an obvious one. The paper has become a platform for warmongers and NEOliberal policies, no different than right wing policies. It’s the flagship for racism and bigotry, as well as Israel genocide of the Palestinian people. Your article shows Weiss as an open racist. But that’s what ZIONISM IS…
A really great article!
It’s totally unthinkable to the average NY Times owners, advertisers etc. that abandoning colonialism might actually not require a debate, it should just be a necessary way to make the world better.
Adam Hochshieldd’s book review ( “Haiti’s Tragic History” Dec 29, 2011 ) on Laurent Dubois argued Haitians are simply too backward to manage their own affairs, and deserve blame. “More disastrous than foreign interference was that Haiti’s birth was such a violent one. Democracy is a fragile, slow-growing plant to begin with, and the early Haitians had experienced none of it, not as subjects of the African kingdoms where many of them were born, not as slaves and not as soldiers under draconian military discipline for over a decade of desperate war. ” Of course, Dubois book had many examples of grassroots democracy that could probably form the nucleus of an independent democracy, and Dubois was allowed to co-author a column (“Haiti Can Be Rich Again ” Jan 8, 2012) to hint at this, but the paper’s viewpoint was obviously the first one, and it was not even a direct response, just more crap for the pile.
As Alan Dershowitz put it — someone who also tries to justify firing oppositional professors — “I would defend Hitler, and I would win.”The strand of politics that Dershowitz and Bari Weiss represent in relation to Israel is insular and sort of Trotskyist, whatever it takes. It’s not at all about truth. The point of pro-Israel activism isn’t to be honest, it’s to win. Dershowitz’ own patriotic book “The Case for Israel” was largely plagiarized from other hack research.
This all begs the question, what is the NY Times doing? Well according to the Propaganda Model, mass media are mostly influenced by ownership and advertising. Being a leading paper also requires not only fame and glory, but access to the US elite for major stories. Get a bad reputation and suddenly nobody is leaking to you anymore. While NYT supposedly has a commitment to “the facts fit to print” the owners of the paper are not incidentally an American Jewish family, the Sulzbergers, who are going to want their viewpoint represented the same as FOX represented Roger Ailes.
All of the NYT behavior then isn’t some cry on behalf of the marginalized, but on behalf of the powerful /losing ground/ to the marginalized. That somehow, in all the progress being made on behalf of the marginalized, people will forget the careful caveats built up over the years for Western/Israeli colonialism, the left-wing will continue to oppose Israeli colonialism without concern for the powerful, and the anti-left viewpoint will lose cultural currency.
As a Columbia alum, I’m distressed that Ms. Weiss used Columbia as a platform for her promotion of the apartheid practiced by Zionists in Israel and in NYC. Bravo Mr. Greenwald for the revelatory observation[s] encompassed by — “literally every one of them fits squarely within the narrow, establishment, center-right to center-left range of opinion that prevails in elite opinion-making circles.” Never thought that the paper would degrade to the status of cat-box liner, but that’s where it now stands.
Opened the comments and the 3 at the top 10:36 a.m. 10:50 a.m. and 10:54 a.m. represent my exact observations, by Grace and Jason Johnson. : )
Glenn – I don’t think your pitch for a job at the NYT is going t work.
Great article. As one who still feels he has to scan the Times and WSJ and LATimes to get what the MSM is dishing out, how refreshing to encounter independent thought. I have just finished reading STATE of TERROIR by Thomas Suarez. It is still haunting me that terrorists like Begin and Shamir actually became PMs. The entire Zionist claim is fuzzy at best and racist at worst.
In other words, if this hack doesn’t like her, she must be scum. No room for opposing viewpoints.
I’ve read some of her stuff, and she writes with a much more accepting view, makes much more logical points, and is frankly just a better writer.
Shame on you, Glenn.
Excellent article!
Loved the article; I haven’t looked at the NY Times in years, of the daily news skims I do it never crosses my mind to go there. It takes a brave specialist to go into any US media outlet’s echo chamber, it has to be like reporting on what’s at the bottom of a toxic waste dump, so thanks for taking us there, as I’ll continue to ignore that “important voice in the national monologue”.
The New York Zionist Times.. I’ll keep passing on subscription renewals, as I have for years.
Anything I hear reported w NYT as a source, I can’t help but discredit immediately.
They have a clear agenda…promoting Israel above anything else, even ignoring their role in advancing rising anti Jewish sentiment.
Israel and those of the Jewish faith/ethnicity are two very different things…but, these Israeli neocons want people to believe it’s all anti semitism.
Support BDS ! Say no to your congress person on anything that is pro Israel and one day, Israel will not “win” so much and we’ll see those ties, along with the blue neckties, fade away.
Nice to see NYT leading the way in Israel losing in the court of public opinion…the opinion that counts!!
90% of the world’s media is now owned by 7 corporations. We’re definitely only getting the corporate side of the story rather than the people’s side. It seems that this, along with a lot of the other even more serious environmental, economic and social problems are mainly the result of ONE DISASTROUS POLICY championed by both the Republican and Democratic Parties. If we stop this policy in its tracks, we can prioritize people and the planet instead of quarterly corporate profits.
Here’s that one bad policy in all its glory. https://clearblueskyoutwest.com/2017/08/16/this-one-policy-is-what-gave-rise-to-trump-nazis-in-the-streets-good-jobs-being-shipped-overseas-unnecessary-wars-environmental-destruction-we-can-definitely-defeat-that-policy-but-first/
I very much disagree with the assessment that there is a
“center-right to center-left range” allowed – not only at the Times,
but within the whole state religion which masquerades as the USA.
The devotion to privatizing corporate militarism is regularly celebrated
and/or demanded by the democrats and republicans alike.
Look at what regularly receives unanimous or nearly unanimous
support in Wall Street’s Washington (and in cases of slight disagreement,
that disagreement usually is based within some individual’s pretense
of principles which help distract from their overall collusion with the
global militarizing juggernaut of private capital).
Any really “left” is loathed by democrats and republicans alike.
In reality, the New York Times, like the vast majority of what is read
and watched for news in the faking U$A, is a tool of neo-fascism.
The New York Times is and always has been a right-wing rag.
Of course, the NY Times wants me to get a subscription and “join the conversation,” “embrace the diversity of ideas,” etc., whatever their current marketing slogan is.
The NY Times of course does good reporting, often, but then only when it does not offend their moneyed or powered owners and benefactors.
Truth to power at the Times is only found, I have seen, when the “truth” they expound comes from a more influential power that is trying to keep a low profile. Some would even call it propaganda.
Sadly, a mirror of what America as a nation and culture is becoming.
Yeah I don’t want none of ’em up in my crib, Jack! I mean, Glenn.
(Looks like a CIA/Mossad propaganda team you ask me.)
yes sir.
operation mockingbird is alive and well, especially with the acquisition (takeover) of wapo.
Superb analysis! The Zionist s will use every tool to spread their disinformation and the NYT gladly plays along. Thoughtful Jews everywhere must reflect on were this is leading.
Rather than an issue of left/right or pro/anti-Israel, could the problem be broader,with the perversion of “intellectual”? Whatever the NYT puts out, to connect it to anything intellectual — as the term has traditionally been understood — is a challenge. Given the new economic model driving all parts of the Infotainment Complex, maybe the NYT’s motive is more crass: to trigger the reader’s bile duct with rhetorical thuggery in order to lure eyeballs. Which is fine as a business model; just don’t call it “intellectual diversity” … and don’t present Ms. Weiss as an example of quality journalism.
Glen,
You didn’t hold back, did you ??
Not so much as a comma, and I just have to say it, you make me want to shout from the rooftops, in exhilarating abandon.
Your beautifully put, “…good standing of the newly overt neoliberal-neoconservative alliance”, has a depth of pure honesty which not one public figure, I know of, dares to say, and in fact all do their damndest to keep alive the notion there is a difference in the thinking and goals of this nefarious alliance.
