Very good article. I just sent it to the son of a friend who was an Israeli paratrooper and has (of course) been recalled to active duty. Hopefully it will provide a little morale boost.
It also helps me, because when my bleeding heart liberal friends cry that Israel has killed more women and children than have been killed in Ukraine, instead of just saying, "So what? Of what possible relevance is that?", I can now hit back with some facts. So thanks for that.
To understand what’s happened at the New York Times, read former editorial page editor James Bennet’s explanation of why he was fired by the New York Times for publishing an op-Ed authored by Senator Tom Cotton. As far as I know, it’s the first time that Bennet has spoken about the subject. Bennet’s essay which appears in the Economist tells you everything you need to know about the New York Times. See,
Fascinating. Thank you. This is the shocking part: "most of the Times newsroom does not fact-check or copy-edit articles, but the magazine does."
I could tell something had gone badly wrong with their copy-editing--every article has copy mistakes--but I didn't realize they no longer even tried. And "no fact-checking" explains a lot.
The newspaper, as a cultural institution, seems to be dead. This makes it entirely clear why this happened: The Times realized it could only survive financially by becoming something much more like Fox News than a traditional high-end newspaper. If they can't make an old-fashioned newsroom profitable, no one can, so the institution of the newspaper is pretty much dead. I've known this for a while and written about it and it's even why we started CG. But somehow I'm shocked to learn there are no fact-checkers anymore. That's something I didn't know.
It's a big loss for the US: We have nothing to replace it.
"Fascinating" is one word for it I guess, but I'd much rather go with "tedious". Why write 20,000 words when 500 would cover it - "partisan independence sells while poisoning the well; senior team really did have no clue what they were getting into".
I wanted to fire the guy myself just to shut him up.
Tantalising nuggets buried in all that windbaggery though, like the fact-checking reveal you picked up. And that even though he says "It was important to me to read pieces in advance that might cause an uproar", he really hadn't read that one.
It is all quite sad; especially around this time of year. The world does seem to be careening out of control, doesn’t it? Like matter eviscerated by antimatter, conservative media and the new woke media seem to be cancelling each other out as they compete for the title of most heinous.
Thank goodness for Substack, but as I think I mentioned to you in a comment the other day, the mainstream media, which feels as threatened by Substack as it feels by the other social media platforms, has now mounted an attack on Substack.
The Atlantic, which was founded in 1857 making it as old school as a media outlet can get, claims Substack is overrun by Nazis. Of course, this is nonsense. See,
Without Substack we would all be far worse off. Can you imagine having nowhere else to get news and informed opinion pieces than the New York Times and Fox News?
I don't think the mainstream media feels at all threatened by Substack. Nor do I think they've "mounted an attack" on Substack. Jon Katz pitched an article to them and the editors thought it sounded interesting. He doesn't think Substack should be promoting Nazis. There are, indeed, many outright Nazi accounts on Substack. They bother me much less than those on Twitter because you have to look for them. On Twitter, you're forced to see them--and they're allowed to harass Jews--so it's a much more offensive and dangerous situation. Still, I agree that Substack should not be allowing Nazis to get rich on their platform, which they are.
I think I remember Thomas Friedman, reminiscing about his days as a young reporter in Beirut, said his “weather report” was asking a local colleague “Hey Ahmed, does it feel like a high of 75 today?” “Yes, Mr Tom, fine.” And so it would be reported.
The AP's satellite analysis finds 10,000 graves in Mariupol (some of which might be for Russian soldiers). We are told nothing of how estimates of up to 75,000 dead are obtained, and I would say it's likely that the maximum estimates are being emphasized here. Ukrainians, just like Palestinians, have every incentive to portray their enemy in the worst terms possible.
With Israel on the same side as Ukraine now the Times and other woke fellow travellers are in a conundrum. But if being woke - meaning viscously antisemitic- means throwing Ukraine under the bus and embracing Russia- so be it.
