The Old Gray Lady

Growing up I read the Troy Record newspaper cover to cover. It wasn’t hard to find because I was a paperboy for years and my older brothers had the same paper route before me. When I slung the strap from the canvas bag that carried the 65 newspapers over my shoulder it cut into my skin from the sheer weight of all that news. The last house on my route was the caretaker at St. Joseph’s cemetery at the top of Mann Avenue and I’d sit on the corner, a stone’s throw from the rusty wrought iron gate at St. Joe’s, and read it all before folding it into three and tucking it into his screen door. Once in a while I’d see him looking out his window with his arms folded watching me read it. He probably should have kicked me in my backside for making him wait for something he paid for but this was the early 70’s so you could do that stuff back then. Today if you even yell at a kid you’ll likely be served with a subpoena before lunch the next day.

I’m telling you this so you’ll understand I love the news and I love consuming the news in every shape and form. That’s why my heart breaks when I see what has become of what used to be the best newspaper in the country, The New York Times.

Twice recently, in a span of three days, they printed things that were lies. These weren’t in your face, can’t miss it if you tried, lies. These were obfuscation and misdirection type lies. Let me clear up the fog on that lense to help you see what I’m saying more clearly.

Actually before that let me state the first rule in journalism. You check your opinion and bias at the door. We all have them, nobody is perfect, but you have to be aware of them and double-check your work to make sure your snarky little attitude doesn’t infect your story. I’ll give you a concrete example with me and something I have to watch.

I wrote something about a year ago the governor (or at least those in his office) didn’t like. Someone I know who works over there called me on my day off to tell me how I got the story wrong. I listened, I was respectful but it annoyed me because the tone was a bit heavy handed. In the days since that phone call I have to make sure I am more than fair to the guy on Eagle street because I know that annoying feeling I had that day they chastised me is still somewhere buried in my subconscious. I have to be certain not to be unfair because I once got my nose slapped. Who knows, maybe I deserved it.

Getting back to the Old Gray Lady (that’s what they used to call the NY Times); here’s what they did on purpose. On the anniversary of 9-11 they tweeted out that, “airplanes took aim at the twin towers.” Airplanes. Not terrorists. Airplanes helped kill 3,000 souls all on their own. When people called them out on it they deleted the tweet.

OK, bad mistake but let’s just call it an off day for them. Then just three days later they run an article on another allegation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, based on a new book that’s coming out. You read what he allegedly did at a party back in college and it sounds really, really bad. The dummies in cable news and a few of those running for president seize on the article and call for Kavanaugh to be impeached.

A different writer named Molly Hemingway sees the article in the Times and says, “Wait a second, I read the same book and the NY Times left out the most important fact; the woman named as the victim says she doesn’t recall Kavanaugh doing anything to her.”

When people point out to the Times how this omission from their piece is nothing short of journalistic malpractice they then correct the story. Of course it was too late to take back all the horrendous things Beto and the others had already said about the man. So in the span of just four days we had a tweet that had to be deleted and an article that had to be “fixed” to include all the facts.

I hate it when people use the term “fake news.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, it’s not fake anything, it’s just bad journalism. It’s having people work for you who have an agenda and approach a story hoping to validate things they already believe. That’s not what this job is.

People on the right were happy to see the New York Times have to delete tweets and correct stories but I’m not. I used to love the “newspaper of record” because I knew growing up I could trust what the Old Gray Lady was telling me. Sadly now, I can’t. I have to fact check the people who are supposed to be the fact checkers. I expect this half-truth nonsense from Fox News and MSNBC; it would be nice if the Times were different.

I wonder when Trump isn’t president anymore if they’ll go back to doing the news? One can hope. It used to be a great newspaper. I miss it.