Tag: Times

When reporter Abraham Michael Rosenthal’s byline began appearing in The New York Times back in the 1940’s, the sensitivities of the paper’s owners – German Jews of the fully assimilated “Our Crowd” variety – dictated that he use the initials A.M. in place of his glaringly ethnic first name.

It’s not exactly news that The New York Times editorial page detested Ronald Reagan. But who would have thought that seventeen years after the end of his presidency and nearly two years after his death the Times would still seek to denigrate Reagan’s legacy, on its news pages, in a manner that can only be described as petty and inappropriate?

Yes, another piece on The New York Times – and those who don’t understand why the Times warrants constant scrutiny probably have no business reading a media column in the first place.

Sam Ehrenhalt, whose op-ed articles and letters to the editor always enhance The Jewish Press, has shared with the Monitor a thoughtful note he recently dispatched to New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller.

The world hardly needs a Jewish Press commentary on the affirmative action and gay rights rulings handed down by the United States Supreme Court last week.

In its May 14 and May 18 editions, The New York Times demonstrated that its pro-Arab/anti-Israel bias continues to drive its treatment of the Middle East.

In the grand tradition of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, Mondale and Ferraro and others too numerous to mention, we now have the Pinch and Howell show at The New York Times, formerly the nation's paper of record but now mere comedic grist for Letterman, Leno and a few hundred struggling comics performing at dives from Trenton to Tacoma.

Beyond The PaleI resent the language used by columnist Emanuel Winston in last week's Jewish Press. However one feels about the so-called 'road map'...

"The incredibly shrinking" New York Times is how George Will describes the one-time paper of record, a formerly respectable journalistic enterprise that, in Will's words, is "reinventing itself along the lines of a factional broadsheet..."

Once again the Monitor is forced to change course and shelve some already delayed comments on media coverage of Israel's recent anti-terror military operation. We'll get back to Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel next week, but right now there can be no topic for discussion other than The New York Times and the travesty it has become.

For several weeks now the Monitor has put off writing a review of Bias, the blockbuster book by former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg. As the number one non-fiction best-seller in the country, Bias has been praised and panned, in print and on the air, so many times over that there seemed to be nothing new the monitor could add.

As was remarked upon here last week, The New York Times has for the past eight years been what can best be described as maddeningly ambivalent, when it hasn't been fighting mad, about Rudy Giuliani.

The New York Times has always had a difficult time understanding, let alone embracing, Rudolph Giuliani. From his first mayoral race - the losing effort against David Dinkins in 1989 - through his victory four years later and the wildly successful two terms in office that followed, Giuliani was treated by the Times with varying degrees of skepticism, condescension, moral outrage and, on occasion, admiration that might charitably have been described as grudging had it not been delivered with the obligatory qualifiers and negative asides the paper reserves these days for George W. Bush.

Readers might find the following items from the Monitor's mailbag to be of some interest. (The Monitor responds privately to all e-mails and letters, but every now and then selects a few for public viewing.)

It took American leftists about 48 hours or so to find their voices after the Sept. 11 attack on America, but find them they did. There were no surprises.Once the initial shock wore off and it became clear that this was not Oklahoma City, not the doing of any home-grown terrorists, the rationalizations and excuses began to fly. And, as always seems to be the case with those on the left, the real culprits were not Islamic extremists but the U.S. and Israel.

Yes, another Monitor on The New York Times - and if you don't understand why the Times warrants constant scrutiny, you probably shouldn?t be reading this column to begin with.

For the second week running the Monitor is forced to postpone a celebration of the death last month of one of the wickedest Jews to walk the earth in this or any other generation. The continuing fallout over outgoing New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Deborah Sontag's novella-length rewrite of recent Middle East history leaves no choice but to put away the streamers and the silly hats and reschedule the party for the next column.

Is it even the least bit shocking that Deborah Sontag has so eagerly jumped aboard the revisionist bandwagon that seeks to blame former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak for the collapse of last year's summit at Camp David?

The New York Times has been a leader in the public charge against Israel's policy of preempting terrorist acts by targeting those who send out the suicide-bombing drones. So we can't help but make note of a recent Times obituary reporting on the death of one Rex T. Barber

It was shaping up to be a rather uneventful day until the arrival of a press release from one of the Monitor's favorite Jewish organizations. Laughter may not the best medicine, but it certainly is the best palliative to boredom, and in that sense, at least, the Anti-Defamation League will never be accused of being boring.

We were intrigued to read on the front page of last week?s New York Jewish Week that New York?s Rabbi Haskel Lookstein has called for a boycott of The New York Times because of the anti-Israel animus that has driven its reporting and editorials on the Middle East. According to the story:

Last week, The New York Times startled even those of us who have come to expect its Mideast reporting and editorializing to be driven by bias toward the Palestinian take on events.

Two years ago the Monitor, inspired by the political humorist P.J. O'Rourke, published an "Enemies List" of anti-Israel journalists. The column struck such a responsive chord, with readers nominating dozens of their own media enemies, that a couple of follow-ups to the original list soon appeared.

There's a certain maxim among media critics (and if there isn't, the Monitor just coined it) that goes like this: If all seems right in the world of journalism, you probably haven't opened up that day's New York Times.