This is not only superb, Claire, it's also hugely restorative after a friend sent me "political scientist" Mearsheimer's latest cascade of bog standard rhetoric at his substack .
Might i ask the following, however; whereabouts would you recommend one looks for some sort of i guess 'corroboration' of the claim that Hamas refuses all civiilian access to their tunnels and bomb shelters? Such verification would seem rather iimportant to have, yes?
Is there a way to find what you refer to? How to internally search substacks still eludes me. But you say that "they said it"? This is hardly informative, Claire!
What is weird is that the Sulzbergers have been squeamish about standing up for Jews since, like, forever. For example, The Times did report on the Holocaust as it was underway, but never featured its Holocaust coverage prominently. It was not treated as a world shaking story contemporaneously. Even though The Times had many Jewish readers. Even though the Times had not yet gone public and was not yet answerable to non family shareholders.
I pay for the Games. I couldn't begin my day without them. I mean that. It's my very favorite part of the day, and the thought that they're waiting for me--and I don't have to go to work until I finish them (admittedly my deal with myself) is what makes me jump up happily in the morning and make coffee, instead of hiding under the covers.
That's why it sucks so much that the rest of the paper has gone so nuts that I don't want to give them my money.
The NY Times article is biased against Israel, both in words and graphs, then put the piece above the fold. Dozens of editors approved: It's no mistake. Meanwhile Hamas has not surrendered, and states publicly it will do Claudine Gay's "context".
The New York Times is controlled by the Sulzberger family through special voting rights stock that has ten times the voting weight of the company’s common stock which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The family actually owns a very small percentage of the outstanding shares but because of their special voting privileges, they control the company lock, stock and barrel.
This voting structure is remarkably corrupt but it is not uncommon. News Corp, the owner of Fox News and Dow Jones has a similar voting structure. The Murdoch family, which owns a small percentage of the stock has voting shares that provide them with ten votes for every share compared with one vote per share for other common stock holders.
Until very recently, Comcast, the owner of NBC, utilized a similar structure where Brian Roberts and family possessed special voting rights that allowed them to completely control the company while owning a small percentage of the common stock. To its credit, Comcast changed the system and now all of its shareholders (including the Roberts family that founded the company) gets one one vote per common share owned and no shareholder gets special voting rights. Comcast was pressured to make this change by large activist investors like the Vanguard Group which owns far more shares than the Roberts family does.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and several other social media sites has refused to follow Comcast’s lead and drop its dual class stock system. Mark Zuckerberg and a few other Facebook founders own 3 percent of the company but their special voting rights give them complete control to elect Meta’s Board of Directors. The Meta ownership structure is as corrupt as the structure at the New York Times and News Corp.
There have been numerous attempts by various State Governments, the FCC, the FTC and the stock exchanges to eliminate dual class voting. Activist investors are also pressing for this change. MAGA Republicans and Progressive Democrats have also called for the elimination of dual class voting for public companies.
Elon Musk bought Twitter the old fashioned way. He purchased all of the common stock which means he owns the company along with minority shareholders allied with him. Musk never contemplated setting up a system where he controlled the company with privileged stock that only he owned with inferior voting rights stock owned by the public. The same thing can be said for Jeff Bezos who bought the Washington Post outright without setting up a special voting system. To his credit, Bezos never set up a special voting system at Amazon either. Other media moguls who own their companies without a corrupt insider vote are Mike Bloomberg and Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times.
It is an open legal question whether legislation unilaterally ending special voting rights stock would pass constitutional muster. It depends in part on whether the courts would view “special voting rights” as “property” that cannot be expropriated without due process and compensation. Are special voting rights property? It can be argued either way.
In my view, the best way to improve the media would be to end the special voting privileges of media giants like the Sulzbergers, the Murdochs and Zuckerberg. Its not a panacea, but it would be a step in the right direction. It’s not just the woke moron graduates from journalism schools who have debased American journalism, it’s the nefarious owner class who believe they should have more voting power than the rest of us.
