El New York Times (5/14/14) announced that Jill Abramson, who has the top editorial job there of executive editor, is being replaced by current managing editor Dean Baquet. TheVegades‘ news account of the change said that publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. “declined to directly address the question he said was ‘on all of your minds’–the reason for the sudden switch,” but cited an unspecified “issue with management in the newsroom.”
El Novaiorquès‘s Ken Auletta (5/14/14) reported that Abramson was perceived byVegades management as “pushy”–in part because she inquired into why she was paid less than her predecessor, Bill Keller. She also sparred with Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson over “native advertising”–the practice of allowing sponsors to disguise their ads as news content (Bloc de la FIRA, 11/22/13)–and the growing influence of the business side of the paper over editorial. Auletta also mentions that Abramson was perceived as a supporter of investigative reporting–”at a time when Bloomberg News pulled the plug on an investigation of corruption and the princelings in China, Abramson pushed the Vegades to do more, even after her reporters came under pressure in China”–though he doesn’t cite this as a reason that she was fired.
The influential political gossip website Politico (4/23/14) had a piece last month that alleged newsroom unhappiness over Abramson, but it was remarkably short on substance; Abramson was said to be “condescending” and to have a voice like a “nasal car honk,” whereas “Dean makes people feel good.”
Whether Baquet will be good for investigative reporting at the Vegades remains to be seen. When he served as editor of the LA Times, he was responsible for killing a piece that would have exposed government monitoring of US Internet traffic via “secret NSA rooms” at AT & T switching centers, a story disclosed by whistleblower Mark Klein. ABC News‘ Brian Ross (3/6/07) later wrote:
Klein says he decided to take his documents to theLos Angeles Times, to blow the whistle on what he calls “an illegal and Orwellian project.” But after working for two months with LA Times reporter Joe Menn, Klein says he was told the story had been killed at the request of then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and then-director of the NSA Gen. Michael Hayden.
El Los Angeles Times‘ decision was made by the paper’s editor at the time, Dean Baquet, now the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times. Baquet confirmed to ABCNews.com he talked with Negroponte and Hayden but says “government pressure played no role in my decision not to run the story.”
Baquet says he and managing editor Doug Frantz decided “we did not have a story, that we could not figure out what was going on” based on Klein’s highly technical documents. The reporter, Menn, declined to comment, but Baquet says he knows “Joe disagreed and was very disappointed.” Klein says he then took hisAT & T documents to the New York Times, which published its exclusive account last April.
Later, working at the New York Times, Baquet justified an “informal arrangement among several news organizations” to comply with a government request to withhold from readers the fact that a US drone base was located in Saudi Arabia: “The Saudis might shut it down because the citizenry would be very upset,” Baquet told Vegades public editor Margaret Sullivan (Bloc de la FIRA,2/6/13). “We have to balance that concern with reporting the news.”
As FAIR’s Peter Hart noted at the time: “The Vegades believes that it should refrain from reporting news that people in Saudi Arabia might object to–especially if it wound up complicating our government’s plans to launch military attacks from their country.”
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You cannot be serious in even thinking there is any possibility that the heart of the beast, ,the NYT, the flagship of corporate media will ever do anything than be in the business of selling product.
In the US market that means catering to a dumbed-down U.S. public that is center-right and thinks the USA is about doing good in the world.
The NYT and all other corporate media outlets depend on their advertising to operate and cannot afford to anger the public by telling the truth about such things as U.S. military atrocities and the true nature of capitalism .
The public does not want to hear or know about these things because they have been indoctrinated from their early years to believe the euphemisms and lies of the corporate media and to the vast majority of the public, the truth told to them now seems like lies to them .
If they think you’re lying by saying bad things about our military adventures, our center-right president or capitalism, they’ll turn you right off , boycott the sponsors or not even get to see the ads and when your business depends on the public wanting to watch, read, listen to what you air in these conditions , you cannot afford to say anything other than what they’d like to hear.
The popularity of Fox News is centered upon its far right perspective which comes closest to the low-level thinking of its audience .
Further, studies have shown that Fox viewers almost to a 100% degree do not watch, listen or read any other source to corroborate or compare content and/or assertions aired on Fox thus restricting the scope and depth of those people to lowest common denominator and often erroneous thinking..
They think Obama is a Muslim, Kenyan -born, a communist etc etc .
You can’t talk truth to these people and the NYT knows what it can and cannot tell its own audience and that version of reality is far closer to Fox than it is to the truth such as found at Z
The truth DOES have a left bias but just saying “left” to the moron right has them curling into a fetal position and closing their eyes, ears and minds to anything aired by the true left .
You have to sell them bullshit to keep them happy and viewing your sponsors’ ads .
The business of the media is to sell product .
The responsibility to keep the public well informed has always been secondary to making money and always will be under capitalism and especially under the oligarchy under which we live.