The thing that has always bothered me, and drives me to distraction, is the ease with which the American public opinion is, and can be, managed, literally resulting in a nation of drones, able to be steered whenever, and wherever, currently rudderless, adrift, heading God knows where, likely nowhere good, for the foreseeable future.
I can’t wait to hear some of the vitriol that is bound to come your way, from the mandibles of this sorry lot of pundits, all of whom exhalt their extraordinary perception of their own meager intellect, buried eternally in their own hubris.
You are waking people up, everywhere.
Thank you, Glen.
As proof of the NYT group think, just look through the comments to any piece dealing with Russia. You’d think Putin is coming to eat our babies.
Edits:
9th paragraph, word arrangement: “…most if not would all…”
5th-to-last paragraph, hyperlink: “expressed shocked”
Great criticism of the NYT; informative to read and I would recommend to anyone. Forgive me for picking on a few somewhat minor points and basically holding Greenwald to a super-human level of journalistic expectation, especially when most journalists fall well below this level.
First, Greenwald criticizes Weiss for making, “…a crude guilt-by-association attack on the minority women who organized the Woman’s March…” but then he makes a similar guilt-by-association implication for Niall Ferguson by saying his wife is a fan of Netanyahu. That may well in fact be true but the evidence isn’t presented here so the implication should have been left out.
My main contention, that I’m hoping we on the left are learning is detrimental, has to do with what Greenwald quotes from Jilani: “The Times editorial page currently does not have a female minority columnist and, despite frequently writing about conflicts in the Middle East, employs no regular Arab American or Muslim American writers.”
Identity politics should not be invoked when talking about diversity of opinions and viewpoints, and this should be doubly obvious when the main subject of this article is diversity of viewpoints. Isn’t this glaringly obvious by now? What if the NYT hired Condi Rice to be the female minority columnist? Or how about Huma Abedin to be a regular woman-Arab-Muslim-American writer about conflicts in the Middle East? Et cetera.
God point on identity politics. Conversely, wouldn’t diversity of viewpoints be achieved by NYT hiring Greenwald, a white male?
Let’s have it right, the NYT is “the paper of record” only for the US Establishment. It’s primary role is to justify the economic status quo and the war industry and set the conventional wisdom.
christians, jews. and muslims are all savages and should all go fuck themselves
The NYTimes hired a pro-Israeli op-ed columnist??
OMG.
At least she wasn’t a speechwriter for Richard Nixon like William Safire.
Or for George Bush.
Makes you wonder who reads their newspaper.
MSNBC hired Reagan and Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan.
It’s like they’re more interested in profits than politics.
Imagine.
Hiring of Zionist at NYT has nothing to do with profits. It is all about Zionists hiring and promoting other Zionists in the interest of Zionism.
Nonsense.
Media corporations have an audience. They advertise and cater to that audience.
The only people interested in Zionism are Zionists and those who suffer as a result of Zionist policies. New York City contains a handful of the former and almost none of the latter.
Thus the hiring decision.
New York Times, strident advocate of invading Iraq on a pack of lies and perennial champion of corrupt war hawks. An ongoing joke, in other words.
The Times since I can remember has always been pro Jewish/Israel underneath the liberal writings/ thinking’s. This is nothing new. Adding a new reporter is no different than the Intercept and Naomi Klein, waiting for/on James Risen articles and reports. Naomi’s interview with Jeremy Corbyn and the latest article on Harry and Climate Change …..no better than a Weiss on Israel…opposite sides of our spectrum(s)…
Love what you are about and doing in The Intercept …have great positives, insights, perspectives on topics of today. You are great on Democracy Now. What are your goals for the future? You’re good at what you are doing….really good….different and capable than most today…keep it up!
who cares the hires at NYT? just perspective words in print and many of those hires/op-ed folks arre jews. so on and on the game goes.
This article is necessary. Many people haven’t ever really considered the NYT’s strident pro-Israel bias in depth. I think though that most well-read folks haven’t taken their Israel coverage seriously for years. Is it even possible to imagine them hiring or printing a one-state advocate’s writings? Robustly questioning the ethics and morality of a modern nation-state based specifically around race and ethnicity? The morality of excluding the majority of a place’s population before deciding who is allowed to be a citizen in a newly created “democracy”?
Their reporters over there literally have children serving in the IDF. Is it reasonable to expect a journalist to NOT have a bias towards the army his child is serving in? Of course it’s silly but it shows how far past the Rubicon the NYT has marched. They are basically an exclusive PR arm of the Likud party/Israeli government and must be read as such.
I love hearing your opinions about other journalists and outlets.
Who better than Mr. Greenwald to place a fine point on the alternative fact of “diversity” at the NYT.
We live in strange times. Who would have ever thought the Jews and the Nazis would find they have so much in common? Rest in Peace Prof. Said.
Glenn, that is fine. But what would be great is an end to establishment, “all in Islam is great” voices often paid by GCC interests, via Podesta/Edelman et al (and by extension, the Blob). Saying that any criticism or questions about Islam is all Islamophobia, is like saying that being against settlements is anti Semitic, or against abuse by priests anti catholic.
How about some honest discussions about apostasy laws? How far to go with occasionalalism in the modern world? Stoning? Destruction of Mecca and other Muslim heritage sites in the name of fighting idolatry while building in the heart of Mecca ugly massive buildings with signs idolizing the house of Saud? What about the hateful school textbooks around the world? The lack of female Arab Muslim independent voices in outlets like Al Jazeera? Who benefits from promoting political Islam, be it Wahhabism, Muslim Brotherhood/Qutb-Qaradawism or Teheran’s theocracy?
On the positive side the many variations of Islam, the strong family values. Why does the Intercept only have token pro Idlib “opposition” voices? Why does the Intercept not open up a frank discussion between Muslim thinkers, people like Mohamed Chilean or Safa Al Ahmad, who did a terrific series on Salafism on the BBC?
Actually, the Israeli and Saudi government are cozying up to each other, so they may direct Bari Weiss and Linda Sarsour to make nice. . . Yes, the Zionists and the Wahhabists may find they have a common cause after all – retention of power. Strange bedfellows indeed.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/unlikely-allies-israel-and-the-saudis/
Criticism of Islam is not same as criticism of Israel’s illegal settlements. The compatible example to criticism of Islam would be criticism of Judaism as being hostile to gentiles.
With one exception which is that Islam is not only a set of beliefs but also a political indoctrination.
Point well taken
Thanks Mr. Greewald. You’re the main reason I still read The Intercept.
The witch hunt against Joseph Massad was launched right after the death of Edward Said, whom not even the Zionists had the chutzpah to attack publicly because he was such a famous and brilliant scholar.
Congressman Anthony Weiner got involved, demanding that Columbia launch an investigation of Massad, and saying he would pursue the matter further if the investigation “comes up dry.”
Weiner eventually went down in a sexting scandal- perhaps it was a witch hunt in its own right, I don’t know. I am against sex scandals, even when they are used against the likes of Anthony Weiner, but in this case, given the hounding of Professor Massad, it seemed like a bit of karma.
Thanks, I’d never heard of him. His wikipedia page makes for fascinating reading – this bit in particular is spot on:
The Saudi/UAE lobby operates in the same way as the Israeli lobby and the two groups are actually allied in their goals and aims (such as supporting ISIS in Syria as a preferable alternative to a Syria economically integrated with Iran and Lebanon, a policy the United States has also directly supported, despite claims that the rise of ISIS in 2013-2014 was ‘accidental’).
I found this other devastating critique of Zionism as a European colonial project in Massad’s 2006 book, “The Persistence of the Palestinian Question”
Hmm. I had never actually read any of Massad’s writing, so thanks for posting a bit of it. He’s right about the Zionist regime’s behavior being dictated by its imperialist paymasters in Washington. AIPAC appears influential simply because it is always lobbying for stuff the US imperialists want to do anyway: bombing, killing, promoting racism, seizing territory. The same is true for the Saudi monarchy.
