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Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted
Demonstrates how "The New York Times" slants the presentation of straight news to fit its liberal editorial bias, discusses the influence of such manipulation on other news agencies, and reveals the methods used to disguise opinion as fact.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
336 pages, Hardcover
First published August 14, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 13, 2016
Reviewer’s Note: As I was researching colonial newspapers for my latest novel, I discovered something remarkable. That integrity and the liberty of a responsible press corps meant something to the publishers of the day.
“Fondness of News may be carried to an extreme…great Care will be taken that no Facts of Importance shall be published but such as are well attested, and these shall be as particular as may be necessary.”
– From the inaugural issue of the New Hampshire GAZETTE by Daniel Fowle, October 7, 1756.
“The SALEM MERCURY: Political, Commercial, and Moral.”
– In the title frame of the SALEM MERCURY, October 14, 1786.
“OPEN to ALL PARTIES, but INFLUENCED by NONE.”
– In the title frame of the PROVIDENCE GAZETTE, June 28, 1788.
“Beneath the Eagle’s Wings, Columbia Rise: Say, Wisdom’s Goddess, where the balance lies.”
– In the title frame of the Impartial Herald, January 31, 1798.
“A Free PRESS maintains the MAJESTY of the PEOPLE.”
– In the title frame of the BOSTON GAZETTE , September 17, 1798.
Then, I ran across this:
“I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them.”
Based on the daily, non-stop betrayal of our alleged “main”stream media, this could easily have been said or written today. In fact, it would appear to sum up the feelings of the majority of those polled by Gallup in 2014 regarding the public’s opinion of today’s news media. Surprisingly, it was penned two centuries earlier, in 1814 by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a Walter Jones.(1)
If we are to be honest brokers, we must firmly reject the labels the purveyors of social engineering find irresistible to arbitrarily place upon us. If we can’t shed these labels (right/left, liberal/conservative, etc…), how can we truthfully address the mountain of issues our country currently faces? Likewise, if you don’t think journalistic integrity is important or you can’t check your political identity at the door, then the following review will be meaningless to you.
Journalistic Fraud
by Bob Kohn
A review
That more and more people are distrustful of the august members of the Fourth Estate is not a well-kept secret. Yet, they insist on openly infusing straight news with their bias in support to their own political or personal agendas. Despite the media’s assurances of objectivity, the preponderance of evidence printed in their own newspapers or aired on their own broadcasts would tend to convict them of perjury.
And how can we easily decipher this bias within a given news story? Author Bob Kohn has selected the “gray lady” herself and examined specific articles from the New York Times (mostly of their crusade against President George W. Bush) and demonstrated for us exactly how publishers Howell Raines and Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. used various methods of social engineering to steer public opinion toward their own views.
Taking on the New York Times (and by extension, other like-minded news outlets) Kohn defines the problem in the first two chapters (calling the Times out for their bias and what a newspaper is supposed to stand for). In the successive chapters, he examines the mechanics of fraud perpetrated by the Times, in particular, the various methods consciously designed to misrepresent hard news; distorting the lead, the headlines and the facts to fit their narrative. Other techniques proficiently demonstrated by Kohn as used by the Times involve distorting with loaded language, polling data and placement of salient facts within the story.
As author Bob Kohn asserts, “The Agenda is Everything.”(2) If it doesn’t pass the litmus test of Sultzberger’s agenda, then it’s buried, scrapped or otherwise discounted. What’s truly outrageous is not that a litmus test exists, but that it’s based solely on ideology, not a bonafide examination of the story itself. An honest broker substituting Obama’s name for Bush within these stories would be outraged at the treatment of the 44th president, yet no such outrage exists for Bush 43. Don’t believe it? Examine the headlines for yourself of both presidencies during similar circumstances. Exchange each president’s name and see if you don’t find wholesale bias within each story; one glowing with praise, the other with derision. Now ask yourself if ideological advocacy is what a “news”paper is supposed to stand for?
Having taken in all the journalistic slight-of-hand employed by the so-called paper of record, the idea that the Times even has an opinion editor is superfluous really, when you consider the methods they used to color hard front-page news with their opinion.
“Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” - Attributed to William I Greener, Jr. – The Wall Street Journal, September 28, 1978.(3)
And I’m betting those barrels are filled with yellow ink.
NOTES
1) http://founders.archives.gov/document...
2) Bob Kohn, Journalistic Fraud, (Nashville: WND Books, 2003), p. 13.
3) http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/n...
