Ignoring the New York Times And Moving On...
02/03/2009
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Effective immediately, let’s all agree to ignore the New York Times. Simply stated, it is unrealistic to expect that we can influence the Times to write without bias—or even responsibly— about immigration.

Look for example at its two most recent Sunday and Monday editorials, The Nativists Are Restless and The Nativists Are Restless, continued analyzed by Patrick Cleburne and James Fulford.

After reading those columns plus my twenty years of experience reviewing other Times stories for some semblance of fairness and balance, I cannot come to any other conclusion except than it’s time to move on.

Consider that several Internet blogs do nothing but legitimately criticize the Times for its shoddy journalism. The leading one is TimesWatch, which also took the Times to task for its "restless nativists" columns.

One of the most popular and widely read bloggers, Mickey Kaus at Slate routinely dissects the Times for its shallowness.

At least four full-length books have been published about the agenda driven Times: The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times, Behind the Times, The Kingdom and the Power,  and The Gospel According to the New York Times.

Other books like Coloring the News have devoted chapters to biased Times reporting.

Coloring the News, and The Kingdom and the Power (written by Gay Talese) were, national and—of all things—New York Times best sellers. Coloring The News did it without ever being reviewed by the Times itself.

Net result of all the negative publicity: the Times remains unrepentant.

The greater the successes of the patriotic immigration reform movement, the more outrageous the Times’s immigration coverage.

With Times' reporters all facing the possibility of being laid-off, I doubt any would have the courage—given what they know about the editorial board’s leanings—to write a decent story about immigration. But if they did, certainly the editors would kill it.

If you were to ask me which I think would happen first, the Times reporting fairly about immigration or declaring bankruptcy and ceasing publication, I would bet on the latter.

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