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It's Time To Kill 'The New York Times'; Here's How To Get Started
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
My friend and fellow Bulletin columnist, Frank Diamond, has come up with one of the best ideas of the new decade — an organized effort to formulate a plan to kill The New York Times.
He writes, “Conservatives should convene a summit to come up with our own secret weapon to kill The New York Times. Surely, the brightest minds on the right can think of some business technique — perfectly legal but perfectly lethal – to hasten this monster’s demise.” (The Bulletin, Jan. 7) Mr. Diamond said he got the idea of a secret weapon from Bob Woodward’s book The War Within, in which he reported a secret weapon contributed to the success of the surge in Iraq.
I think Mr. Diamond is on target and there ought to be a some high-powered thinking and deliberation dedicated to coming up with what would be a death sentence for The New York Times.
The usual approach is a boycott organized to get readers to cancel their subscriptions and to stop reading the paper and its Web site and to boycott advertisers as well. As far as I know, these boycotts have chipped away at the circulation and economic power of the Times but not enough to prove fatal or even inflict a serious wound. But enough small cuts can add up to big problems. The Times isn’t dead yet, but I think it is well on the road to being anemic. Mr. Diamond writes, “I have seen boycotts come and go. I’ve watched the Times weather scandal and recession. It’s as resilient as cancer, and just as deadly. Something more is needed.”
I agree with Mr. Diamond that something more is needed. But I think that what is needed will probably be a package of approaches, one of which will be the boycott. Furthermore, a boycott now is likely to be more successful now than on previous occasions. The Times is like a patient with an impaired immune system that may succumb to an infection that would be easily fought off by someone in good health. The Times is now in one of the worst newspaper environments in history and it has experienced falling circulation and advertising. It’s selling off assets and has enough problems to assure that the vultures might want to be ready to start circling.
There are other developments favoring a boycott. The subject of biased, dishonest and fraudulent media is starting to become an important subject in the alternative media such as Fox Cable News, although it is generally avoided by the mainstream media. They mirror the same anti-American, anti-religion, anti-military, anti-war, anti-law-enforcement, anti-Israel, anti-Republican, anti-conservative, and anti-Bush so obviously enshrined in the news and commentary of the Times.
During the last few years, I have seen the media bias of the mainstream media go from a rarely mentioned subject to one often mentioned and often fully discussed. What’s more politicians have started zeroing in on the bias of the mainstream media more frequently. Finally, the public is waking up to that bias and polls show most people were aware the mainstream media had been transformed into an elect-Barack Obama campaign organization and was and is no longer a group of journalistic enterprises.
There’s another important development making the boycott a more lethal weapon to be used against The Times. Accuracy in Media, one of the premier media watchdogs, has undertaken a Times boycott as their project and has created an excellent Web site, at boycottnytimes.com, where people can get solid reporting about Times’ bias and also sign a petition in support of the boycott. The Accuracy in Media Web site for other information about media bias is at aim.com.
A related development is the growing importance and effectiveness of other media watchdogs, such as camera.org and honestreporting.com. Those two concentrate on media bias reflected in reporting on the Middle East. There is also the Media Research Center, www.mrc.org, another major watchdog.
With all due respects to my above argument, I still think that there has to be more than a boycott. There are other avenues worth exploring. One is to get involved via stock ownership and take the media bias case to the stockholders’ meeting. That is a way of getting publicity for the cause and also forcing management to pay attention. In the more advanced stages of such an effort, there might be attempts to get proposals on the table for the stockholders’ meeting and to elect directors that could help force the paper toward more honest, balanced and truthful reporting.
I had an experience when I was Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner that taught me if you can impact the finances of a company you can suddenly get them to see the light of sweet reason. I was in a battle with a major hospital in the Altoona area that wanted to discontinue its Blue Cross contract. That would have seriously disadvantaged all the Blue Cross policyholders as they would have to pay the standard hospital rates rather than the Blue Cross negotiated rates.
As commissioner, I thought I better protect the public by getting that contract renewed. I held a series of hearings, launched a publicity campaign against the hospital and more. But what brought the matter to a fast and satisfactory settlement was a comment I made. There was a bank that had significant relationships and board members on the hospital’s governing body. And in response to a reporter’s question, I said “if that bank managed its own affairs, as they seem to be contributing to the mismanagement of the hospital’s affairs, I’d take my money out of the bank.”