Socialist revolution in the Middle East would put an end to all imperialist operations there. This is what the imperialists fear the most. Massad, on the other hand, says their main concern is that Jews in Israel might become “not only in the Middle East, but of it.” If he is referring to Israeli and Arab workers uniting to overthrow capitalism throughout the region, then he is right, but he doesn’t spell that out. There are plenty of Arab capitalists who are “of” the Middle East, and they are very friendly with the imperialists, unleashing air strikes and torture whenever needed to terrorize the oppressed peoples of the region: Kurds, Palestinians, Yemenis, black Africans in Libya and so on.
The piece is great, Glenn, unlike the person who is its subject. I believe the word I am searching for is, “yech.” I almost pulled a muscle from laughing at “biblical entitlement of Israel.” Maybe Weiss should have listed Grimm’s Fairy Tales as an additional reference work.
The New York Times is a sh*t stain and no one with an ounce of intelligence reads it. If a reader is looking for facts and insight, this is the site they come to. Thank you.
It’s spelled SHITSTAIN.
Don’t censor your disgust with the New York Times. They are shit and they know it, so you should proclaim it proudly, because they sure as hell do.
spot on.
facts, meaning, and relevance.
There ought to be a mass campaign to demand that the NYT print its tripe on softer paper.
You know… Viewpoint diversity isn’t all that great. TheIntercept for instance, has fucking lunatics writing “stories” here.
“Here’s why this black Trump supporter is a moron – written by smug white guy”
“Climate change is to blame for this non-record storm”
“Trump is a bad man and makes us feel bad – is this impeaches!?”
I usually like the Greenwald articles even if I don’t agree, but holy crap this site can go from 100 to 0 quick.
Useless shit heel hates article.. check.
Useless shit heel uses blanket statements and none quotes from other supposed articles on said site in order to discredit article.. check.
Useless shit heel ignores entire text of article in lame effort to try and discredit it and the writer.. check.
Well, that’s 1, 2, 3 strikes and you’re out OS. Which means that this article and writer is on point and 100% correct about the thesis of the article.
The fact that he seems to have triggered a worthless troll like you is just the cherry on top.
Which means that this article and writer is on point and 100% correct about the thesis of the article.
good one.
maybe OS works for NYT. used to like the paper, not no mo.
The New York Times–all the news the CIA thinks is fit to print
You know it’s WaPo that has the 600 million dollar contract with the CIA though… right?
Perhaps you weren’t listening when Dr Grier mentioned about the CIA plants in msm.
UNACKNOWLEDGED
don’t blame the CIA for NYT. If you really want to blame a specific intelligence agency, then place the blame where it really belongs.. MOSAD.
According to Benjamin H Freedman, the US has been played for fools.
Second that.
I’m kind of vaguely open to Glenn’s larger point, but the three op-eds by Weiss – arguing that the Star of David thing was messed up, that Sarsour is pretty shady and there’s a radical element to the women’s march, and that cultural appropriation is a stupid concept – all strike me as completely fair assessments. Nor do I grant the point these are “powerless” concepts getting hit by a meanie writer.
Hiring some populist writers would be a plus, though.
Bravo Glenn. You apply a standard of intellectual honesty to this debate that is sorely missing, and that the “paper of record” [barf] lacks entirely. The cheerleaders of the Iraq war still sit high in their 8th avenue perches and the op-ed is populated by war criminals like Erik Prince. Now this. I gave up on the NYT after Judith Miller and Tom Friedman and this gives me no reason to go back. When are people going to realize the NYT doesn’t care about anybody outside of a small cadre of pseudo-intellectual and wall streeters? Neocons who are cool with gays and abortion. I know they have a great crossword puzzle, but for God sakes, don’t underwrite their crap any more.
I deeply appreciate your enthusiastic greeting on my arrival today, which I quite understand is addressed not to me personally but to the holy war in the cause of humanity in which we are embarked.
in case any idiots get the wrong idea, the quote above is not of me. It is a quote from somebody else close to the NYT in the past.
and in case any idiots get the wrong idea, that person in the past close to the NYT is neither a friend nor relative nor associate nor acquaintence nor familiar of mine. I believe that the relationship between the NYT and certain warmongers is a historical pattern. I could also point out another DOT in which the NYT had published false implications of WMD.
That amounts to a few significant DOTS. So what do we have here, ANOTHER JUDITH MILLER?
It’s all Mark Thompson’s fault, he did the same to the BBC.
I don’ t know this Weiss person and to be honest i don’ t know the rest of the people who were cited of mentioned in the article either. However it seems to me that Glen is really hard trying to protect a particular group ad discharge another.
So Muslims are being constantly marginalized by the rest of the world, right? This is not only in the Us the case, it is everywhere, well Boohoo. I am marginalized more than any Muslim in the streets of Europe. Europeans see me as a foreigner /maybe Muslim, and the Muslims see me as Kufar. So what. Everybody is marginalized if they don’t fit the status quo.
I most definitely don’t advocate anyone to hate Muslims or anyone else for that matter, but the fact that this group is being chosen all the time as the victim of prosecution is really nonsense. Especially when we look across the board to where Muslim majorities live and how they treat their fellow Christians or Hindus or simply Non-believers as they call them. Why don’t you go and ask the Copts in Egypt about their daughters being kidnapped and converted into Islam, or the Hindu girls in Pakistan. When asked about them, the authorities simply say that if the girls have converted to Islam by choice it is impossible to bring them back as Non-Muslims. Because this is Haraam in Islam. So what about these people? They are not marginalized? They don’t count? You don’t even hear their Coptic pope talk about them, their so-called spiritual leader. ( This Coptic pope was demanded some time ago to appear on Egyptian television and “correct” one of his priests because said that the Quran was changed) that’s not marginalizing? And I know, someone now is going to write back and say, well that’s in Egypt and in Pakistan and somewhere else. We live in the US. (Which by definition means that you find the US and other Western countries more advanced in human rights than those you don’t want to talk about.)
So then the next question is why again so much talk about Israel and how much people who advocate the existence of Israel hate Muslims? Well why don’t we ask the question the other way around. Why do Muslims hate the Jews so much? Do not tell me that it is because of Israel. In November 1941 Hitler and the Palestinian mufti met each other to have a talk about a common enemy. I wonder which common enemy. If we would take the polls of last year about how the Muslims view the Jews, simply by comparison to who hate who more. Jordan, % of the Muslim population asked views them unfavourable. In Lebanon it is 99%, Egypt 98%, Morocco 88%, Indonesia 76%, Pakistan 74%, Turkey 60%. This is in Turkey. What have the Jews done to the Turks that they hate them?
Yes there are people who hate Muslims, but you know, actually all of the world hates each other. The Germans hate the English, they hate the French, they hate the Americans and they hate the Chinese and the Chinese hate the Japanese. This is how it is, period.
Oh for God’s sake. If you don’t know who Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman are, then how can anyone expect you to have enough context to make any larger point or have the patience to read through your wall-of-text paragraph-break-free screed?
Thank for your well great response.
Do you want a well great response? Then provide your link for the poll you cited.
” In Lebanon it is 99%, Egypt 98%, Morocco 88%, Indonesia 76%, Pakistan 74%, Turkey 60%. This is in Turkey. What have the Jews done to the Turks that they hate them?”
What poll was this? I need to see exactly what it asked and read about the methodology before I can take you seriously.
https://www.thoughtco.com/muslim-views-of-jews-2076073
Here you are
Quite right. Anyone who follows news in the U.S. should have at least heard or read these names before. If they haven’t read articles about them, they must have come across critiques of them in other news outlets. The World Socialist Web Site frequently excoriates the NYT and these writers in particular.
