The New York Times is a fascinating newspaper for the study of bias. Yes, of course we all have our biases and blind spots, and every publication has a point of view, but there is something about the Times‘ style and tone that suggest a loftier than usual view of their own objectivity and insight. If journalists conceive their newspaper to be the national “newspaper of record,” that self-conception might encourage a scrupulous attempt to be objective, but it might also encourage them to assume that they are objective because they are writing in the newspaper of record.
Several friends in an e-mail circle have been analyzing Republicans Distance Themselves from Threats to Democrats. The one who sent it round wrote that the writer
could not open by saying “Republicans leaders denounced death threats, vandalism” etc. Instead, he said leaders “tried to move quickly to distance themselves” from said threats. Only tried, mind you; the success of the endeavor is in doubt. And they only tried to “distance” themselves from the threats, not to oppose or denounce them. Does the Times presume that Republican leaders may actually countenance such threats, and are merely trying to achieve plausible deniability?
The technique is an easy one to master: you don’t report what they did, you report what they were trying to do — as you see it, of course, though you write as if this were an objective and obvious observation. Another friend in the same circle, who grew up in a leftwing family and knows how these things work, argued that,
There is no — NO — evidence that the racial slurs ever happened. There were a number of people videotaping the entire walk of the Black Caucus past Tea Partiers — people from both sides —- and no one has come up with one racial slur. This is a ploy straight out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook. He advocated just such false accusations to demonize one’s enemies. And the media have picked it up and run with it.
I’m sure some of the death threats have happened — death threats are so common that Jim Bunning got one after he held up a vote for an appropriation. There have been death threats to Republicans too, over the health care bill, but you don’t hear about them.
Furthermore, during the Bush administration, Bush himself and many other Republicans and conservatives were subject to horribly mockery and death threats, and you rarely heard about them. Glenn Beck yesterday played a segment of a Bill Maher show in which John Kerry joked about killing Bush. There was a book about killing Bush, and a play. There was a poster of him decapitated. I don’t remember a word of outrage from Democrats or the mainstream media.
Prominent conservatives get death and other threats too. Just the other day a culturally conservative academic told me he got several such threats after being mentioned in a newspaper article defending marriage. I suspect they get them in as great a number as liberal politicians do, but being dignified they usually don’t cry about it public or try to turn it to political advantage, since the threats mean nothing politically. There are vicious people out there. Some are rightwing, some leftwing, and some just hate everyone. (And we should not assume that every claim to having received such a threat is true.)
But the “death threat” story is now a staple of the kind of politically-driven reporting the Times offers. Mark Helprin famously and rightly predicted that “the homeless” would reappear in the news when a Republican succeeded Clinton. I will make a similar prediction and say that whenever the Democrats pass a hard-liberal piece of legislation to which the broad conservative movement has been strongly opposed, the Times and its peers will run a string of death threat stories, which will include the kind of “they really approve” description of the conservative response my friends analyzed. But the stories will disappear if the Republicans take power again, and not because Americans will suddenly have become more civil.
March 26th, 2010 | 1:56 pm
Here’s what the NY Times writer actually wrote:
Leaders of the movement tried to contain the damage on Thursday, denouncing the violence and distancing themselves from those behind the acts. So the writer of that email is a liar, and the Times’ point is valid anyhow: Republicans are _trying_ to contain the possible political damage.
And here’s how the NY Times review of the book about the guy wanting to assassinate Bush begins: This scummy little book treats the question of whether the problems that now beset our cherished and anxious country may be solved by the shooting of its president.
March 26th, 2010 | 2:15 pm
[...] Thoughts: They Really Approve of Death Threats – there’s definitely a double [...]
March 26th, 2010 | 2:39 pm
No, Ken, the analysis still stands. The sentence you quote does, for example, begin not with the fact of the response but with a judgment of the motivation. And this is to leave aside the quetion of how much that damage to be contained is invented.
One book review hardly overcomes the great silence of our elite media to the constant abuse of Bush and his crowd. It’s nice when a writer does say something like “scummy little book,” but it’s nice in part because it stands out. Do you really think that were a play calling for Obama’s death there would not be a huge and on-going outcry against it, such as was not heard in response to the play mentioned?
March 26th, 2010 | 3:02 pm
David, the email writer characterizes the Times as saying that Republicans only tried to “distance” themselves from the threats, not to oppose or denounce them., but in fact the Times wrote that they did denounce them. And while I don’t doubt that most of Republicans — the ones not making incendiary statements themselves — do deplore the violence and the violent rhetoric, the Times is surely correct that they’re also worried about the political fallout. After all, the battle for swing voters is still on.
I agree disagree with the first sentence of your second paragraph, but a book and a 15-minute play performed only one time, one evening (if I’m not mistaken), if they pose a threat at all (they weren’t intended as such), hardly pose one on the same level as threatening phone calls and a cut gas line.