For some reason, perhaps only coincidence, right after that remark was publicized, the hospital settled with Blue Cross and continued its contractual relationship.
There are other approaches, some designed mainly to get publicity for the boycott effort and to call grievances to management attention. For example, a demonstration might be organized at the site of the newspaper’s offices. Of course, there are the usual letters to the editors and calls to talk shows raising the bias issues. You can also try to set up talks with editors, reporters and other staff members. You might also consider an appeal to members of the board of directors.
Still another useful approach is to call attention to the many excellent sources of information outside of the mainstream media.
In the final analysis, you have to wake the public up and get them involved. That is the key to reform, but also the most difficut task. For some reasons it is hard to get the public fired up even in the face of the most outrageous and dangerous media abuses. I would have thought when the public saw how dishonest the recent election coverage was, there would have been cancellation of subscriptions en masse to such papers as The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. But there wasn’t.
There’s one other discouraging note. A group of high-powered investors and journalists decided the best way to fight The New York Times bias was a competing paper. So they started publishing The New York Sun, a paper with a conservative approach, but also one that was fair, balanced and truthful — the opposite of the Times. I would have thought tat the Sun would have been wildly and enthusiastically embraced but it wasn’t. It failed to even break the 50,000-paid-circulation barrier. It recently folded when it was faced with the need to try to get financing during the financial meltdown. But despite that timing problem, I felt that the public did’t give the Sun the support it was entitled to.
And I’d add an addendum to the “Kill The Times” campaign. I think the Times is just the most obvious cancer on the media landscape. Most of the major papers and radio and television networks are part of that mainstream media, which mirrors the Times’ multiple biases. So the campaign should be directed across the board. For example, here in Philadelphia, the Inquirer should be target No. 1. Others at the top of my list would be the local NPR station and the local NBC station (Channel 3). I suggested to Accuracy in Media, the watchdog that organized the Times boycott, that it design a boycott methodology that could be used around the country.
To come back with the central problem of getting the public involved in boycotts and other activities, this is my suggestion. I don’t think the public fully understands how dangerous The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media are to the safety, security and survival of America.
The Times acts in a treasonous fashion and makes a habit of revealing national security secrets on the front page. The Times disrespects our military by focusing on any slight misstep but ignoring or downplaying its heroism. They also seems to be in love with those who advocate genocide, terrorism and murder and is prejudiced against those that try to fight Islamofascism. One of the best ways to get the public’s attention and activism is to read articles like that just published by Steve Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and one of the nation’s leading authorities on terrorism. He is the author of five of the most important books on terrorism and recently wrote an article titled “Why Does The New York Times Love Hamas?”
Here’s the way his article starts and that gives you the flavor of its power: “The paper of record refuses to call them terrorists, extols the groups humanitarian efforts and whitewashes its behavior during the now broken cease fire.
“In the past week, the fourth estate’s Hamas cheerleaders have stripped away any pretense of being honest or neutral, with The New York Times continuing to take the side of the terrorist group in one of the most shameful journalistic episodes I have ever seen. In following the Times coverage for the past six months and checking external sources of information, one can see a clear pattern of propagandistic reporting favoring Hamas that selectively suppressed or willfully misrepresented information.”
When The Times favors genocidal murderers and maniacs and tries to put those fighting against them in the worst possible light and uses dishonest techniques to boot, it’s time to say, “Enough is enough. I’m canceling my Times subscription right now and I’m not going to buy that paper again.”
When the Times can’t even call Hamas’ suicide bombers by their right name of terrorist and makes up ridiculous and outrageous reasons for not doing so, you know its bias and dishonesty is totally out of control. The head of the Times Jerusalem bureau said the term terrorist is loaded and overused. The fact that a term is “loaded” is not a reason to avoiding using it. “Murderer” is a loaded term but if that’s what the guy is that’s what you call him. The Times is covering the news and not writing dainty messages for a tea party invitation.
Mr. Emerson gives this example of how the Times goes out of its way to paint Hamas murderers, terrorists, and genocidal maniacs as loving souls:
“On Oct. 20, 2008, for example, The Times painted a sweet portrait of Hamas fostering love, not war, through arranged marriages for members of Izz ad-Din al-Quassam (the terrorist groups that specializes in suicide bombings)...” Mr. Emerson observes, “How touching.”