Substack, the site that made Claire Berlinski famous and is home to the Cosmopolitan Globalist is now under attack from the Atlantic Magazine for its light touch when it comes to content moderation. According to the Atlantic, Substack is a hot bed of Nazi extremists.
It just goes to show that regardless of the ownership structure of journalistic sites, the state of journalism is debased.
The Atlantic is owned outright by Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of Steve Jobs) through the absurdly named Emerson Collective. Jobs bought the magazine outright and doesn’t use a special voting rights structure. Nevertheless the Atlantic, like the New York Times and many other traditional media outlets (the “lame stream” media) hate Substack because Substack has disintermediated the power of traditional media.
Where could the likes of Claire Berlinski or any of the other famous Substackers get a hearing if not for Substack? If they had jobs at all, their writing would be subject to the whims of editors reporting ultimately to plutocrat owners.
Is it any wonder that the Atlantic and its idiotic CEO, Jeffrey Goldberg, demand that Substack aggressively moderate its content?
Substack has been remarkably suspicious of content moderation. If it gives in, how long will it be before Claire Berlinski and others are having their content scrutinized to within an inch of their lives?
If that were to happen, the New York Times and other mainstream outlets would control our access to the news. There would be no one left to critique the terrible Middle East coverage of the Times and similar journalistic endeavors. That’s what legacy media craves. They want to return to the good old days when they were the only source of news and analysis. They want the Berlinskis of the world silenced.
To read the Atlantic hit piece on Substack, go here,
I seem to recall CB finding The Atlantic extremely useful for generally aiding and abetting her anti-Trump hysteria, in the days when she still operated solely out of Twitter...
Good reporting Claire, I wish there were more of this. Unfortunately, I think we are due for things to get much worse for journalism. There's too much financial incentive to sensationalize things and distort them to be more "meaningful". Driving "engagement". This will happen until people turn back towards their real lives. It's pretty sad that people are so inept and incapable of critical thought. For me, I don't need numbers, any numbers, to know Hamas is evil. Now I also think Bibi is evil, and I think he's stoked about being able to go to war, but he wouldn't have been allowed to do that without the actions of Hamas. And if you have a functioning brain cell, you know that Hamas is trying to manipulate public opinion and play the pity card because they know we are squeamish and weak and have no resolve. I say just let them fight and let Israel win, and hopefully the evil there teaches people why we don't like war. War cannot be controlled - that is why we avoid it.
The point about 'engagement' is 100% correct. Many media outlets will put out whatever it takes to get clicks, shares, eyeballs, whatever!!!! Social media also drives this . . . .as my dad used to say, it's a race to the bottom.
Your only mistake is still holding on to the image of the New York Times as a paragon of credible reporting.
As you've noted, they have been lying about the Communists for one hundred years!!!
I bet you could take any issue over the past 40 years and find a major "above the fold" story that was erroneously reported, or at least incorrectly interpreted, extrapolated, or predicted.
Bravo Claire pour ce formidable travail de salubrité politique. Par son attitude sur un cessez-le-feu et son vote hier à l’ONU Macron rejoint Biden dans le camps des cloportes. Ils offrent ainsi une autoroute à Trump et le Pen pour Les présidentielles à venir.
Excellent article.
Very good article. I just sent it to the son of a friend who was an Israeli paratrooper and has (of course) been recalled to active duty. Hopefully it will provide a little morale boost.
It also helps me, because when my bleeding heart liberal friends cry that Israel has killed more women and children than have been killed in Ukraine, instead of just saying, "So what? Of what possible relevance is that?", I can now hit back with some facts. So thanks for that.
Keep up the good work.
gentle mother russia.......
To understand what’s happened at the New York Times, read former editorial page editor James Bennet’s explanation of why he was fired by the New York Times for publishing an op-Ed authored by Senator Tom Cotton. As far as I know, it’s the first time that Bennet has spoken about the subject. Bennet’s essay which appears in the Economist tells you everything you need to know about the New York Times. See,
https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-times-lost-its-way
Fascinating. Thank you. This is the shocking part: "most of the Times newsroom does not fact-check or copy-edit articles, but the magazine does."
