Wednesday, December 14, 2016

New York Times. 80 years of disinformation

All the news that fits we print.  The Times got started in the 1930's with their man Walter Duranty, who sent back years of glowing stories from Stalin's Soviet Union.  According to Duranty everything was sweetness and light in Russia.  He never wrote a word about the great famines, the purges, and the secret police.  Duranty was so bad that even the NY Times finally admitted that his Pulitizer prizes were undeserved.  Of course they didn't come clean until the 1990's, but the Times did admit (then) that Duranty's reporting was not on the up and up.
   Then the Times had a love affair with Fidel Castro in the late 1950's when Fidel was just a revolutionary hiding out in the Cuban woods.  They ran a long series of stories, flattering to Fidel, condemning Batista.   They helped Fidel immensely, the Times had all of America convinced that Fidel was a good guy.  Which helped Fidel a lot.  He was running guns and stuff into Cuba from Florida.  Since everyone knew, 'cause the Times had told them, that Fidel was a good guy, we never cracked down on his smuggling into Cuba.  This wasn't the only reason Fidel won, but it was a big help.  It wasn't until Fidel had been in power for six months and made a bunch of rabidly anti American speeches that the Times finally admitted that well, yes, Fidel was a communist.
    Then in the late 1960's the Times sent their man Harrison Salisbury to North Viet Nam, where he sent back a flock of stories sympathizing with the Viet Cong.  Harrison wrote about this remote village, where the village chief kept a big written log of all the American air raids going back for years.  Horrors, four innocent villagers had been  wantonly killed by Yankee Air Pirate bombs.   Well, I was in South East Asia that year, and my unit, the 388 Tactical Fighter Wing, had flown missions to that little ville in North Viet Nam.  The biggest railroad yard you ever did see was smack dab in the middle of that little ville.  And we had raided it, heavily, several times.  If  "collateral damage" was limited to only four civilian casualties, I call that damn good bombing on our part.
   After that, I never paid much attention to the NY Times, since they had proven themselves unreliable.  They were back in fine form for this year's election, plugging for Hillary and trashing The Donald at every turn.
   An example of American journalism at it's finest.  
   
   

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