Does the NYT's Jill Abramson understand how journalism is supposed to work?
January 09, 2009 9:46 am ET by Eric Boehlert
Or does she consider playing dumb to be part of her job description as M.E. of the Times? I ask because during a recent Q&A with a reader, Abramson raised doubts about both.
The question came from a reader still upset about the Times' Rush Limbaugh valentine written by a Limbaugh dittohead and published on the cover of the Sunday Times magazine last summer. The reader noted:
I find it interesting that there is very little on-going criticism of Rush, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and people like this. I cannot figure out why people who have such a following seem to be isolated from criticism except from such Web sites as Media Matters...Rush is left off the hook because he is "an entertainer." Since when don't entertainers have the tell the truth?
Abramson's utterly predictable, CYA response:
There seems a suggestion behind your question that the job of The Times is to target for attack certain figures because of their ideology and prominence. The role of a great news organization isn't to make itself a combantant in the ongoing political food fights that unfold each night on cable and elswewhere. Our Rush Limbaugh magazine cover story was a rich, nuanced portrait of someone whose show has made him a large force over time at the interesection of news, politics, business and entertainment. You may have found it too kind because you would have preferred to read a partisan hatchet job. You won't find those in The New York Times.
Read that a couple times to let the significance sink it. The Times, according to Abramson, has no responsibliity whatsoever in reporting critically, or even accurately, on hate speech merchants like Rush Limbaugh, even when the Times devotes 7,700 words to profiling them in the Times magazine. In fact, the Times thought it was a smart idea to hire a devoted fan to profile Limbaugh without ever revealing to readers the writer's open bias in favor of Limbaugh.
Consequently the Times' Limbuagh profile was a laughing stock (see James Wolcott).
Here's the point I made last year:
Does every Limbaugh profile need to be a hit piece? Of course not. Should every serious Limbaugh profile at least try to convey to readers what's so controversial about the host and what he says on his radio program? Of course. And that's where the Times, rather obliviously, took the pratfall with its Limbaugh article. I understand that Beltway media players routinely play nice with Limbaugh and his fringe brand of conservatism. Spooked by his liberal-bias charges, the mainstream press corps has for years treated Limbaugh with undeserved respect, worked overtime to soften his radical edges, and presented him as simply a partisan pundit. The lengthy Times profile took that trend to a whole new level, because unlike most previous half-hearted attempts to outline, in very general ways, what Limbaugh says and explain why he's controversial, the Times clearly never had any intention of shedding even the dimmest light on the content of Limbaugh's program. Instead, it hired a conservative writer to wistfully dismiss Limbaugh's critics in two or three sentences. And in exchange for playing dumb, the Times was granted unusual access to the talk-show host. That kind of obvious quid pro quo is the type of thing that's practiced on a daily basis at celebrity magazines, where editors angle for access in exchange for puff pieces. It's not journalism, and it ought to be beneath the Times.
The Times has never addressed that charge. And based on Abramson's cavalier Q&A response, it never intends to. The Times would rather play nice with Rush Limbaugh than be honest with its readers.
"You may have found it too kind because you would have preferred to read a partisan hatchet job. You won't find those in The New York Times."
I write reporters of the NY Times often when I see things such as "Bush says the sky is purple, the Dems disagree." And the quote above from Abramson is the same canned response I get if they write back. They defend themselves saying they are being objective by presenting both sides of the argument -- even if one side is completely wrong.
They don't address the true issue -- that you have an obligation to tell the public that the damn sky is blue and Bush has it wrong. One reporter actually used as his defense that they usually get blamed for being too liberal.
I don't care if it is liberal or conservative -- it just needs to be the damn truth with facts and context. I do not think reporters understand that anymore. To them, there are two sides to every story and it is up to the reader to decide which is correct.
But is that not why we pay the NY Times subscription -- for them to report the truth so we don't have to research what the truth is? Do I really have time to run around the internet to research why the sky might be purple or might be blue? I buy a paper so I don't have to take the time to fact check the paper but in this day and age, you do.
I LOVE this line:
"Spooked by his liberal-bias charges, the mainstream press corps has for years treated Limbaugh with undeserved respect"
I try to make that point when I try to explain to my friends and my wife why it is that Beck, Dobbs, Limbaugh, Coulter, et. al. spout off without ANY worry about truth or consequences.
The right-wing media machine has built up such a base of media haters and the liberal media basis theme that it is now a well-oiled functioning machine that effectively castrates Democratic politicians, the MSM and most other media sources.
Thank goodness we have MMFA and I hope that your influence gains more traction in the MSM to help play bad cop/good cop with other media outlets against the hatefulness and deceitfulness of the right wing nuts.
Readers will enjoy the found humor of making their own lists of what else you won't find in the New York Times. It's not so much a political slant as a general trend to dumbth. The magazine is a perfect example. Issues from decades past show an upper middle class, upper middle brow mentality; serious writers trying to tackle serious subjects. Now it's some kind of obscure inside self-parody. Curtis Bill Pepper's long ago article on Laurence Olivier was brought to mind by the recent profile of Philip Seymour Hoffman; a talented young actor,but the writer seemed to think that Hoffman was Charles Laughton on his very best day. The impression was burnished by the cover protrait of Hoffman as Rembrandt. The comparison was so odious that you could have thought that the editors hate Hoffman--the way they seem to hate Alex Kuczynski after their highly unedited printing, with evocative photography accompanying, her baby momma momma article.
As it is, the target demo now seems to be the mannequins with the glazed, self-satisfied stares in the watch ads, and the most memorable write is the copy of same: "You never actually own a Patek Phillipe. You merely take care of it for the next generation." Just as the hollow stare of the next generation indicates that said watch is already in the pocket of a coke dealer, the level of writing and editing in the magazine would indicate that the remaining issues will be collector's items, against the day that the print edition dies, and writers like Jill Abramson have their columns interrupted by ads for Captain Morgan's Rum.