All the Narratives

About the New York Times and Reality

Ashley Rindsberg couldn't believe it. The Times Berlin correspondent couldn't have believed the Nazi propaganda, and the Times wouldn't have been naïve enough to print the lie that Poland had, for no reason, invaded Germany on September 1, 1939, and forced Germany to respond.

Rindsberg did the research in the Times archives and confirmed it. That's precisely what the Times reported. His confidence in the accuracy of the Times was shaken, and he researched it, which resulted in a book, The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions, and Fabrications Radically Alter History.

He describes multiple cases where the Times emphasized, downplayed, or made up information to create what we now call a narrative to fit the purpose of the day.

Their coverage of the moral disasters of the 1930s was despicable. The Sulzberger family, which owned the Times, was Jewish but did not want to emphasize that fact or have the Times seen as a Jewish newspaper. They also knew that President Roosevelt didn't want to make the battle against the Nazis a "war to save the Jews." The Times regularly downplayed the horrendous news out of Germany. It did not take up the cause of Jews who had fled and sought asylum in the U.S. Their Holocaust coverage was inadequate because it was downplayed.

There was another mass death in the 1930's which is not as well-known. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and ruled by Josef Stalin. He decided to collectivize all the farms and take all the food to the cities. The result was massive starvation. Ukrainians call it the Holodomor, and estimates range from four to six million deaths.

Rhea Clyman, Gareth Jones, and Malcolm Muggeridge were trying to report on it despite international efforts to wink at it and ignore it. But the Times had a master liar and ignorer. He even accepted a Pulitzer Prize for the lie. As far as I know, that prize has never been reversed, and the liar's portrait still has a place of honor on a wall in the Times offices. His name was Walter Duranty, and he was the Times Moscow Correspondent.

In an infamous article, "Russians Hungry But Not Starving," Duranty lied about what was happening, minimized the amount of suffering, and justified what suffering there was. He coined the shocking phrase, "You can't make an omelette{sp} without breaking eggs." He specifically addressed Gareth Jones' comments and downplayed claims of famine and death.

The lies served a purpose, so they were acceptable. What purpose did they serve? The Western powers did not recognize the Soviet government. Any bad news about it would delay or prevent that recognition. Rindsberg explains that the Times arranged meetings between the famous Duranty and Franklin Roosevelt before FDR became president, which helped shape FDR's attitude toward recognizing the Soviet government.

Many other foreign policy cases are described in the book, but I want to focus on a different lie: the last example cited because it is the most egregious. It is not only a lie but also a slander, inflammatory, divisive, and serves no positive purpose.

I'm talking about the 1619 project. The Times spent millions of dollars lying, adding bitterness to the civic conversation. They wrote:

The goal of the 1619 Project is to…reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation's birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.

But that's not who we are. Slavery was universal in 1619. The indigenous peoples of the Americas practiced it. Thomas Sowell, in Intellectuals and Society, describes misunderstandings about slavery.

… two crucial facts have been filtered out of this picture: (1) the institution of slavery was not based on race, and (2) whites as well as blacks were enslaved. … For most of the history of slavery, which covers most of the history of the human race, most slaves were not racially different from those who enslaved them

… white slaves were still being bought and sold in the Islamic world, decades after blacks had been freed in the United States.

To add to the insult, the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wanted to grant a tenured position to the author of this screed. As you can imagine, that was not a very popular idea.

Rindsberg's book shows case after case where the Times decides that it is smarter than the public or government officials. Information was shaded to tilt public opinion to create a desired result because the average public or government member wasn't as wise as the people in the Times offices.

But the 1619 Project was the epitome of hubris. Even those who aren't scholars of Dr. Sowell's quality could smell a rat. There was a general sense that slavery was common in the world before the start of America and that our founders came here for other kinds of freedom. We knew 1619 was a lie. We couldn't understand why people who called themselves smart thought they could get away with such a blatant lie.

They insulted us by thinking we were historically ignorant. They slandered our country. They tried to turn the most noble experiment in human history into one of the most despicable efforts in history. They lied to increase bitterness and anger between different groups in society. Then they wonder why we consider them a negative, poisonous, lying, detrimental part of "fake news."