Mr. Emerson gives another example involving one of its reports that two Palestinian children were killed. The article was written to give the impression Israel was recklessly attacking civilian areas. But the Times did’t report that the two children were killed by Palestinian rockets that fell short of their Israeli targets.
Mr. Emerson has a whole series of compelling examples, each of which, almost alone, proves that the Times has abandoned all journalistic principles and is serving as the unpaid agent of terrorists and genocidal maniacs. Mr. Emerson concludes his article with this summary:
“In its purportedly evenhanded approach to reporting the news from the Gaza front, The New York Times continues to betray the trust placed on journalists to give readers all the facts. And in this clear attempt to place the blame on one party alone — Israel — the Times is advancing the cause of Hamas. If the Times really wanted to present the truth, it would simply drop the pretense of being honest and simply register as a f oreign agent of Hamas.”
When the most important paper in America becomes an agent for Hamas, an organization dedicated to genocide and terrorism, and one that has murdered many including Americans, it’s time to do something about it. It’s our patriotic duty to act against the Times in every legal way. Can America hope to defend itself and survive with that kind of propaganda and poison flooding forth from this treasonous, dishonest, biased, fraudulent newspaper?
If anyone has ideas on how to kill the Times, please send them to me, as I would like to keep this discussion going until the great day when the Times stops printing or finally gives up its anti-American, pro-terrorist, pro-genocide agenda. In the meantime, join the battle against the terrorist and genocide-loving New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media. Take one step now such as:
• Cancel your subscription to The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsweek or one of the other mainstream media outlets.
• Stop watching the television stations that peddle poison, such as CNN and NBC and switch to Fox Cable News.
• Seek information from other sources that more closely approach the fair, balanced and truthful ideal. For openers, consider a subscription to the National Review or Weekly Standard.
• Sign the boycott The New York Times petition at boycottnnytimes.com and follow media bias issues at other sites such as aim.com, mrc.org, camera.org, and honestreporting.org.
• Let the publications and broadcasters know where you stand through letters-to-the-editor and calls to talk shows.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
He writes, “Conservatives should convene a summit to come up with our own secret weapon to kill The New York Times. Surely, the brightest minds on the right can think of some business technique — perfectly legal but perfectly lethal – to hasten this monster’s demise.” (The Bulletin, Jan. 7) Mr. Diamond said he got the idea of a secret weapon from Bob Woodward’s book The War Within, in which he reported a secret weapon contributed to the success of the surge in Iraq.
I think Mr. Diamond is on target and there ought to be a some high-powered thinking and deliberation dedicated to coming up with what would be a death sentence for The New York Times.
The usual approach is a boycott organized to get readers to cancel their subscriptions and to stop reading the paper and its Web site and to boycott advertisers as well. As far as I know, these boycotts have chipped away at the circulation and economic power of the Times but not enough to prove fatal or even inflict a serious wound. But enough small cuts can add up to big problems. The Times isn’t dead yet, but I think it is well on the road to being anemic. Mr. Diamond writes, “I have seen boycotts come and go. I’ve watched the Times weather scandal and recession. It’s as resilient as cancer, and just as deadly. Something more is needed.”
I agree with Mr. Diamond that something more is needed. But I think that what is needed will probably be a package of approaches, one of which will be the boycott. Furthermore, a boycott now is likely to be more successful now than on previous occasions. The Times is like a patient with an impaired immune system that may succumb to an infection that would be easily fought off by someone in good health. The Times is now in one of the worst newspaper environments in history and it has experienced falling circulation and advertising. It’s selling off assets and has enough problems to assure that the vultures might want to be ready to start circling.
There are other developments favoring a boycott. The subject of biased, dishonest and fraudulent media is starting to become an important subject in the alternative media such as Fox Cable News, although it is generally avoided by the mainstream media. They mirror the same anti-American, anti-religion, anti-military, anti-war, anti-law-enforcement, anti-Israel, anti-Republican, anti-conservative, and anti-Bush so obviously enshrined in the news and commentary of the Times.