Well I don’t follow news in the U.S. and the only reason I am on this website is because of Glen Greenwald.
I am not from the U.S, and I dont care about the internal quarrels in the U.S.
I come to this website for other news than I get from newspapers in my own country.
Are you okay with that?
The mark of a racist, or whatever the nationalistic equivalent of that is, is to classify everyone of a particular nationality or religion or ethnicity as though they were clones of one another. To the point, your last paragraph is a paragon of ignorance and generalization, essentially devoid of truth.
And incidentally in this morning’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, there was an article about a recent poll in Germany in which 88% of the respondents indicated they would have no problem if Muslims moved in next door. That doesn’t seem to indicate widespread hatred of Muslims to me.
Paragraph? Did you mean “sentence”? I didn’t see any paragraphs. Well, other than the giant one.
The sentence was nothing more than to show that if you want to find racism or hatred towards other people, you can find it anywhere and against everbody. That’s it.
Now coming back to Racism: Since when is religion a race? Are born in it or thought to believ in it?
Can you covert to it?
Can you leave it?
Well that’s not a race.
You readily admit your ignorance, and then you expect people to take your imbecile beliefs seriously? You ain’t thinking this shit through at all.
Imbecile beliefs?
So what is it you’re not taking seriously? The fact that Muslims hate Jews or the fact that in Egypt Copts are being treated as second class citizens? Or, as written today on this very website, how UAE treats it foreign workers?
What is it you don’t want to take seriously and I am not thinking about?
Tell me have you ever been a minority in the Middle east? If not, please don’t tell me how it is to be one.
The problem with your type of peole is that you live in a glass room watching the rest of us strugle and know exactly how it is to be us.
The problem with some people is that they live in a glass room watching the rest of us struggle and know exactly how it is to be us. Thanks for thinking for the world yet never act to change it.
So what possessed you to comment on an article about news in the U.S., this Weiss person, and the rest of the people mentioned?
1. “[A] broader range of perspectives;” “different views;” “different voices”? OK, how about Earth First!ers, traditional Native people, Buddhists, communists, and socialists? Now THAT would be a broader range of perspectives with different views and voices. This is just more of the same capitalist crap from the right wing faction of the establishment.
2. The New York Times is nothing more than corporate propaganda from the liberal wing of corporate America, albeit very sophisticated propaganda. The NYT has been caught printing phony articles from CIA operatives, and censors — i.e., never prints — anything outside of establishment perspectives or anything that might offend its major advertisers. Unfortunately, this garbage is considered the paper of record for the U.S. and it has a lot of undue influence, but that doesn’t make what it prints credible.
what major advertisers……have you read the paper daily it looks like a sick version of LIFE magazine……large photo after large photo. fired 1/2 of it editors it prints they same old Clinton BS, Russia did it, Russia did it. It’s editorial page is unreadable and I’m sure it life as a paper paper is finished.
what major advertisers……have you read the paper daily it looks like a sick version of LIFE magazine……large photo after large photo. fired 1/2 of it editors it prints they same old Clinton BS, Russia did it, Russia did it. It’s editorial page is unreadable and I’m sure it life as a paper paper is finished.
Thank you. I agree. It has long been a propaganda outlet for the MIC.
Glenn – you can’t be pro-Putin and anti-Netanyahu. It won’t work out. I guess you will just have to learn the hard way.
jour·nal·ist: j?rn(?)l?st/ (noun) – noun: journalist; plural noun: journalists
“a person who writes for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or prepares news to be broadcast.”
There you go Myth. You seemed to not understand what that word means. Hope that helps you out in the future.
Glenn is pro-Putin, only in the head of a deluded Democrat.
The NYT editorial page is a perfect personification of Noam Chomsky’s quote on the subject of limiting debate.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….”
Was this Chomsky comment before the advent of the Internet. How quaint it is.
Did it touch a nerve? Do you have anything specific to complain about or did you just come here today to express your general discontent about when the venerable right-of-center NYT editorial page and Zionists are criticized?
Glenn, you need an editor. Or at least, you should have cut this into several different articles; I didn’t have the stamina (or stomach) to read the entire piece.
That said, what I got from the portion I did read was (a) the range of opinion in the Times’ editorial page is relatively narrow, and (b) Bari Weiss is mostly a one-trick pony shilling for Israel. Leaving aside the seeming contradiction between (a) and (b), only someone with a solidly leftist perspective could think that the Times is “center left to center right”. It is “relatively hard left to center left”, and has been for a very long time. Adding Bret Steven did indeed help add a bit of a conservative viewpoint, but only a tiny bit; he is not reliably conservative (I’ve read his pieces in the WSJ for years). And Weiss is pretty much irrelevant.
I applaud the Times’ attempt to add some diversity of viewpoints, tepid as its effort has been. But until the thoroughly leftist slant to its news reporting changes, and it adopts a neutral, facts-only approach (without editorializing) I won’t be reading it any time soon (except, perhaps, for its arts pages). I gave up on the “newspaper of record” decades ago, and don’t expect that to change.
ANti-fa is exactly what they want, they need to stop.
The horror that she isn’t a nutty lefty like Klein or Michael “I’m not a millionaire”Moore (he seriously claimed that on Howard Stern’s show).
She should be applauded for her article on how ridiculous the idea of cultural appropriation is
The funny thing is that Glenn is probably just providing additional profile to Bari Weiss with this piece.
I hadn’t heard of her until this article and actually enjoyed her piece: “Three Cheers for Cultural Appropriation.” I didn’t realize that people were getting upset over Kendrick Lamar’s use of ninjas in a performance. Talk about a first world problem there. Although I wonder if she over-exaggerates the supposed problem. Are there really that many people out there upset over Katy Perry pulling a wig off of her head? Or is she just picking an choosing some isolated commentary and painted it as a generalization?
It’s definitely not the most pressing issue one should be concerned about. But I get the point. When people talk about “cultural appropriation”, they aren’t referring to cultural adoption, but to the use of cultural elements of a minority in a colonialist or derogatory fashion. A good example is the use of the word “nigger”.
People who write regularly for the NYT op-ed page and who are paid to commission articles for it have no influence or attention unless I write about them.
This is a great point, Nate.
I have to imagine Mate was trying to be funny. I have to.
Glenn, let me put this into terms you can understand: she has 8,600 followers on Twitter.
You undoubtedly gave her a nice little bump. Earning a trademark Glenn Greenwald attack piece? She hasn’t earned that!!
And thanks to Mr. Glenn Greenwald, America gets a pre-emptive alert on the next NYT assault on America. Cost? a little undeserved bumb in the jimmy’s rating as youare guessing. But hey, at least you got part of the picture!
Of course the sad point is that both this article and Greenwald’s response here are entirely indiciative of his writing during the Trump era. Sad!
“ignore them and they will go away” has become one of the most oft-invoked dopey ideas of our time. It’s not just for parents giving bad advice to their kids about bullies anymore.
This article is 150% correct on the issue of Israel and the NYT. It allows only one view. (pro-israel, anti-arab). Do you want to test how pretentious Weiss’ commitment to free speech is? Just mildly criticize Israel. She will demand you be silenced and fired.
I apologize in advance, because I don’t have the time/stamina to read this in its entirety now, but I have to add a couple of things.
I agree, wholeheartedly, because the establishment’s interpretation of diversity has little to do with the dictionary meaning.
I read Politico last night and I think it was a staff opinion piece. The idiot writer/s there called Claire McCaskill – of all people – a populist. WTF? From the fire to the frying pan, I’ll say, as far as media’s judgment and hipness about today’s culture, mood, and reality .
For a much better take on David Brooks (who writes a great deal of social commentary) and Thomas Friedman, may I suggest The TARFU Report by Matt Taibbi and Alex Pareene?: https://www.patreon.com/tarfureport
It’s also without subscription…
I would suggest rading the articles about Brooks and Friedman on the World Socialist Web Site. http://www.wsws.org Do a search. There are several.
Unless you have heard Matt Taibbi and Alex Pareene, you are missing a great deal of fun.
They suck on helium-filled balloons for these segments.
Podcast on Friday without the subscription.
I understand the rap and I do not disagree with it.
Re TF – The pro-war neoliberals drive me up a wall. All somebody has to say is something like, “Last night he became President,” to forever tarnish the rep of an ass like Fareed Zakaria.
Zakaria and Niall Ferguson debate the Future of Geopolitics. The premise was so wrong: https://munkdebates.com/
Thank you for the suggestion.
What are you complaining about, Glenn. .. The NYT may have Ms Weiss, but The Intercept gets James Risen!
*you can’t get blood out of a turnip … and that’s a pretty fair deal.
Benjamin Freedman, expressing concerns about a third world war being promoted by the war promoters, knew differently.
and yet the NYT on August 7 1933 willfully cooperated with a full page ad from (name goes here).
Actually, I am not at all upset about Weiss being on the Times op-ed team. The move makes the biases of the NYT all the more obvious to any thinking reader, and further incentivizes people to ignore their op-ed statements. The gray lady has long since become the gray hag, the wicked witch of the northeast.
Bari Weiss: All the more reason to laugh at the clueless people out there who accuse the Times of representing the “liberal media”.
This article is probably correct. But please stop using the phrase “marginalized groups” when describing some peoples. Its the worst. The woooorst.
Also, Paul Krugman is the worst. The woooorst.
Very unfortunately, Krugman is not one of the marginalized groups. Appropriate action should be taken to see that this changesASAP.
The news organization that hired convicted felon Juan Thompson, subpar journalists such as Ken Silverstein and Natasha Vargas Cooper; that seemingly has a stunning amount of turnover; and whose general incompetence on the reporting of the Reality Winner leak led to an “internal investigation,” is chiding the NYT on hiring decisions.
Hmmmm….
Edit: Hired later to be convicted felon Juan Thompson.
TI’s only hiring of a convicted felon was Barrett Brown. My bad!
Allow me to appropriate an old sports expression (how appropriate, right?) and let you know that you aren’t worthy of carrying convicted felon Barrett Brown’s dirty jockstrap.
There’s no surprise here. The traitorous Israel-first Americans are circling the wagons in an attempt to save their beloved “Jewish democracy” because they see it slipping fast against mounting popular movements against it. Their preference is to continue “negotiations” ad infinitum to maintain the facade that the “two-state” solution is the end goal. But anyone with two cents worth of sense knows the two-state solution is dead because the Israelites won’t give up the settlements. That leaves one-state characterized by either vicious Apartheid rule (de facto what currently exists) or true democracy where there are equal rights for Arabs, Christians and Jews (which had worked fine a century prior to the “creation” of their beloved state). Even the “progressive” stalwart Bernie Sanders told AJ+ in an interview that he prefers Apartheid (status quo) over democracy because in his words a single democratic state “would mean the end of Israel.”
In other words, the NYT just doubled down on its commitment to supporting Israel and Zionism at all costs. It’s not a coincidence that Weiss started at Columbia: she’s been known to the Times her whole career.
This is a problem: the Paper of Record, with its ability to set the national agenda, is deeply biased on one of our most pressing foreign policy issues. Remember, the NYT is guilty of publishing lies to promote the Iraq War. Its choice of columnists is just part of that.
There’s something quite ironic about a writer on The Intercept complaining about the lack of diversity in a media outlet’s viewpoints, considering there is not a single writer on this website who could be considered right-of-center. Not even a single libertarian, and they don’t fall neatly into the left/right dichotomy at all. I realize this lack of diversity is not Greenwald’s fault, and if every journalist on this site had the same strict code of integrity that Glenn has it wouldn’t matter much. But unfortunately many writers on this site are clearly DNC hacks, and the ones that aren’t seem to fall in the far-left and even extremist left side of the spectrum and strive for little or no level of fairness in their writing and reporting. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate having a source of news that doesn’t spew neocon propaganda, it’s just that TI is not qualified to criticize other media outlets for lack of diversity in the viewpoints allowed.
What is ironic is that the opinions of the media in this country have moved so far right over the last four decades that there is no far-left or left-extremist opinion still around to hear. There is not a dichotomy between left and right in this country, just an echoing chorus of right and far-right, with the left-wing left outside the chorister digging latrines for their own, once-mainstream opinions.
Oh, really? Read the World Socialist Web Site, why don’t you? http://www.wsws.org
Difference being The Intercept doesn’t engage in the hypocrisy of claiming it has a commitment to “diverse” viewpoints as the NYT times, when in fact it doesn’t.
The Intercept’s editorial and stated mission is to challenge power (political, military and economic) by accurately and contextually presenting facts and stories that most major outlets either don’t cover or cover in a very different way.
Nothing wrong with having a “viewpoint” or being consistent about it so long as the facts underlying that viewpoint are accurately represented, properly contextualized, and logically and morally coherently argued.
Define “fairness” and then if you would or could please define what you mean by “far-left” and “extremist left” and who on The Intercept falls into either of those latter categories. So you’d be doing me and all of us a favor if you could point out anyone on staff who is “far-left” and/or “extremist left” as I am unaware of who they are.
I’ve been reading this site since its inception, and Greenwald for a lot longer than that, and I’m not aware of any true “socialists” or “communists” or Marxists or Leninists or Bolivarians that actually write material for this site, at best there is a well represented “New Deal” sort of liberalism or European “social democracy” leftism at this site but that is far from “far or extreme left” in any known sense of the word amongst political science literature except in the minds of American “conservatives” who are actually “far right” at this point and a lot closer to some combination of classic liberal/propertarian-libertarian/theocratic authoritarian corporatist loons looking to create a dystopian nightmare in America.
Sorry about that last massive run-on sentence. Little over-caffeinated today. Better go spread some bark dust in the flower beds and work it out.
Run-on or not, it doesn’t make it less true. Enjoy your gardening.
I agree with you for the most part. I should have said “militant left” rather than “extremist left.” I’m extremely tired today and didn’t choose my words carefully, so for that I apologize. However, I would consider any of the so-called “democratic socialists” to be far-left. Any ideology heavily influenced by Marx and Keynes cannot be considered otherwise (you can try to make it sound more acceptable by labeling it “New Deal” liberalism but the New Deal was heavily influenced by Marxist ideas). Just because Europe has moved so far left economically and socially doesn’t make it the new center. And since we are talking about America specifically, that goes doubly so.
I also would point out that it’s not fair to monolith “classic liberal/propertarian-libertarian/theocratic authoritarian corporatist” together. Classic liberalism and libertarianism are essentially the same, but libertarians are fiercely opposed to authoritarianism and corporatism of any kind, so lumping them together is intellectually lazy and unfair.
Actually “libertarians” come in about half a dozen different shades. Classical liberalism and libertarianism are not the same because of that. The only form of libertarianism that is even remotely coherent and morally defensible is the type Noam Chomsky is–libertarian socialist/anarcho syndicalist. IMHO.
If you think Marx and Keynes politics (or political economy) are the same I’d suggest some remedial courses at university in political science and economics. Keynes is reasoned and sane, not “far-left,” and nothing like Marx. Which is not to say Marx wasn’t correct about a great many things even if his ultimate solutions to some of mankind’s problems were unworkable except in the theoretical.