I could tell something had gone badly wrong with their copy-editing--every article has copy mistakes--but I didn't realize they no longer even tried. And "no fact-checking" explains a lot.
The newspaper, as a cultural institution, seems to be dead. This makes it entirely clear why this happened: The Times realized it could only survive financially by becoming something much more like Fox News than a traditional high-end newspaper. If they can't make an old-fashioned newsroom profitable, no one can, so the institution of the newspaper is pretty much dead. I've known this for a while and written about it and it's even why we started CG. But somehow I'm shocked to learn there are no fact-checkers anymore. That's something I didn't know.
It's a big loss for the US: We have nothing to replace it.
"Fascinating" is one word for it I guess, but I'd much rather go with "tedious". Why write 20,000 words when 500 would cover it - "partisan independence sells while poisoning the well; senior team really did have no clue what they were getting into".
I wanted to fire the guy myself just to shut him up.
Tantalising nuggets buried in all that windbaggery though, like the fact-checking reveal you picked up. And that even though he says "It was important to me to read pieces in advance that might cause an uproar", he really hadn't read that one.
It is all quite sad; especially around this time of year. The world does seem to be careening out of control, doesn’t it? Like matter eviscerated by antimatter, conservative media and the new woke media seem to be cancelling each other out as they compete for the title of most heinous.
Thank goodness for Substack, but as I think I mentioned to you in a comment the other day, the mainstream media, which feels as threatened by Substack as it feels by the other social media platforms, has now mounted an attack on Substack.
The Atlantic, which was founded in 1857 making it as old school as a media outlet can get, claims Substack is overrun by Nazis. Of course, this is nonsense. See,
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-extremism-nazi-white-supremacy-newsletters/676156/
Without Substack we would all be far worse off. Can you imagine having nowhere else to get news and informed opinion pieces than the New York Times and Fox News?
I don't think the mainstream media feels at all threatened by Substack. Nor do I think they've "mounted an attack" on Substack. Jon Katz pitched an article to them and the editors thought it sounded interesting. He doesn't think Substack should be promoting Nazis. There are, indeed, many outright Nazi accounts on Substack. They bother me much less than those on Twitter because you have to look for them. On Twitter, you're forced to see them--and they're allowed to harass Jews--so it's a much more offensive and dangerous situation. Still, I agree that Substack should not be allowing Nazis to get rich on their platform, which they are.
I think I remember Thomas Friedman, reminiscing about his days as a young reporter in Beirut, said his “weather report” was asking a local colleague “Hey Ahmed, does it feel like a high of 75 today?” “Yes, Mr Tom, fine.” And so it would be reported.
Thanks for informing readers about the NY Times death count errors
The AP's satellite analysis finds 10,000 graves in Mariupol (some of which might be for Russian soldiers). We are told nothing of how estimates of up to 75,000 dead are obtained, and I would say it's likely that the maximum estimates are being emphasized here. Ukrainians, just like Palestinians, have every incentive to portray their enemy in the worst terms possible.
With Israel on the same side as Ukraine now the Times and other woke fellow travellers are in a conundrum. But if being woke - meaning viscously antisemitic- means throwing Ukraine under the bus and embracing Russia- so be it.
This is not only superb, Claire, it's also hugely restorative after a friend sent me "political scientist" Mearsheimer's latest cascade of bog standard rhetoric at his substack .
I thank you
Might i ask the following, however; whereabouts would you recommend one looks for some sort of i guess 'corroboration' of the claim that Hamas refuses all civiilian access to their tunnels and bomb shelters? Such verification would seem rather iimportant to have, yes?
They said it in an interview with RT. It was in Global Eyes twice, I think.
Is there a way to find what you refer to? How to internally search substacks still eludes me. But you say that "they said it"? This is hardly informative, Claire!