During the last few years, I have seen the media bias of the mainstream media go from a rarely mentioned subject to one often mentioned and often fully discussed. What’s more politicians have started zeroing in on the bias of the mainstream media more frequently. Finally, the public is waking up to that bias and polls show most people were aware the mainstream media had been transformed into an elect-Barack Obama campaign organization and was and is no longer a group of journalistic enterprises.
There’s another important development making the boycott a more lethal weapon to be used against The Times. Accuracy in Media, one of the premier media watchdogs, has undertaken a Times boycott as their project and has created an excellent Web site, at boycottnytimes.com, where people can get solid reporting about Times’ bias and also sign a petition in support of the boycott. The Accuracy in Media Web site for other information about media bias is at aim.com.
A related development is the growing importance and effectiveness of other media watchdogs, such as camera.org and honestreporting.com. Those two concentrate on media bias reflected in reporting on the Middle East. There is also the Media Research Center, www.mrc.org, another major watchdog.
With all due respects to my above argument, I still think that there has to be more than a boycott. There are other avenues worth exploring. One is to get involved via stock ownership and take the media bias case to the stockholders’ meeting. That is a way of getting publicity for the cause and also forcing management to pay attention. In the more advanced stages of such an effort, there might be attempts to get proposals on the table for the stockholders’ meeting and to elect directors that could help force the paper toward more honest, balanced and truthful reporting.
I had an experience when I was Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner that taught me if you can impact the finances of a company you can suddenly get them to see the light of sweet reason. I was in a battle with a major hospital in the Altoona area that wanted to discontinue its Blue Cross contract. That would have seriously disadvantaged all the Blue Cross policyholders as they would have to pay the standard hospital rates rather than the Blue Cross negotiated rates.
As commissioner, I thought I better protect the public by getting that contract renewed. I held a series of hearings, launched a publicity campaign against the hospital and more. But what brought the matter to a fast and satisfactory settlement was a comment I made. There was a bank that had significant relationships and board members on the hospital’s governing body. And in response to a reporter’s question, I said “if that bank managed its own affairs, as they seem to be contributing to the mismanagement of the hospital’s affairs, I’d take my money out of the bank.”
For some reason, perhaps only coincidence, right after that remark was publicized, the hospital settled with Blue Cross and continued its contractual relationship.
There are other approaches, some designed mainly to get publicity for the boycott effort and to call grievances to management attention. For example, a demonstration might be organized at the site of the newspaper’s offices. Of course, there are the usual letters to the editors and calls to talk shows raising the bias issues. You can also try to set up talks with editors, reporters and other staff members. You might also consider an appeal to members of the board of directors.
Still another useful approach is to call attention to the many excellent sources of information outside of the mainstream media.
In the final analysis, you have to wake the public up and get them involved. That is the key to reform, but also the most difficut task. For some reasons it is hard to get the public fired up even in the face of the most outrageous and dangerous media abuses. I would have thought when the public saw how dishonest the recent election coverage was, there would have been cancellation of subscriptions en masse to such papers as The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. But there wasn’t.
There’s one other discouraging note. A group of high-powered investors and journalists decided the best way to fight The New York Times bias was a competing paper. So they started publishing The New York Sun, a paper with a conservative approach, but also one that was fair, balanced and truthful — the opposite of the Times. I would have thought tat the Sun would have been wildly and enthusiastically embraced but it wasn’t. It failed to even break the 50,000-paid-circulation barrier. It recently folded when it was faced with the need to try to get financing during the financial meltdown. But despite that timing problem, I felt that the public did’t give the Sun the support it was entitled to.
And I’d add an addendum to the “Kill The Times” campaign. I think the Times is just the most obvious cancer on the media landscape. Most of the major papers and radio and television networks are part of that mainstream media, which mirrors the Times’ multiple biases. So the campaign should be directed across the board. For example, here in Philadelphia, the Inquirer should be target No. 1. Others at the top of my list would be the local NPR station and the local NBC station (Channel 3). I suggested to Accuracy in Media, the watchdog that organized the Times boycott, that it design a boycott methodology that could be used around the country.
To come back with the central problem of getting the public involved in boycotts and other activities, this is my suggestion. I don’t think the public fully understands how dangerous The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media are to the safety, security and survival of America.
