I wasn’t happy about it, but I cancelled my NYT subcription last week.
In the 1970s I once saw a New York Times newsbox on the street. Someone had painted the outside with a twist on their famous “All the news that’s fit to print” slogan.
The graffiti artist instead wrote: “All the news we see fit to print”.
He captured something. The New York Times is one of our most important journalistic institutions. But through the years their journalism has also been distorted by bouts of hubris, which is very much their current moment.
It’s a sad, because the country needs journalistic institutions with resources and a history of standing up for journalistic principles. The NY Times has been there too. It is the reason free speech was expanded so broadly in the 1960s. Prior to the Sullivan case, States could curtail speech with targeted libel laws — which Alabama was using to shut up criticism of the state violence against Civil Rights workers & supporters in the 1960s. The New York Times took Alabama on — and won free speech for all of us.
Few Americans these days understand how little free speech the country once had Under the original Consitution, the Bill of Rights applied only to the Federal Government — not the States. Tennessee, for instance had a law prior to the Civil War that called for the death penalty for anyone speaking against slavery. Republicans were not able to campaign in any of the deep south states in 1860 because they would have been immediately arrested because of their stance on slavery — and Lincoln got zero deep south votes because he wasn’t allowed on the ballot. The 14th Amendment — ratified in 1868 — began to slowly change the situation as the courts used it to apply the Bill of Rights to State level restrictions. But it wasn’t until the 20th Century that Americans gained the full advantage of the Bill of Rights. The Times was crucial to that.
The NY Times is also the reason we have no prior restraint of publication. Thanks to both them and The Washington Post. The Nixon Adminstration tried to suppress the publishing of the leaked Pentagon Papers — a secret government report that showed how futile and stupid it was for the US to fight in Vietnam. Nixon was still fighting that war and in fact continued to fight it right up to his resignation. By publishing the Pentagon Papers, The New York Times & Wapo created the political space for the Congress to eventually pull the plug on the war effort in 1975.
We face the dangerous potential now of a roll-back of these rights. States are again trying to again use libel law to roll back free speech. Mississippi (my home state) is using libel law to sue newspapers pointing out the corruption of a former governor. All it will take is for the Supreme Court to take up a case like that, and undo the Sullivan decision, something in which Justice Thomas has already expressed an interest.
It’s powerful institutions like the NY Times that can take on trends like this.
But the NYT wields a two-edged sword.TheTimes has always been an establishment newspaper — meaning they often support right-wing views when they’re shared by significant blocks of establishment thinking. It was the Washington Post that led on Watergate, not the New York Times. The Times later criticized Jimmy Carter for trying to contain US participation in international arms dealing. They were never that critical of Reagan and they gave a journalistic home to William Safire, the former Nixon & Agnew speechwriter who coined Agnew’s famous "nattering nabobs of negativism" line. In the 1990s Safire used his column at the Times to relentlessly demonize Hillary Clinton, and create a media narrative around her that never faded.
Of course the NY Times was also a key reason why the US went to war in Iraq, when they allowed Judith Miller to plant stories that Iraq had the bomb — stories that were invented by an Iranian intelligence operative — discredited by internal CIA investigations — and yet pushed by the Bush administration. Once they were printed (laundered) in the NY Times, Bush’s people used them as proof that Saddam had nuclear weapons. Disaster followed.
Then there was the pushing of Russian propaganda about Hillary Clinton — Russian intelligence had hacked Democratic emails, and used Wikileaks and other cut-outs to selectively release emails that would damage Clinton in 2016 — some of which were likely doctored by the Russians but blended into genuine emails, making detection difficult. Not that the NY Times bothered to do journalism with these emails — they pushed that story relentlessly and damaged Clinton, giving the election to Trump. They did this while also harping on Clinton’s private email server. Of course Clinton should not have been using a private server — but the irony is that while the Democratic National Committee was hacked — and the US State Department was hacked — the Russians were never able to break into Hillary’s server, even though they tried.
I could go on but I think this is enough to show that the NY Times has always been a mixed bag. It doesn’t mean the country doesn’t still need it as a journalistic institution.
Unfortunately they are now playing for the other team — fascist forces trying to take down our democracy and curtail freedom of speech and freedom of the press to boot and the NY Times doesn’t give a damn. In fact they are defacto cheering on Trump, neglecting to cover his daily craziness while harping endlessly on Biden’s very real but not dangerous age-frailty.
This election is so much bigger than Trump vs Biden. As Project 2025 shows, our democracy hangs in the balance. Whether the NY Times is a useful idiot, or in on the game is beside the point. They need to stop.
They will only change course as a result of pressure, and that can only come through cancellation of subscriptions.
If you hate the NY Times, you probably don’t have a subscription but you can still spread the word. But if you love them (in the very qualified way I do), it’s time for tough-love. Time to cancel.
If they start acting like journalists again, we can re-subscribe. I hope that day will come sooner rather than later.