Thank you, Claire, for this sharp and precisely argued exposure of the NYT's latest piece of pro-Kremlin propaganda!
What is weird is that the Sulzbergers have been squeamish about standing up for Jews since, like, forever. For example, The Times did report on the Holocaust as it was underway, but never featured its Holocaust coverage prominently. It was not treated as a world shaking story contemporaneously. Even though The Times had many Jewish readers. Even though the Times had not yet gone public and was not yet answerable to non family shareholders.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/10903
We know that the reporters of the NYT are often liars - we have seen that often enough in a variety of situations.
But why do readers continue to pay the NYT to lie to them?
Paying someone to lie to you seems like being in an abusive relationship.
I am reminded of the hunter who shoots at a bear. He misses and the bear sodomizes him in revenge.
Outraged, the hunter buys a bigger rifle and goes after the bear again.
Once again he misses, and once again the bear sodomizes him.
So the hunter buys an elephant gun and goes after the bear for a third attempt.
After the inevitable miss, the bear grabs the hunter and bends him over.
But before taking his pleasure, the bear remarks to the hunter: "I think that you are here for more than the hunting."
NYT readers have a lot in common with that bear hunter.
I pay for the Games. I couldn't begin my day without them. I mean that. It's my very favorite part of the day, and the thought that they're waiting for me--and I don't have to go to work until I finish them (admittedly my deal with myself) is what makes me jump up happily in the morning and make coffee, instead of hiding under the covers.
That's why it sucks so much that the rest of the paper has gone so nuts that I don't want to give them my money.
I know it's lame to admit that I live for the Spelling Bee--but I do. Where else do I get a chance to use my very special talents?
Spelling Bee is a gas. Don't know why it is so addictive.
People may think you're smiling as you say "addictive," but trust me, kids: Don't start on Spelling Bee. Not even once.
The NY Times article is biased against Israel, both in words and graphs, then put the piece above the fold. Dozens of editors approved: It's no mistake. Meanwhile Hamas has not surrendered, and states publicly it will do Claudine Gay's "context".
The New York Times is controlled by the Sulzberger family through special voting rights stock that has ten times the voting weight of the company’s common stock which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The family actually owns a very small percentage of the outstanding shares but because of their special voting privileges, they control the company lock, stock and barrel.
This voting structure is remarkably corrupt but it is not uncommon. News Corp, the owner of Fox News and Dow Jones has a similar voting structure. The Murdoch family, which owns a small percentage of the stock has voting shares that provide them with ten votes for every share compared with one vote per share for other common stock holders.
Until very recently, Comcast, the owner of NBC, utilized a similar structure where Brian Roberts and family possessed special voting rights that allowed them to completely control the company while owning a small percentage of the common stock. To its credit, Comcast changed the system and now all of its shareholders (including the Roberts family that founded the company) gets one one vote per common share owned and no shareholder gets special voting rights. Comcast was pressured to make this change by large activist investors like the Vanguard Group which owns far more shares than the Roberts family does.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and several other social media sites has refused to follow Comcast’s lead and drop its dual class stock system. Mark Zuckerberg and a few other Facebook founders own 3 percent of the company but their special voting rights give them complete control to elect Meta’s Board of Directors. The Meta ownership structure is as corrupt as the structure at the New York Times and News Corp.
There have been numerous attempts by various State Governments, the FCC, the FTC and the stock exchanges to eliminate dual class voting. Activist investors are also pressing for this change. MAGA Republicans and Progressive Democrats have also called for the elimination of dual class voting for public companies.
Elon Musk bought Twitter the old fashioned way. He purchased all of the common stock which means he owns the company along with minority shareholders allied with him. Musk never contemplated setting up a system where he controlled the company with privileged stock that only he owned with inferior voting rights stock owned by the public. The same thing can be said for Jeff Bezos who bought the Washington Post outright without setting up a special voting system. To his credit, Bezos never set up a special voting system at Amazon either. Other media moguls who own their companies without a corrupt insider vote are Mike Bloomberg and Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times.
It is an open legal question whether legislation unilaterally ending special voting rights stock would pass constitutional muster. It depends in part on whether the courts would view “special voting rights” as “property” that cannot be expropriated without due process and compensation. Are special voting rights property? It can be argued either way.
In my view, the best way to improve the media would be to end the special voting privileges of media giants like the Sulzbergers, the Murdochs and Zuckerberg. Its not a panacea, but it would be a step in the right direction. It’s not just the woke moron graduates from journalism schools who have debased American journalism, it’s the nefarious owner class who believe they should have more voting power than the rest of us.
Substack, the site that made Claire Berlinski famous and is home to the Cosmopolitan Globalist is now under attack from the Atlantic Magazine for its light touch when it comes to content moderation. According to the Atlantic, Substack is a hot bed of Nazi extremists.
It just goes to show that regardless of the ownership structure of journalistic sites, the state of journalism is debased.
The Atlantic is owned outright by Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of Steve Jobs) through the absurdly named Emerson Collective. Jobs bought the magazine outright and doesn’t use a special voting rights structure. Nevertheless the Atlantic, like the New York Times and many other traditional media outlets (the “lame stream” media) hate Substack because Substack has disintermediated the power of traditional media.
Where could the likes of Claire Berlinski or any of the other famous Substackers get a hearing if not for Substack? If they had jobs at all, their writing would be subject to the whims of editors reporting ultimately to plutocrat owners.
Is it any wonder that the Atlantic and its idiotic CEO, Jeffrey Goldberg, demand that Substack aggressively moderate its content?
Substack has been remarkably suspicious of content moderation. If it gives in, how long will it be before Claire Berlinski and others are having their content scrutinized to within an inch of their lives?
If that were to happen, the New York Times and other mainstream outlets would control our access to the news. There would be no one left to critique the terrible Middle East coverage of the Times and similar journalistic endeavors. That’s what legacy media craves. They want to return to the good old days when they were the only source of news and analysis. They want the Berlinskis of the world silenced.
To read the Atlantic hit piece on Substack, go here,
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-extremism-nazi-white-supremacy-newsletters/676156/
I seem to recall CB finding The Atlantic extremely useful for generally aiding and abetting her anti-Trump hysteria, in the days when she still operated solely out of Twitter...
Good reporting Claire, I wish there were more of this. Unfortunately, I think we are due for things to get much worse for journalism. There's too much financial incentive to sensationalize things and distort them to be more "meaningful". Driving "engagement". This will happen until people turn back towards their real lives. It's pretty sad that people are so inept and incapable of critical thought. For me, I don't need numbers, any numbers, to know Hamas is evil. Now I also think Bibi is evil, and I think he's stoked about being able to go to war, but he wouldn't have been allowed to do that without the actions of Hamas. And if you have a functioning brain cell, you know that Hamas is trying to manipulate public opinion and play the pity card because they know we are squeamish and weak and have no resolve. I say just let them fight and let Israel win, and hopefully the evil there teaches people why we don't like war. War cannot be controlled - that is why we avoid it.
The point about 'engagement' is 100% correct. Many media outlets will put out whatever it takes to get clicks, shares, eyeballs, whatever!!!! Social media also drives this . . . .as my dad used to say, it's a race to the bottom.
Outstanding reportage, Claire! Thank you!
Your only mistake is still holding on to the image of the New York Times as a paragon of credible reporting.
As you've noted, they have been lying about the Communists for one hundred years!!!
I bet you could take any issue over the past 40 years and find a major "above the fold" story that was erroneously reported, or at least incorrectly interpreted, extrapolated, or predicted.
Bravo Claire pour ce formidable travail de salubrité politique. Par son attitude sur un cessez-le-feu et son vote hier à l’ONU Macron rejoint Biden dans le camps des cloportes. Ils offrent ainsi une autoroute à Trump et le Pen pour Les présidentielles à venir.