Smartertimes.com

Time 2020-10-12 19:03:26

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The double standards of the New York Times are on clear display in the newspaper's coverage of illegal drugs.Sunday's New York Times style section carries a mostly laudatory feature about parents turning to drugs during the pandemic: "Though there aren't reliable statistics that break down parents' use of alcohol, marijuana and anti-anxiety medications specifically, overall adult use of these substances has gone up since the pandemic began, said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse."The Sunday Times Real Estate section, under the headline "Love and the Lockdown," devotes a page to stories of couples deciding to move in together during the pandemic. The article mentions, and includes photographs of, six different couples, all six of whom appear to be white and heterosexual. If a Republican campaign rally or political convention or corporate board looked like this, the Times would be all over it for the lack of diversity.The latest example of how the New York Times is throwing traditional journalistic objectivity overboard in its effort to defeat President Trump comes toward the end of a long investigative article (the second in a series) about the president's tax returns. The Times writes, "After he announced his candidacy in 2015 with racist comments about Mexicans, NBC, which carried 'The Apprentice,' cut ties with him and he sold his interest in the Miss Universe pageant, another reliable moneymaker."The approaching election seems to be tempting the New York Times into partisanship.Here are three recent examples where the Times seems to have stopped even attempting to appear neutral.Example No. 1. A Times news article headlined "Justice Dept. Aids Trump's False Narrative on Voting." This almost comically tilted article begins:In the effort led by President Trump to create a misleading impression of widespread voter fraud, administration and campaign officials have seized on nine mail-in military ballots in a Pennsylvania county that Mr. Trump won by 20 points in 2016.Federal officials have disclosed that they are investigating whether local elections officials improperly discarded the ballots, at least seven of which were cast for Mr. Trump, they said.Today's New York Times offers a rare opportunity for a side-by-side comparison of how the newspaper covers Democrats and Republicans with similar policies.Here is a passage from a Times news article about President Trump proposing an arms sale to Taiwan: "The proposed sales come as President Trump and his campaign strategists try to paint him as tough on China in the run-up to the election in November. They are eager to divert the conversation among American voters away from Mr. Trump's vast failures on the coronavirus pandemic and the economy, and to paper over his constant praise for Xi Jinping, China's authoritarian leader, and his earlier encouragement or tolerance of some of Mr. Xi's most repressive policies, including in the regions of Xinjiang and Hong Kong."With about seven posts in the past couple of weeks, this site has been more active this past month than it has been recently. If you like what you are seeing and want it to continue, please help make it possible by becoming a paying subscriber. The "How to Help" page is here. Thanks in advance.A subheadline in the New York Times magazine, over an article about Donald Trump, Jr., reports, "Of all the president's children, he has the strongest connection to the politics, voters and online disinformation ecosystem that put his father in the White House."In this Sunday's New York Times Book Review, reviewing Lesley M.M. Blume's Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World, William Langewiesche writes: "The subject of nuclear war is too important not to fascinate, and though we have avoided it for 75 years, the possibility now looms closer than before."A New York Times editorial, "Steve Bannon's Art of the Grift," says in part:The looming question, however, is whether President Trump will keep Mr. Bannon at arm's length. Americans can feel little confidence that Mr. Bannon will receive a fair trial and, if convicted, a fair punishment. By commuting Roger Stone's sentence in July, Mr. Trump demonstrated a willingness to shelter his current and former associates from the legal consequences of their actions.The Times' signal of concern that Bannon "receive a fair trial," is touching, but the newspaper sure isn't helping matters by running an editorial denouncing him as a grifter before he's even had the chance to mount a defense.Do the Times editorialists really lack confidence that the federal judge to whom the case is assigned, U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres, an Obama appointee, will give Bannon a fair trial? Or is the issue that a Manhattan trial jury won't be fair to Bannon?A Times news article reports on the City of New York moving homeless people, some of them mentally ill, substance-abusing, or sex offenders, at government expense into hotels on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It includes this sentence: "The owner of a well-known French bistro, Nice Matin, which adjoins the Lucerne, said he believed the harsh rhetoric among some in the neighborhood had hurt business."If the bistro is indeed "well-known," it's unnecessary to inform Times readers of that—they already know, so it is redundant. "Well-known" is like the word "famous"—in cases where it's accurate, it's almost always unnecessary.The same redundancy objection applies, by the way, to the term "French bistro." Are there non-French bistros? It is late August so maybe all the editors who would ordinarily catch this sort of thing are on vacation, but maybe even at peak levels this is just about what you can expect of Times editing care these days. Would this sort of thing ever have gotten through back in the days when Allan M. Siegal was running the copy desk?A New York Times news article on President Trump's announcement of a presidential pardon of Susan B. Anthony reports: "Unlike other people the president has pardoned, Anthony is not someone whose work Mr. Trump has spoken of during his campaign or his presidency."Trump's March 10 2017 Weekly Address said, "We are a greater, stronger, and more just Nation today because of women like Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, and so many others."In a March 2017 panel discussion on women's empowerment, Trump said, "we've had leaders like Susan B. Anthony—have you heard of Susan B. Anthony?—[laughter]—I'm shocked that you've heard of her—who dreamed of a much more equal and fair future, an America where women themselves, as she said, 'helped to make laws and elect the lawmakers.'"David Brooks writes:But if you look at who actually leads change over the course of American history, it's not the radicals. At a certain point, radicals give way to the more prudent and moderate wings of their coalitions.In the 1770s, the rabble-rousing Samuel Adams gave way to the more moderate John Adams (not to mention George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton).The New York Times greets the selection of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate with three above-the-fold front-page articles, and all three offer an assessment of her ideology.The lead Times news article describes her as "A pragmatic moderate who spent most of her career as a prosecutor."A "news analysis" (as if the other articles are analysis-free) reports that Biden and Harris are "two moderates with relatively cautious political instincts."And a profile of Harris describes her as "cautious on substantive issues more often than many liberals would like."A New York Times article about how Harvard is treating its students, particularly first generation and low income students, during the pandemic reports: "some scholars say a fundamental tension remains between the school's explicit mission in the first centuries of its existence — to reproduce the white gentry by educating its sons — and its stated role now, as a beacon of diversity and democracy where a prestigious education is available to any and all who merit acceptance."The Times doesn't name any of these "scholars." Just for the record, though, it is not accurate that the school's "explicit mission in the first centuries of its existence" was "to reproduce the white gentry by educating its sons."

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