Gov. Bill Richardson has not yet agreed to debate Republican challenger John Dendahl. So, here’s a column Dendahl wrote about the New York Times for the Santa Fe New Mexican in 2004, taken directly from Dendahl’s Web site:
‘Times’ is poisoning the well of news reporting
Jan. 13, 2004
Few if any news organizations wield the power of The New York Times. Sadly, though, the Times has become a nasty illustration of power’s corrupting influence.
It’s all frighteningly dissected and laid bare in attorney Bob Kohn’s book, Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted, published in mid-2003. The book comes across as a work of tough love by a 40-year reader.
An ominous statement on Kohn’s book jacket warns, “Once you’ve read this book, you’ll never read the Times — or any newspaper — the same way again.” In one sense, that could refer to the window Kohn provides into principles and techniques generally used in writing news. So in-formed, a careful reader would, indeed, probably read every newspaper differently. But the writer of the statement implied something far less healthy, which is that the Times is poisoning the well of news reporting.
Can any asset of a news organization be more important than people’s trust? I think not. Using the trust it earned over many decades, doubtless helped by astute business management, the Times has accumulated levers of influence that go far beyond its awesome daily print circulation.
The family of publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. has controlled the Times for nearly 110 years since it was purchased in 1896 by Adolph S. Ochs. Ochs said at that time, “It will be the aim of the Times … to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interests involved.”
The Times earned its respected place as the “newspaper of record” in part by properly insulating a fine newsroom from those writing its editorials. Though the source of many a complaint from those with whom the Ochs-Sulzberger family disagreed, their affection for the political Left was beside the point, professionally.
By 1969, however, 30-year Times reporter and senior editor Howard Dinsmore could write, “The New York Times today is deliberately pitched to the so-called liberal point of view, both in its news and editorial columns.”
Kohn argues that the newsroom-editorial insulation has disappeared, making the entire paper and its widely used news service a huge megaphone for the views of its management. He examines Times news coverage and its links to the paper’s editorial positions on such subjects as the Bush presidency, the war in Iraq, race preferences called “affirmative action,” campaign finance “reform,” and opening membership of the Augusta National Golf Club to women — each the subject of a Times crusade. Linkage between editorial positions and the way news stories and associated headlines are written is clearly demonstrated.
Consider campaign finance “reform.” The news-papers carrying this column have consistently editorialized against the McCain-Feingold law recently upheld in large part by the U.S. Supreme Court. They are champions of more than just the press freedom established by the First Amend-ment. Not so the Times, whose editorial support for McCain-Feingold was subtly, skillfully — and unprofessionally — amplified in perhaps scores of news stories.
The problem here is that the Times, with annual revenues of $3 billion from selling news (read speech) and a net worth of nearly $10 billion, is exactly the sort of player against whom political opponents must spend very large amounts of money to compete. The Times is unhampered by McCain-Feingold, but opponents like the Republican Party are horribly handicapped. One supposes the Times is now delighted with the likelihood of less speech (TV ads and the like) from Ochs-Sulzberger opponents on the Right.
Why should one get steamed up over the shoddiness of one newspaper? Well, this one’s tentacles are everywhere. The organization owns over 15 regional newspapers, including The Boston Globe, as well as the New York Times News Service to which over 650 news organizations are subscribers. Every day, stories, photos, editorials and other features originating in the Times organization are transmitted electronically to that network — surely being the source of a significant amount of network television news to go with the printed media.
It was said in the 19th century, “A lie travels round the world while the truth is putting on her boots.” Today, the Times can make it happen in less than a second.