Depends on the type of libertarian you are, but the vast majority are not fiercely opposed nor do they have any problem whatsoever with employing the corporate form(s) to engage in their supposed personal/individual business affairs. And they certainly don’t have any problem whatsoever with the idea that said corporate form, acting on their behalf, and providing them personal liability protection, ends up achieving monopoly or monopsony position in the market. Or that said entity is allowed to use the entity’s profits to advance its profit maximization ends, or the personal financial ends of its principals, by employing its profits to buy influence the “political” arena (i.e. corporate personhood purchasing rafts of lobbyists and influence peddlers) rather than the principals just having one vote and whatever personal connections they can create, as opposed to the average individual. They really have no commitment to “liberty” or “freedom” except to the extent money can protect those ideas for themselves. They are almost uniformly just perfectly fine with being plutocrats or oligarchs, which makes liberty and freedom less likely for everyone who isn’t.
All of those type of “libertarians,” which is the vast majority unlike Chomsky, are “propertarians” first and foremost with zero problem with “corporatism” (corporate statism, neoliberalism, fascism etc. not the other forms of which there are many) so long as they are they are a beneficiary (majority shareholder, CEO, . . .) of that legal fiction/idea.
Basically libertarianism, except the Chomsky variety, is internally incoherent, morally indefensible, and quite simply an anti-humanist fantasy glommed onto by halfwits like Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan. I wont even bother deconstructing the bullshit and harm the Hayeks, Friedmans, von Mises, and Rothbards of the world have inflicted on humanity with their crackpot ideas.
I don’t have time to address everything in your massive wall of text rant but you are basically lumping a vast array of opinions from all over the political spectrum together under one label, which is utterly unhelpful for establishing a dialog.
Also I never said or implied that Keynes and Marx were the same. What I said is that they have both influenced the bad economic policies endorsed by the left.
well said.
A good boiling down to the article’s gist, which was the Times’ hypocrisy. Apparently the article was too long for many commenters to get.
“Nothing wrong with having a “viewpoint” or being consistent about it so long as the facts underlying that viewpoint are accurately represented, properly contextualized, and logically and morally coherently argued.”
This also applies to NYT. Their viewpoint is that they are somewhere in the Middle of everthing working for their Masters who want to make money. Is that a viewpoint or not?
Best comment of the day! Thanks for well reasoned post
This misses the point. For starters, news outlets can hire whoever they want and have any editorial line they’d like. But they shouldn’t then pretend to have “diversity of opinion” when they self-promote.
Beyond that, The Intercept is in essence very different to the NYT. The Intercept specializes in certain types of reporting. The NYT is supposed to be a general audience paper. From a democratic point of view, the NYT’s published opinions should ideally be somewhat reflective of those of its readers. So where are the columnists who support single payer, are anti-capitalist and anti-war?
Please don’t take my comments as defending the NYT. I think it’s a terrible newspaper and I too would love to see those types of viewpoints espoused, hence why I come to The Intercept. My point is that there’s nothing in TI’s stated mission that would exclude a conservative or liberty-minded voice and yet that is clearly what is happening.
The point you think I made is the exact opposite of the point I actually made:
We don’t claim to be the Paper of Record devoted to airing all ideological views and intellectual diversity. We acknowledge we write from a point of view and are devoted to specific perspectives.
That’s why the whole second part of the article – which I recommend you read before denouncing – is devoted to showing how important it is for the NYT to claim they are devoted to the full range of political viewpoints.
Yes you are right of course. My comment was partially facetious because the shutting out of liberty-minded viewpoints on TI is a pet peeve of mine. I love your style of journalism and The Intercept’s mission, I just wish you (really not you specifically, but whoever is in charge of hiring writers) would include a more libertarian voice because truly principled liberals like you share many values with libertarians, such as on free speech, civil liberties, Israel, foreign policy, corporatism, etc., and it would make a lot of sense to seek that common ground rather than shutting out the voice of a potential ally. There’s nothing in The Intercept’s stated editorial practices that would imply that liberty-minded views are not allowed, and yet they are clearly being shut out even though many libertarians frequent this site and crave the type of coverage The Intercept provides.
In addition to the issues I listed above, another thing we can agree on is that the NYT is terrible. So thank you for calling them out on their hypocrisy and I hope you will consider what I have said here.
Could you be more specific? What issues does TI regularly (or ever) cover that would benefit from a libertarian’s perspective? The Drug War? Foreign policy? Domestic surveillance?
Who do you allege is having their voice shut out that should be on TI’s roster?
“I just wish you would include a more libertarian voice because truly principled liberals like you share many values with libertarians, such as on free speech, civil liberties, Israel, foreign policy, corporatism, etc.”
Thank you for making my brain want to explode in so many diverse ways
Actually you’ve frequently argued that The Intercept doesn’t present a singular perspective and instead has a diverse range of voices, while simultaneously arguing that you have no control over what is or is not published.
Are you retracting those claims, and admitting The Intercept is instead a hyper narrow publication devoted only to the views you find acceptable? That would be a level of honesty and self-awareness I’d be surprised to see.
Actually you said multiple times when The Intercept started that you would be hiring conservative writers. You said this in your exchange with Bill Keller. You said that you would be hiring “real” conservatives, not David Brooksian types. To date, The Intercept has not hired any conservative writers. And there are plenty out there who share your foreign policy and civil liberties stances, that “point of view” and “devoted to specific perspectives” you mentioned.
The Grey Lady is a joke. They pushed Bush’s WMD scare, they clamored for trillions in bailouts to Wall Street, they sold the Obama wars in Syria and Libya, demonized Russia … how can anyone take them seriously.
“Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing: A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.”
– New York Times 1971
NYT is competing with WaPo isn’t it?
Alison Weir’s , “Against Our Better Judgment” comes to mind here..”Chapter Fifteen -Zionist influence in the media”
I had a major LULZ attack at this brilliant one-liner:
“supporting the war in Iraq made you an imperialist,”
Duh.
Ha!!
You are so right! I didn’t think about it when I read it. Thanks for that!
BW writing in Haaretz:
Neither of these is consistent with much of anything in most of the comments.
This relatively new “journalist” is getting kudos for being right-wing and ignorant? Well, not inconsistant with the right-wing propaganda machine that is the New York Times. What a joke. Send this child back to school.
How is it any different from the constant pandering to Muslims that we see on these pages?
The ideological biases on here are just as bad as any seen on the NY Times OpEd pages.
With exceptions from some of the straight journalists the NYT employs, the paper is a joke. How is NYTs Op-Ed tenor different than the WSJ Op-Ed tenor? It isn’t.
It’s a “style” and “culture” paper for rich NYC types. Why anyone considers it the “paper of record” is beyond me. It’s fish wrapper and birdcage liner for the most part with some narrow exceptions.
“All the news that’s fit to slant”.
add the washington post to the list. the media is suppose to inform the population, not propagandize the people.
we have an american pravda.
i wonder where the press stands on the proposed anti bds law? particularly the nyt,wsj, & wapo.
GG: our Virgil as we descend to the next levels.
Exceptionalism: being lost in a dark wood midway through our journey. The light at the end of the tunnel? The glare of filthy lucre or the flames of hell. As long as might makes right, who cares about Beatrice?
Another article about the power of corporations.
The articles about monopoly power in the last couple of days which were highlighted by the firing of the entire Open Markets Team at the New America Foundation. Those fired say that this event highlighted that they were making a difference and Google acted.
A couple of years ago I was at a NetRoots conference and Zephyr Teachout was there. I gave her a hug and with tears in my eyes thanked her for being in politics. At the time she was running for the House in NY State.
The Intercept published an article of hers a couple of days ago.
“HOW I GOT FIRED FROM A D.C. THINK TANK FOR FIGHTING AGAINST THE POWER OF GOOGLE”
https://theintercept.com/2017/08/31/how-i-got-fired-from-a-d-c-think-tank-for-fighting-against-the-power-of-google/
And there was even an article by her in the WA Post on the same topic.
“Google is coming after critics in academia and journalism. It’s time to stop them.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/30/zephyr-teachout-google-is-coming-after-critics-in-academia-and-journalism-its-time-to-stop-them/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.8fcc5461be2e
The article begins with
“About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.”
Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.”
This is a very important effort because corporations and finance and military control the government. And the monopoly power of the corporations, along with rigged courts and our wars are all part of the coup.
Aren’t news organizations and publications private businesses owned by private citizens? I thought Citizen Kane was Hollywood’s magnum opus for movies because of its powerful criticism of manipulative news agencies? Oh wait, the US turned those moguls into awards in journalism lol! Stop kidding yourselves. You’re all capitalists using contrived controversy to promote your advertising sponsers. How can Klein be anti-capitalist when her only publications are advertisements for her book(s)? Can you be anti-capitalist while playing, and doing very well, as a capitalist? Lot of cognitive dissonance there.
Human decency and respect can’t work in a capitalist system. You have to train it out of people starting young. You can’t enforce it through the police, so you need to supplement the brainwashing with a steady drip of media. The consumers don’t know how they’re supposed to behave, so they need guidance from their superiors in news, law, police agencies, and media. So, those benevolent capitalists are kind enough to hire people to help their consumers find their way to the right stores.
It’s cute how news media has become playground politics. Every agency just snipes at each other so their fans can giggle in glee at their apparent superiority. They enjoy the illusion of independence and moral righteousness while undermining their own power by giving their value away for false promises of security. Like a little kids soccer game, you guys all just chase the same story accomplishing nothing, but the spectators keep cheering for the show.
Capitalism funnels people into boxes called markets. Now there’s only a few corporations gobbling up the few markets left, so they have to expand their formally niche markets to pander for more customers. Video games are a great example. They pandered to young isolated white males until they made a lot of money. Now they’re desperately trying to pander to appear more “inclusive” with the hope their toys can grab some girls market or black boys market. Capitalists don’t see us as people, we’re commodities to them. Identity politics is the same thing, capitalists trying to manage politics and the people involved like commodities.
The Society of the Spectacle is far too real now. The “greatest”, The Boomer, and X’er generations had chances to change things. Instead they sold out their futures for cheap superficial gains like good little capitalist slaves. We young people thank you for selling us out.
While I agree with many of your views on merits of capitalism, your take here, in this case, is off base:
This site, although seed-funded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, relies on no advertising sponsors to maintain it’s existence.
True, a benefactor (agency or single individual) is problematic at best; but the editorial leadership, output and subsequent funding by less capitalistic individuals (this site is asking for financial contributions from it’s readers, as well) will in the end determine it’s fate.
While I have had (and continue to have) concerns about the direction of The Intercept, it’s not the advertisers controlling the content, nor, I hope, is Omidyar.
It’s the staff.
I’m not interested in an apologist view point for capitalism. Especially when, if you have listened to the Intercepted podcast, you would know very well this site is supported by advertising from private companies, and is owned by a large multi-national company with more commodity interests than just podcast view numbers.
You can play degrees of separation all you want, it doesn’t change the economic model driving their behavior as journalists. Your denial doesn’t change anything.
“[T]his site is supported by advertising from private companies”?
This is unsupported BS. What advertising? There are no ads on this site. I don’t think you even approach understanding how ads on websites work. It would not matter at all to any advertisers how many people read The Intercept if there are no ads on the page. Duh!
You’re retarded if you honestly believe that. Listen to Intercepted which is part of the Intercept, and listen for the ads.
If you honestly think this place isn’t influenced by advertising and private interests then you’re just plain stupid. You really think they don’t collaborate with companies to sell your information for profit? Please.
I don’t expect cheerleaders to care though. You do as your media tells you, like most of the good old dogs ’round here.
Notice how you repeatedly actually say absolutely nothing:
Three posts with a litany of accusations backed up by absolutely nothing but blowhard self-love followed by playing the victim.
Learn to read then. It’s not my fault you can’t handle some passion in writing or emotion in a discussion. Nor is it my fault you don’t understand what I wrote. Maybe try reading it again? Maybe you can pay attention to people’s behavior and stop listening to their sales pitches. Otherwise, keep waiting for your masters to tell you how to think you silly old man.
As Sillyputty’s reply to you below notes, again, you’ve said absolutely nothing to back up any of your scrambled word salads. To top that off you’re running with your cowardly and feeble defense with the old cliche of “keep waiting for your masters to …”. I would say that you’re all about horse shit, but even horse shit is at least visible.
Cool. I didn’t provide one.
Prove that claim, please.
That one, too.
Or I can just ask you to prove your unsubstantiated claims.
Which is yet to be proven by you.
My “denial” isn’t the topic here, your “assertions” are.
Obviously neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism works out very well; in one case you have the plutocratic monopolist in charge, in the other you have the central committee in charge.
In the purely capitalist system, Naomi Klein could only sell her books with Amazon’s approval – that would be the only distributor, unless she wanted to sell books out of the back of a car.
In the purely socialist system, Naomi Klein would have to get the Ministry of Information’s approval for a state distribution license – or be sent off to the gulag for counterrevolutionary activites.
Clearly, a middle way is best. You might want to read some John Kenneth Galbraith on such issues – see American Capitalism, 1956, or even better, everything written by Ha Joon Chang, in particular, Economics, The User’s Guide.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20613671-economics
As far as who owns the media in the United States – learn how to use yahoo finance to look up the major holders in the biggest media corporations and providers – TimeWarner, Disney, AT&T, Viacom, etc. You’ll find their major shareholders are the biggest pension and investment funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street, Dodge & Cox, F etc. – also major holders in fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, banking, arms manufacturing, automobiles, computers, etc. Most of the profits from these activities roll into the pockets of the 1%, defined as people with incomes >$400,000 per year and with assets >$8 million. Roughly 96% white, 1% black, 1% latino, 1% asian, 1% other. Dominated by inherited wealth. The aristocrat class, in other words – created by decades of neoliberal policies implemented by Democrats and Republicans.
That’s the actual structure of the system today – it’s a plutocratic oligarchic system, not a democracy – and quite unstable, as the shock election of the Trumpster shows.
The issue of the New York Times having a “opposing viewpoints” debate between Paul Krugman and David Brooks is pretty hilarious – but that’s the nature of the tiny little box the NYT’s owners and editors and readers live in. Look at it from outside the box, the dimensions of allowed opinons are structured as either:
(1) Ideological fixation on free-market fundamentalism, the designation of neoclassical Milton-Friedman-style “market orthodoxy” as the unquestionable true economic science. David Sirota wrote an article about this back in 2006 and absolutely nothing at the NYTimes has changed since – Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman being mindless yes-men for any free trade deal approved by Washington:
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Where-economics-meets-religious-fundamentalism-2514142.php
Or,
(2) Absolute faith in a foreign policy agenda that views military assault as an entirely acceptable method of achieving economic dominance when the other neoliberal tools (‘free trade’ deals, debt wars, etc.) have failed to have the desired effect – as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. David Brooks is the most ludicrous champion of this approach, see his cheerleadaing for the “impeccably crafted” intervention in Libya (March 21, 2011) and his warning that “multilateralism works best as a garment clothing American leadership”. Go forward to 2013 and he’s jumping up and down again for more of the same:
Right now, President Obama is focused on the imminent strike against the Assad regime, to establish American credibility when it sets red lines and reinforce the norm that poison gas is not acceptable. – David Brooks, Aug 29 2013.
So that’s their range of opinon – America must dominate the world either by shady neoliberal ‘free trade’ deals, or, failing that, by ‘humanitarian military intervention’. Hillary Clinton boilerplate drivel. Israel and Saudi Arabia/GCC our most loyal client states, are useful tools for this effort so no criticism of them is allowed, regardless of human rights abuses, clandestine nuclear weapons programs, illegal military assaults on their neighbors (Yemen, Lebanon) – pure hypocrisy. It’s not just stupid, it’s evil.
