I'm related by marriage to the family that founded and still controls the NYT. I know where many of its private and very hidden skeletons are buried. Chris only scratches the surface of the overt Zionism that informs the family's core values and which percolates down to the NYT editorial mindset and choice of executives. Believe me, there's a book in all of that. Splendid and passionate revelation about why he really quit. You could never be replaced, Chris. Thank goodness you are still speaking out.
This was a beautiful and very moving piece that graciously connected the personal to the political. I love Mr. Hedges and have suffered similar struggles - he too knows what the scapegoat knows.
Edit: I borrowed that phrase "what the scapegoat knows" from a marvelous book by C. Fred Alford titled : "Whistleblowers: Broken Lives And Organizational Power". It is a profound analysis that fits Hedges' personal experience (and my own) and writings about the "demonic" nature of all institutions. Highly recommended.
Two recent journalistic triumphs for the budgie liner of record are fresh in memory. An anecdote can sometimes betray volumes of chicanery and BS.
1) when Epstein left earthly environs, the NYT was on it with the speed of anaphylaxis. In breathless Auden - like tones, mere minutes/hrs later, they flatly informed the world that he had committed suicide. All this, while the body was still warm. All before he was seen by the Medical Examiner. Of course no citation.
Not an unexplained death. Not a mysterious death. Not a suspected suicide. Not a death being investigated, but an unqualified suicide. Baten the Uber experienced former NYC Med Examiner did not agree. Cue in the ad hom on Baten?
They were right about him being dead. But then it would be easy to be sure if you’re connected with those who knew for sure what happened.
2) the ice-hearted way they described the seemingly annoying (to them) victims of Epstein, purveyor and sex trafficker of mall runaways as young as 13. No hint early on of their appalling backgrounds, or their ages at first. Not a soupçon of empathy. The fix was on. So unsurprisingly, the unwashed were immediately informed that the girls were “underaged women”, implying they were happy consenters. Well what would you expect from them, sitting on explosive coincidences like Clinton’s frequent flyer status on the Lolita Express, including trips to Thailand without his wife. And MI6 protecting the prurient interests of Prince Andrew.
For that matter, you'd think that Epstein was the only person that Ghislaine Maxwell ever pimped girls to. Not a peep about his many friends and visitors.
The NYT is today mostly quoted for comedic value. The paper is a good indicator of what the corporate-run government of the US wants its readers to think, NOT what is really happening. Sad.
The main value of any MSM outlet is not as a source of news, information or even analysis. It is as a guide as to what a carefully curated slice of the PMC is expected to think on a series of issues and what issues they are supposed to think of as important and how important and what they are supposed to think about them. Anything not in that MSM feed can be safely ignored.
I've for some time held similar perspective. I'd never subscribe or give them a penny to peddle the propaganda, but occasionally, when I go to a local coffee place that puts its copy out for the customers, I'll pick it up. This is first, to see if I've correctly guessed in how many articles Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, et al are cast as bogey-men. I also look to see how the narratives are shifting - so as to anticipate how swiftly the security establishment are trying to pivot public fears from one bogey-man to another, as for example, from Russia in Ukraine to China in Taiwan; or to see what their strategy is for dealing with growing public anger over the Gaza genocide. Since the NYT along with Wa-Po are the closest allies to what is called the Deep State, one can most quickly tell which way the political winds are blowing by reading their reports and editorials.
My 95 y.o. mother, the daughter of a logger, calls this "the enemy of the month." She also says they (meaning the pol & econ elites) think we're all stupid. The smug 'meritocracy' as usual fails to notice that some of us worker/peasants can read, write, and think.
Your mother sounds like a gem. And she is quite right about 'them' thinking we're all stupid. Unfortunately, there are just enough of those who are - and they keep voting in sleaze politicians from one or the other half of the duopoly, and wonder why things keep getting worse.
If you're interested in the labor side, read //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What To Do about It)// by Les Leopold (2024) By bitter 1st hand experience--28 years as a blue collar worker plus 20 as a local Dem campaign mgr--I know he's right. The Ds abandoned labor. Book includes stats on attitudes; a majority of the white working working class not only isn't put off by identity issues, they support them! As an old union activist both BIPOC and LGBT, I'm pleased re: evidence beyond a simplistic either/or. Rebuttal to vanguard wanna-bes who assert identity is merely division or distraction. De facto classism; yet another way of saying we workers are stupid.
PS--My mom's dad (my grandfather) was a Wobbly. The familial attitudes run deep.
Thx for the reference. Your comment here diverges into an area that deserves far more than short declaratives and labels. I'm honestly not sure I want to take the time to begin that; especially as in other forums I've not seen a lot of evidence that the participants will actually read and consider what they've read before shooting back at each other. This is especially the case where one or more parties are emotionally involved.
Yes, I have noticed I look at the topic of the article, scan it and it's like Chris says, poor journalism, then I go to the comments and they are often more fascinating analysis than the writer of the original article. This is sad for all of us, that ethical journalists who can write - are no longer there.
Forgot to include this....I became an activist in defense of Palestinians because of Chris Hedges' reports years ago that IDF forces were targeting children--literally TARGETING them as a psychotic form of, apparently, recreation. We are seeing this deeply sadistic, ingrained cultural attitude throughout much of Israeli society and of course in the genocidal psychopathy of Netanyahu. Apparently it is now perfectly acceptable in their ingrained entitlement culture to kill aid workers, bomb hospitals, inflict what everyone realizes is deliberate starvation, and ensure lifetimes of deprivation and trauma because of their disturbed craving for utter and destructive revenge and what is clearly genocide. Don't rail against this last sentence, because I won't respond. THEY ARE NOW THE NAZIS.
Please make sense. You are clearly some kind of troll. Read my other message above and stop cluttering this intelligent thread with your nonsense. I was married to a Palestinian surgeon and visited there dozens of times. I've been a political activist for fifty years, and yes, by the way, have two PhDs and know very well what "genocide" means. You might try going back to 4th-grade civics or a readily available definition of that term to resolve your apparent confusion. And please go elsewhere with such an incoherent and nonsensical comment.
As the West's MSM act as cheerleaders and propagandists for their various governments and institutions, your words, your voice tell the truth of what has happened, and is happening, to democracy, justice, decency, fairness, honor, and compassion here in America and around the world.
Dear Chris, your truth-telling is a balm which eases for a while my aching, grieving heart. From the bottom of that heart, thank you for your courageous work. Be safe. Be well.
Chills as a read this article, Chris Hedges. The courage to speak up and speak out re the infamous NYTs and your personal experiences and memories of Joe Lelyveld. Thank you for Being:)
The New York Times has unfortunately committed itself to serving as a propaganda outlet on behalf of Wall Street and the Pentagon. I’ve written elsewhere about how NYT editors swung the 2004 election for Bush by sitting on a story about illegal and unconstitutional mass surveillance programs that he authorized until after the election. More recently, I’ve documented the Times’ coverage of civil rights concerns about police body cameras that editors suppressed for nearly a decade. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/the-new-york-times-shows-upa-decade
I think I agree with Paul Tillich: while I read your post, I could plug in one of the industries in which I spent 35 years (commercial/industrial lighting), from its dispicable practices and willingness to sacrifice everything for the almighty dollar to the pathetic know-nothings who headed the corporations and acted like they were so much better (instead of more ass-kissing) than those who worked under them. Leadership? Hardly. I also worked as an adjunct instructor of composition and research, whrere I witnessed (and it's still falling) the lack of quality or ethics in reporting . . . even at the New York Times. As of about 1998, I told my students they could no longer use this formerly touted source as reliable evidence to support their claims. Your Requiem assures me that as I went against the grain of academia (another institution that has sold out), I wasn't wrong or misinformed. Thank you, Mr. Hedges.
I wish them not a minute’s rest and that their grave is roiled by wild animals and journalistic honey badgers that will uncover the depth and betrayal of what I anticipate will be unprecedented corruption for an American national paper. ALL (well some anyway) OF THE NEWS ( well not news really. but agenda-pushing vs news - same thing , right? ) FIT ( the F word is fabrication) TO PRINT .
