As much as the Times is an institution with some serious problems, it is also one of those enduring institutions which stands apart from the government, clear partisan affiliation, the crudest dictates of money, and so forth -- in other words, precisely what an organ of a free press, a part of the scaffolding of civil society, is supposed to do
It is precisely this standing of the old New York Times that Howell Raines has badly undercut, first by turning the paper of record into a crusading liberal paper, second by lowering its journalistic standards quite shockingly. Blair was only the most extreme example. I believe Bragg when he says that he only did as others did (though he may have done more of it). Both Hedges and Egan have written very fact-challenged articles (anybody remember Kissinger being enlisted in the anti-war camp last summer, or "Crack, Sag and Burn" about Alaska supposedly rising 7 degrees in temperature in thirty years?), and they are still there. And of course, Johnny Apple's dolorous quagmire predictions did not a thing to increase the factual content of the first page of the New York Times.
I want the old Times back. The one whose news I could trust. |