The Times acts in a treasonous fashion and makes a habit of revealing national security secrets on the front page. The Times disrespects our military by focusing on any slight misstep but ignoring or downplaying its heroism. They also seems to be in love with those who advocate genocide, terrorism and murder and is prejudiced against those that try to fight Islamofascism. One of the best ways to get the public’s attention and activism is to read articles like that just published by Steve Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and one of the nation’s leading authorities on terrorism. He is the author of five of the most important books on terrorism and recently wrote an article titled “Why Does The New York Times Love Hamas?”
Here’s the way his article starts and that gives you the flavor of its power: “The paper of record refuses to call them terrorists, extols the groups humanitarian efforts and whitewashes its behavior during the now broken cease fire.
“In the past week, the fourth estate’s Hamas cheerleaders have stripped away any pretense of being honest or neutral, with The New York Times continuing to take the side of the terrorist group in one of the most shameful journalistic episodes I have ever seen. In following the Times coverage for the past six months and checking external sources of information, one can see a clear pattern of propagandistic reporting favoring Hamas that selectively suppressed or willfully misrepresented information.”
When The Times favors genocidal murderers and maniacs and tries to put those fighting against them in the worst possible light and uses dishonest techniques to boot, it’s time to say, “Enough is enough. I’m canceling my Times subscription right now and I’m not going to buy that paper again.”
When the Times can’t even call Hamas’ suicide bombers by their right name of terrorist and makes up ridiculous and outrageous reasons for not doing so, you know its bias and dishonesty is totally out of control. The head of the Times Jerusalem bureau said the term terrorist is loaded and overused. The fact that a term is “loaded” is not a reason to avoiding using it. “Murderer” is a loaded term but if that’s what the guy is that’s what you call him. The Times is covering the news and not writing dainty messages for a tea party invitation.
Mr. Emerson gives this example of how the Times goes out of its way to paint Hamas murderers, terrorists, and genocidal maniacs as loving souls:
“On Oct. 20, 2008, for example, The Times painted a sweet portrait of Hamas fostering love, not war, through arranged marriages for members of Izz ad-Din al-Quassam (the terrorist groups that specializes in suicide bombings)...” Mr. Emerson observes, “How touching.”
Mr. Emerson gives another example involving one of its reports that two Palestinian children were killed. The article was written to give the impression Israel was recklessly attacking civilian areas. But the Times did’t report that the two children were killed by Palestinian rockets that fell short of their Israeli targets.
Mr. Emerson has a whole series of compelling examples, each of which, almost alone, proves that the Times has abandoned all journalistic principles and is serving as the unpaid agent of terrorists and genocidal maniacs. Mr. Emerson concludes his article with this summary:
“In its purportedly evenhanded approach to reporting the news from the Gaza front, The New York Times continues to betray the trust placed on journalists to give readers all the facts. And in this clear attempt to place the blame on one party alone — Israel — the Times is advancing the cause of Hamas. If the Times really wanted to present the truth, it would simply drop the pretense of being honest and simply register as a f oreign agent of Hamas.”
When the most important paper in America becomes an agent for Hamas, an organization dedicated to genocide and terrorism, and one that has murdered many including Americans, it’s time to do something about it. It’s our patriotic duty to act against the Times in every legal way. Can America hope to defend itself and survive with that kind of propaganda and poison flooding forth from this treasonous, dishonest, biased, fraudulent newspaper?
If anyone has ideas on how to kill the Times, please send them to me, as I would like to keep this discussion going until the great day when the Times stops printing or finally gives up its anti-American, pro-terrorist, pro-genocide agenda. In the meantime, join the battle against the terrorist and genocide-loving New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media. Take one step now such as:
• Cancel your subscription to The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsweek or one of the other mainstream media outlets.
• Stop watching the television stations that peddle poison, such as CNN and NBC and switch to Fox Cable News.
• Seek information from other sources that more closely approach the fair, balanced and truthful ideal. For openers, consider a subscription to the National Review or Weekly Standard.
• Sign the boycott The New York Times petition at boycottnnytimes.com and follow media bias issues at other sites such as aim.com, mrc.org, camera.org, and honestreporting.org.
• Let the publications and broadcasters know where you stand through letters-to-the-editor and calls to talk shows.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
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