“Fondness of News may be carried to an extreme…great Care will be taken that no Facts of Importance shall be published but such as are well attested, and these shall be as particular as may be necessary.”
– From the inaugural issue of the New Hampshire GAZETTE by Daniel Fowle, October 7, 1756.
“The SALEM MERCURY: Political, Commercial, and Moral.”
– In the title frame of the SALEM MERCURY, October 14, 1786.
“OPEN to ALL PARTIES, but INFLUENCED by NONE.”
– In the title frame of the PROVIDENCE GAZETTE, June 28, 1788.
“Beneath the Eagle’s Wings, Columbia Rise: Say, Wisdom’s Goddess, where the balance lies.”
– In the title frame of the Impartial Herald, January 31, 1798.
“A Free PRESS maintains the MAJESTY of the PEOPLE.”
– In the title frame of the BOSTON GAZETTE , September 17, 1798.
Then, I ran across this:
“I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them.”
Based on the daily, non-stop betrayal of our alleged “main”stream media, this could easily have been said or written today. In fact, it would appear to sum up the feelings of the majority of those polled by Gallup in 2014 regarding the public’s opinion of today’s news media. Surprisingly, it was penned two centuries earlier, in 1814 by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a Walter Jones.(1)
If we are to be honest brokers, we must firmly reject the labels the purveyors of social engineering find irresistible to arbitrarily place upon us. If we can’t shed these labels (right/left, liberal/conservative, etc…), how can we truthfully address the mountain of issues our country currently faces? Likewise, if you don’t think journalistic integrity is important or you can’t check your political identity at the door, then the following review will be meaningless to you.
Journalistic Fraud
by Bob Kohn
A review
That more and more people are distrustful of the august members of the Fourth Estate is not a well-kept secret. Yet, they insist on openly infusing straight news with their bias in support to their own political or personal agendas. Despite the media’s assurances of objectivity, the preponderance of evidence printed in their own newspapers or aired on their own broadcasts would tend to convict them of perjury.
And how can we easily decipher this bias within a given news story? Author Bob Kohn has selected the “gray lady” herself and examined specific articles from the New York Times (mostly of their crusade against President George W. Bush) and demonstrated for us exactly how publishers Howell Raines and Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. used various methods of social engineering to steer public opinion toward their own views.
Taking on the New York Times (and by extension, other like-minded news outlets) Kohn defines the problem in the first two chapters (calling the Times out for their bias and what a newspaper is supposed to stand for). In the successive chapters, he examines the mechanics of fraud perpetrated by the Times, in particular, the various methods consciously designed to misrepresent hard news; distorting the lead, the headlines and the facts to fit their narrative. Other techniques proficiently demonstrated by Kohn as used by the Times involve distorting with loaded language, polling data and placement of salient facts within the story.
As author Bob Kohn asserts, “The Agenda is Everything.”(2) If it doesn’t pass the litmus test of Sultzberger’s agenda, then it’s buried, scrapped or otherwise discounted. What’s truly outrageous is not that a litmus test exists, but that it’s based solely on ideology, not a bonafide examination of the story itself. An honest broker substituting Obama’s name for Bush within these stories would be outraged at the treatment of the 44th president, yet no such outrage exists for Bush 43. Don’t believe it? Examine the headlines for yourself of both presidencies during similar circumstances. Exchange each president’s name and see if you don’t find wholesale bias within each story; one glowing with praise, the other with derision. Now ask yourself if ideological advocacy is what a “news”paper is supposed to stand for?
Having taken in all the journalistic slight-of-hand employed by the so-called paper of record, the idea that the Times even has an opinion editor is superfluous really, when you consider the methods they used to color hard front-page news with their opinion.
“Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” - Attributed to William I Greener, Jr. – The Wall Street Journal, September 28, 1978.(3)
And I’m betting those barrels are filled with yellow ink.
NOTES
1) http://founders.archives.gov/document...
2) Bob Kohn, Journalistic Fraud, (Nashville: WND Books, 2003), p. 13.
3) http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/n...
April 9, 2020
Good account of how the media, in this case the NYT, distorts the truth. Eye opening. I'm glad I read it. Lots of examples which are still in use today, unfortunately.
January 28, 2023
The author's own far-right bias really gets in the way of his otherwise potentially informative exploration of bias in mainstream media news.
July 8, 2015
An excellent book that highlights the arrogance of mainstream media, and more specifically The New York Times, in their pontification of their own opinions, driven by false reporting, masked as true factual journalism. This is definitely required reading!
September 17, 2013
Right-wing propaganda
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews