The Authoritarian Media
The New York Times has crossed a moral line..
By JAMES TARANTO
The Wall Street Journal online
After the horrific shooting spree, the editorial board of New York Times offered a voice of reasoned circumspection: "In the aftermath of this unforgivable attack, it will be important to avoid drawing prejudicial conclusions . . .," the paper counseled.
Here's how the sentence continued: ". . . from the fact that Major Hasan is an American Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East."
The Tucson Safeway massacre prompted exactly the opposite reaction. What was once known as the paper of record egged on its readers to draw invidious conclusions that are not only prejudicial but contrary to fact. In doing so, the Times has crossed a moral line.
Here is an excerpt from yesterday's editorial:
<<< It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman's act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.
That whirlwind has touched down most forcefully in Arizona, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described after the shooting as the capital of "the anger, the hatred and the bigotry that goes on in this country." Anti-immigrant sentiment in the state, firmly opposed by Ms. Giffords, has reached the point where Latino studies programs that advocate ethnic solidarity have actually been made illegal. . . .
Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments. >>>
To describe the Tucson massacre as an act of "political violence" is, quite simply, a lie. It is as if, two days after the Columbine massacre, a conservative newspaper of the Times's stature had described that atrocious crime as an act of "educational violence" and used it as an occasion to denounce teachers unions. Such an editorial would be shameful and indecent even if the arguments it made were meritorious.
The New York Times has seized on a madman's act of wanton violence as an excuse to instigate a witch hunt against those it regards as its domestic foes. "Instigate" is not too strong a word here: As we noted yesterday, one of the first to point an accusatory finger at the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin was the Times's star columnist, Paul Krugman. Less than two hours after the news of the shooting broke, he opined on the Times website: "We don't have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was."
This was speculative fantasy, irresponsible but perhaps forgivable had Krugman walked it back when the facts proved contrary to his prejudices. He did not. His Monday column evinced the same damn-the-facts attitude as the editorial did.
In the column, Krugman blames the massacre on "eliminationist rhetoric," which he defines as "suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary." He rightly asserts that "there isn't any place" for such rhetoric. But he falsely asserts that it is "coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."
He provides exactly one example: Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, "urging constituents to be 'armed and dangerous.' " Such a statement does seem problematic, although in the absence of context, and given what former Times public editor Daniel Okrent has described as Krugman's "disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults"--an observation that surely applies to nonnumeric facts as well--we are disinclined to trust Krugman's interpretation of Bachmann's statement.
In any case, the evidence Krugman offers is insufficient to establish even the existence of "eliminationist rhetoric" on the right. To be sure, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Such rhetoric does exist on the right, and we join Krugman in deploring it.
But Krugman's assertion that such rhetoric comes "overwhelmingly from the right" is at best wilfully ignorant. National Review's Jay Nordlinger runs down some examples on the left:
<<< Even before [George W.] Bush was elected president, the kill-Bush talk and imagery started.
When Governor Bush was delivering his 2000 convention speech, Craig Kilborn, a CBS talk-show host, showed him on the screen with the words "SNIPERS WANTED."
Six years later, Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, "You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone." (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, "Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone." (This is the same Kerry who joked in 1988, "Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they're to shoot Quayle.")
Also in 2006, the New York comptroller, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, would "put a bullet between the president's eyes if he could get away with it." >>>
One example Nordlinger misses: Just this past October, then-Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania told the Times-Tribune of Scranton: "That [Rick] Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him." Kanjorski was defeated for re-election the following month, but he turns up today on the op-ed page of--oh, yes--the New York Times:
<<< The House speaker, John Boehner, spoke for everyone who has been in Congress when he said that an attack against one of us is an attack against all who serve. It is also an attack against all Americans. >>>
Does that include Gov. Rick Scott, Mr. Kanjorski?
Left-wing eliminationist rhetoric has occasionally made its way into the very pages of the Times. Here are the jaunty opening paragraphs of a news story dated Dec. 26, 1995:
<<< As the Rev. Al Sharpton strode through Harlem toward Sylvia's restaurant and a meeting with the boxing promoter Don King last week, the greetings of passers-by followed him down Lenox Avenue.
"Hey, Reverend Al, you going to kill Giuliani?" one man shouted, in a joking reference to the latest confrontation between Mr. Sharpton and the Mayor. Mr. Sharpton waved silently and walked on.
"Giuliani," he said, "is the best press agent I ever had." >>>
The next paragraph puts this eliminationist rhetoric into context:
<<< Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and others have accused Mr. Sharpton of using racially charged language that contributed to the emotional pitch of a dispute between a Jewish clothing store owner and the black owner of a record shop. They have suggested he had a responsibility to defuse the tensions that rose until a gunman set Freddy's clothing store afire Dec. 8, killing himself and seven others. >>>
(As an aside, it is no credit to our colleagues at Fox News Channel that Sharpton is a frequent guest on their programs.)
Another bit of eliminationist rhetoric appeared as the lead sentence of an article on the Times op-ed page in December 2009: "A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy." The author: Paul Krugman.
A March 2010 profile of Krugman in The New Yorker featured this related detail:
<<< Once Obama won the primary, Krugman supported him. Obviously, any Democrat was better than John McCain.
"I was nervous until they finally called it on Election Night," Krugman says. "We had an Election Night party at our house, thirty or forty people."
"The econ department, the finance department, the Woodrow Wilson school," [Robin] Wells [Krugman's wife] says. "They were all very nervous, so they were grateful we were having the party, because they didn't want to be alone. We had two or three TVs set up and we had a little portable outside fire pit and we let people throw in an effigy or whatever they wanted to get rid of for the past eight years."
"One of our Italian colleagues threw in an effigy of Berlusconi." >>>
Burning an effigy, like burning an American flag, is constitutionally protected symbolic speech. It is also about as eliminationist as speech can get, short of a true threat or incitement. To Krugman, it is a fun party activity. It is shockingly hypocritical for such a man to deliver a pious lecture about the dangers of eliminationist rhetoric.
The Times is far from alone in responding to the Tucson massacre with false accusations and inflammatory innuendoes against its foes. We focus on the Times because it is the leader--the most authoritative voice of the left-liberal media, or what used to be called the "mainstream" media.
What accounts for this descent into madness? We think the key lies in this sentence from yesterday's Times editorial: "But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible . . ."
Particularly their supporters in the media. This echoes a comment House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer made on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday:
<<< One of the things that you and I have discussed, Bob [Schieffer, the host], when--when you and I grew up, we grew up listening to a set of three major news outlets--NBC, ABC, and, of course, CBS. Most of the people like Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid, Huntley-Brinkley and they saw their job as to inform us of the facts and we would make a conclusion. Far too many broadcasts now and so many outlets have the intent of inciting--of inciting people to opposition, to anger, to thinking the other side is less than moral. >>>
The campaign of vilification against the right, led by the New York Times, is really about competition in the media industry--not commercial competition but competition for authority. When Bob Schieffer and Steny Hoyer were growing up, the New York Times had unrivaled authority to set the media's agenda, with the three major TV networks following its lead.
The ensuing decades have seen a proliferation of alternative media outlets, most notably talk radio and Fox News Channel, and a corresponding diminution of the so-called mainstream media's ability to set the boundaries of political debate.
Its authority dwindling, the New York Times is resorting to authoritarian tactics--slandering its competitors in the hope of tearing them down. Hoyer is right. Too many news outlets are busy "inciting people . . . to anger, to thinking the other side is less than moral." The worst offender, because it is the leader, is the New York Times. Decent people of whatever political stripe must say enough is enough.
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