So, Elon Musk started what has been the "wokeist purge" and corporations began to take his lead. Media is just at the tail-end of this trend... even later than NGO purges.
These are toxic grievance-oriented employees that have been tolerated because there was a need for employees and this is what the education system had/has been providing.
But there have been some pretty massive layoffs.
We are moving to a point where all of these people are going to be unemployable. It is already happening. And the education system is going to have to take responsibility for the damage it has caused.
Another fine piece illustrating Hedges' nuanced moral intelligence. His respect for Lelyveld as an editor, and thinker, while still recognizing his human short-comings, is a case in point. This is why I trust the judgement of Hedges. He knows the world does not come to us in neat little parcels marked good and bad.
What is worthy of respect in this life does not arrive neatly packaged and labeled. Rather, it is an essence we have worked to discover by sifting through a painful mountain of moral debris, positive and negative. Serious moral minds work hard as any miner in a deep shaft. Such work requires great expenditure of energy and thought. That is why so few are truly good at it.
A reframe which will help diminish the regular disappointment:
The theologian Paul Tillich writes that all institutions are inherently demonic, that the moral life usually requires, at some point, that we defy institutions, even at the cost of our careers.
I'm related by marriage to the family that founded and still controls the NYT. I know where many of its private and very hidden skeletons are buried. Chris only scratches the surface of the overt Zionism that informs the family's core values and which percolates down to the NYT editorial mindset and choice of executives. Believe me, there's a book in all of that. Splendid and passionate revelation about why he really quit. You could never be replaced, Chris. Thank goodness you are still speaking out.
This was a beautiful and very moving piece that graciously connected the personal to the political. I love Mr. Hedges and have suffered similar struggles - he too knows what the scapegoat knows.
Edit: I borrowed that phrase "what the scapegoat knows" from a marvelous book by C. Fred Alford titled : "Whistleblowers: Broken Lives And Organizational Power". It is a profound analysis that fits Hedges' personal experience (and my own) and writings about the "demonic" nature of all institutions. Highly recommended.
I ordered the book. (used) Thx for the recommendation.
Brilliant as always, Chris.
Two recent journalistic triumphs for the budgie liner of record are fresh in memory. An anecdote can sometimes betray volumes of chicanery and BS.
1) when Epstein left earthly environs, the NYT was on it with the speed of anaphylaxis. In breathless Auden - like tones, mere minutes/hrs later, they flatly informed the world that he had committed suicide. All this, while the body was still warm. All before he was seen by the Medical Examiner. Of course no citation.
Not an unexplained death. Not a mysterious death. Not a suspected suicide. Not a death being investigated, but an unqualified suicide. Baten the Uber experienced former NYC Med Examiner did not agree. Cue in the ad hom on Baten?
They were right about him being dead. But then it would be easy to be sure if you’re connected with those who knew for sure what happened.
2) the ice-hearted way they described the seemingly annoying (to them) victims of Epstein, purveyor and sex trafficker of mall runaways as young as 13. No hint early on of their appalling backgrounds, or their ages at first. Not a soupçon of empathy. The fix was on. So unsurprisingly, the unwashed were immediately informed that the girls were “underaged women”, implying they were happy consenters. Well what would you expect from them, sitting on explosive coincidences like Clinton’s frequent flyer status on the Lolita Express, including trips to Thailand without his wife. And MI6 protecting the prurient interests of Prince Andrew.
For that matter, you'd think that Epstein was the only person that Ghislaine Maxwell ever pimped girls to. Not a peep about his many friends and visitors.
The NYT is today mostly quoted for comedic value. The paper is a good indicator of what the corporate-run government of the US wants its readers to think, NOT what is really happening. Sad.
"Our source was the New York Times!"
-Russian Ambassador in the 'War Room', Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove classic 1964 film.
The main value of any MSM outlet is not as a source of news, information or even analysis. It is as a guide as to what a carefully curated slice of the PMC is expected to think on a series of issues and what issues they are supposed to think of as important and how important and what they are supposed to think about them. Anything not in that MSM feed can be safely ignored.