The factual basis of their opinions is always highly suspect, just as when the NYTimes was the lead actor promoting the lies about Saddam having nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Their claims about having a ‘firewall’ between the opinion pages and the news pages is so much BS; facts are spun all the time to suit their opinions, as is so common in US corporate media these days.
The problem is, the people who read and regurgitate Krugman and Brooks actually think they’re the intelligent, well-informed ones – the habituated loyal readership of the New York Times, who, with a little prodding, will spill all the talking points they’ve absorbed, just as if they’ve thought it all out for themselves. It’s so pathetic – even in the old Soviet Union, you didn’t have this section of the population that actually believed the garbage put out by Tass and Pravda – they at least knew it was all fishwrap.
so, she’s a provocateur, a construct . . like we don’t have enough of that.
I’m sure she sucks. However, stopped reading after GG critiqued her for her stance on the Israeli flag ban and cultural appropriation. That shit IS stupid and IS the problem with the left. You’d think GG with his free speech absolutist stance would save the critique for where she’s actually wrong.
Why do hires like this continue? Because the rich and powerful that own corporate media are convinced that right wing content sells. We’re in a goddamn war (Steve Bannon). It’s fucking hand-to-hand combat for viewers (Phil Griffin). Boring hard serious rolling news is out. People want infotainment.
This means that the talking heads on cable news aren’t journalists. Instead, they’re millionaire talk hosts who do what their bosses say. Wanna be a star? Wanna have money, power, perks and be a fucking person not to be messed with? Just do what we say. If you don’t, we’ll fire your ass. Then you’ll be just another out-of-work TV “star” that nobody cares about.
Now, there are literally no US papers worth buying/reading online anymore.
Such a total shame, isn’t it?
Gone are the days of the intrepid journalist, or the intrepid politician. I’m not saying that there ever was such a time, but at least it wasn’t this bad.
It’s unbelievable.
Even sadder is that with very little rewriting, Greenwald could make another article with the same premise regarding the Washington Post editorial unit. Their “conservative” voice is Jennifer Rubin, who really only cares about Israel and bombing Muslims and little else about conservative values. And all their liberal writers are the same kinds of bourgeois center-left automatons they have at the Times.
One thing Greenwald doesn’t mention in the article is that most of these people, aside from their banal centrism, aren’t very good writers to begin with and some of them are awful to the point of comedy. Some are Tom Friedman laughingly bad, and some are just boring and interchangeable.
I agree about the range of opinion on foreign policy, Israel in particular but on cultural and social issues I think they are trying. I happen to agree with her about cultural appropriation; she could have been more sensitive and consiliatory towards a general case for a cosmopolitan understanding instead of pointing at silly and absurd knee jerk reactions but public discourse seems to require provocation to get people interested enough to take in the more deep positions that transcend the culture war.
One positive about Bari Weiss on Israel is she’s at least being vocal about her position. When I talk to Israeli friends and family it’s all platitudes and equivocations like “those settlers are very brave” and I don’t feel I can say anything because I don’t feel like I know enough about Israeli politics from afar that couldn’t be discounted as ignorant of the facts on the ground.
Yes! Why can’t GG who is such a free speech absolutist not reconcile the fact that whining about bs like cultural appropriation and banning Israeli flags from a march are not good for the left?
That’s the point. Those are easy issues to have diversity of opinion on, because powerful economic interests are OK with that diversity. They can live with it. It’s much harder to have diversity of opinion on imperialistic intervention, economic justice, etc.
I’m anti-Zionist, but I’m with you on Weiss’s piece on cultural appropriation – despite its clickbait headline, I was aligned with her on most of the article’s content.
I’d be curious, Glenn Greenwald – to know your specific crit on that article, as to my mind the appropriation police have many parallels to hate speech police that I know you are firmly against. If you or anyone has links to your writings on this subject I’d love to read them, thanks.
As someone who never reads the NYT, I guess it helps that someone does, if only to take them apart. The job of a media analyst is grim.
Thanks!
The role of the NY Times is to shape public opinion. A diversity of opinion within their own ranks would only complicate that task. There is an argument to be made for a diversity of backgrounds and experience. Each writer can appeal to their own demographic. But the ultimate conclusions they reach must be identical.
Other news organizations use different models. Fox News for example, always has a slot for a ‘liberal’ who plays the village idiot. But Fox News was born in the era of WWE wrestling in which interest was generated by staged conflicts. The NYT belongs to an older tradition, where wise storytellers spin tales that fascinate and educate their clueless readers.
Now, both of these models are obsolete. Currently, it is readers who provide the drama by staging protests and counter-protests and professional pundits are trained inflamers who spur them on by publishing fake news.
It is not easy to switch from one paradigm to another. So the NY Times remains mired in the past, becoming evermore irrelevant.
I think the idea is far more simple.
NYTimes strategy:
Part 1: Let’s grow our base and attract Republicans
Part 2: Fuck our base
Part 3: Become irrelevant to everyone
Fox Strategy:
Part 1: Our base is king.
Part 2: Our base is king.
Part 3: Our base is king, and we’re relevant to our base.
No they spelled out their strategy in a memo some time ago, probably a bit more revealing than they intended (marketing people can be funny that way):
This unites the entire company around the shared goal of improving the experience for our loyal, habituated audience and making it easier and more compelling for new readers to make The Times an important part of their daily lives. Instead of blindly chasing page views, we must thoughtfully build an audience of loyalists.
They’re trying to recruit an army of zombies, in other words. I think William Gibson described their target audience very nicely, in a short story, “The Gernsback Continuum”
“This unites the entire company around the shared goal of improving the experience for our loyal, habituated audience and making it easier and more compelling for new readers to make The Times an important part of their daily lives. ”
Again, this is most effectively accomplished by printing on softer paper.
The NYT never understood the concept of a ‘base’. If asked, they would reply their base is everybody. They believe themselves to be so brilliant that their persuasion will work universally.
Fox News came along later, and made their mission to carve away and create their own base. So they understand the concept. They persuade using emotions rather than logic – which is why they are more effective than the NT Times. However, they still report actual news, which limits them to some extent.
The new model, based on the internet, is to enhance the persuasion power of the news by making it up to suit the narrative. Mr. Trump tries to confuse the issue by labelling the NY Times as Fake News. If only. Their fundamental problem is they don’t do fake news very well.
That’s quite a list. Ha ha. What a disappointment Krugman is.
Edits:
5th Paragraph from top:
“Weiss, standing alone, isn’t worth spending much on:”
Maybe it should be “isn’t worth spending much time on”
2nd Paragraph down from “Bari Weiss is a caricature”
“husband of Netanyahu-fan Ayaan Hirsi Ali (whom Weiss admirers)”
should be whom Weiss admires
I take it Greenwald just wants the Times as an echo chamber of liberal points of view
RTFA
BTW, that was brutal and awesome.
I think it is “prancing around” that is the most devastating. Something from Monty Python comes to mind, with coconuts. Or maybe unicorns.
i was thinking of king arthur riding his imaginary horse in monty python and the holy grail.
Bob, nope.
“But as far as embracing views far to the left or right, the Times’ full-time opinion writers have never represented a particularly wide range. The paper has never had a Pat Buchanan or Steve Bannon, a strident right-wing populist arguing against free trade, immigration and U.S. intervention abroad. Nor has it played host to a regular columnist from the anti-war left in the vein of Michael Moore, or an anti-capitalist like Naomi Klein.”
Try to keep up… or at the very least read the article.. or alternatively, have someone read it for you and explain what it means. One of the many points made is that the spectrum of opinion at the Times is very narrow… it includes liberals, neo liberals, neocons, and other bigots who will support the mainstream echo-chamber …. a very narrow spectrum of opinion that you see in all corporate media. There is a virtual consensus on foreign policy that is glaring to those who are paying attention, for instance. Glenn made many great points in this media critique (nobody does it better) and you failed to address any of them.