March 26th, 2010 | 3:03 pm
er, that should be “I agree with the first sentence,” sorry.
March 26th, 2010 | 7:36 pm
“So the writer of that email is a liar … .” Ken, are you sure you quoted from the same article that the person you’re accusing of lying quoted from? And by the way, even if it was the same article, you need more evidence than what you gave to conclude that the email writer was lying. Perhaps s/he was quoting from memory and got it wrong. No doubt there are folks out there (on both sides of the political aisle) who have ill motives, especially toward those they disagree with politically, but as far as I can tell, there’s no real evidence that this person is one of them.
March 26th, 2010 | 9:00 pm
JB, yes, I clicked on the link and read the article. You can too. :-) As for his memory just being faulty, we’re talking about one simple sentence in which the thing he says was left out sits one word — “and” — away from the thing he quotes! Absurd.
March 27th, 2010 | 1:17 pm
Ken: When I click on the link, it takes me to another article. I finally found a reproduced snippet of the one referred to above on The World News Network (March 27), but when I click on the link to the full article, it takes me to that same other article. (Apparently, the article referred to above is no longer available on the NYT website.) The entire article (from March 25) appears to be reproduced on a site titled Unemployed-Friends. I’ll paste the entire truncated version from The World News Network here:
Republicans Distance Themselves From Threats to Democrats The New York Times 2010-03-25
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders tried to move quickly on Thursday to distance themselves from death threats, vandalism and other attempts at intimidation mounted in recent days against Democratic lawmakers who voted for the health care overhaul. Blog The Caucus The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion. More Politics News The Republicans, who have been criticized by Democrats for not speaking out forcefully against the violence and, in some cases, for encouraging it over the weekend with partisan displays,…
As you can see, the original liar, er, blogger had it word-for-word correct.
March 28th, 2010 | 9:47 am
JB, if you click on the the link presented in this blog post as the one the email writer “sent [...] round,” the article is still there (under the one on top) with that very same wording I quoted.
March 28th, 2010 | 5:21 pm
Ken: I clicked on it, looked below, above, and on either side of the article the link takes me to, and I didn’t see the article you’re talking about. I did see three articles listed (and given links to) underneath the main article, but none of them is titled “Republicans Distance Themselves from Threats to Democrats,” which is the title of the article, according to David Mills post, that was being sent around by the blogger. Now, if the wording you attribute to the article is in one of those articles, how does that make the blogger mentioned above a liar, especially given the fact that s/he claimed to be quoting from a NYT article titled “Republicans Distance Themselves from Threats to Democrats,” which, in fact, does contain the wording s/he claims it does (as I pointed out in my previous post)?
March 28th, 2010 | 8:01 pm
That’s funny, the now goes to a completely different article than it did even this afternoon. Anyhow, I can’t follow your last sentence. But again, the following wording was in the article: Leaders of the movement tried to contain the damage on Thursday, denouncing the violence and distancing themselves from those behind the acts., and that is not how the emailer represented it. Now if he only read the innacurate WNN condensation you posted — which isn’t what’s linked to above — then I am wrong and he wasn’t a liar, just sloppy.
March 28th, 2010 | 10:31 pm
The phony outrage from the left and the corrupt MSM — feigning shock, outrage and concern about bogus reports of violence and racism — is particularly hilarious given that Dear Leader launched his political career in the home of a terrorist who blew up buildings, and sat in the church of a rabid racist for 20 years.
Two major stories that the corrupt MSM completely ignored during the campaign.
Pardon us if we don’t take you propagandists seriously now.
March 29th, 2010 | 8:01 am
Ayers wasn’t really a “terrorist” as the word is commonly used, since he didn’t kill anyone and took precautions not to kill anyone. In any case, once a terrorist, always a terrorist? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, you who mock? By your own standard, it defines you forever. Ayers has since devoted himself to education, and whether you agree with his goals or not, that’s honorable work.
As for Wright, I imagine you’ve heard the term, “eat the meat and spit out the bones.” There were obvious reasons the Obamas were attracted to his church, and there is zero evidence and of Wright’s racism rubbed off on them.
March 29th, 2010 | 2:54 pm
You lost me at
” I suspect [conservative academics] get [death threats] in as great a number as liberal politicians do, but being dignified they usually don’t cry about it public or try to turn it to political advantage”
Interesting suspicion. I suspect that you don’t get emotional when writing, you keep a cool objective outlook that reeks of dignity. It must really help when you project your favorite characteristics on your political leaders….I mean, write an article on objectivity in journalism.
March 29th, 2010 | 3:55 pm
There are vicious people out there. Some are rightwing, some leftwing, and some just hate everyone.
That’s true, of course. It’s deeply shameful, however, that First Things gives a platform for rightwing haters on its Gateway Pundit blog. That’s a hate site, nothing less.
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