I've for some time held similar perspective. I'd never subscribe or give them a penny to peddle the propaganda, but occasionally, when I go to a local coffee place that puts its copy out for the customers, I'll pick it up. This is first, to see if I've correctly guessed in how many articles Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, et al are cast as bogey-men. I also look to see how the narratives are shifting - so as to anticipate how swiftly the security establishment are trying to pivot public fears from one bogey-man to another, as for example, from Russia in Ukraine to China in Taiwan; or to see what their strategy is for dealing with growing public anger over the Gaza genocide. Since the NYT along with Wa-Po are the closest allies to what is called the Deep State, one can most quickly tell which way the political winds are blowing by reading their reports and editorials.
My 95 y.o. mother, the daughter of a logger, calls this "the enemy of the month." She also says they (meaning the pol & econ elites) think we're all stupid. The smug 'meritocracy' as usual fails to notice that some of us worker/peasants can read, write, and think.
Your mother sounds like a gem. And she is quite right about 'them' thinking we're all stupid. Unfortunately, there are just enough of those who are - and they keep voting in sleaze politicians from one or the other half of the duopoly, and wonder why things keep getting worse.
If you're interested in the labor side, read //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What To Do about It)// by Les Leopold (2024) By bitter 1st hand experience--28 years as a blue collar worker plus 20 as a local Dem campaign mgr--I know he's right. The Ds abandoned labor. Book includes stats on attitudes; a majority of the white working working class not only isn't put off by identity issues, they support them! As an old union activist both BIPOC and LGBT, I'm pleased re: evidence beyond a simplistic either/or. Rebuttal to vanguard wanna-bes who assert identity is merely division or distraction. De facto classism; yet another way of saying we workers are stupid.
PS--My mom's dad (my grandfather) was a Wobbly. The familial attitudes run deep.
Keep that Wobbly torch burning!
Thx for the reference. Your comment here diverges into an area that deserves far more than short declaratives and labels. I'm honestly not sure I want to take the time to begin that; especially as in other forums I've not seen a lot of evidence that the participants will actually read and consider what they've read before shooting back at each other. This is especially the case where one or more parties are emotionally involved.
"Opposition research". The term you may be looking for is "opposition research".
Well put. Takes many Professional Managerial Class members a long time to figure this out, if ever. Sadly.
Thank you.
nyt readers' comments
however're well-
Worth the $5.
Yes, I have noticed I look at the topic of the article, scan it and it's like Chris says, poor journalism, then I go to the comments and they are often more fascinating analysis than the writer of the original article. This is sad for all of us, that ethical journalists who can write - are no longer there.
with most of nyt's
Punditry I skip
the article and
head straight
for the Com-
ments & see
if it's even
worth it
& then
maybe
scan.
and Yes, Adios
Journalism
we Barely
Knew ya.
Forgot to include this....I became an activist in defense of Palestinians because of Chris Hedges' reports years ago that IDF forces were targeting children--literally TARGETING them as a psychotic form of, apparently, recreation. We are seeing this deeply sadistic, ingrained cultural attitude throughout much of Israeli society and of course in the genocidal psychopathy of Netanyahu. Apparently it is now perfectly acceptable in their ingrained entitlement culture to kill aid workers, bomb hospitals, inflict what everyone realizes is deliberate starvation, and ensure lifetimes of deprivation and trauma because of their disturbed craving for utter and destructive revenge and what is clearly genocide. Don't rail against this last sentence, because I won't respond. THEY ARE NOW THE NAZIS.
grammar nazis
Love to define
genocide for
the Rest of
us / as if
We can
not tell
.
as if that makes
the Slaughter
Moral
Please make sense. You are clearly some kind of troll. Read my other message above and stop cluttering this intelligent thread with your nonsense. I was married to a Palestinian surgeon and visited there dozens of times. I've been a political activist for fifty years, and yes, by the way, have two PhDs and know very well what "genocide" means. You might try going back to 4th-grade civics or a readily available definition of that term to resolve your apparent confusion. And please go elsewhere with such an incoherent and nonsensical comment.
forgive me
I do not rail
against your
term I bemoan
those excusing the
Massacre as 'not genocide'
justifying bibi's Horrific over-reaction
cum Land Grab & await his upcoming Trials.
apologies.
I even Liked
your comment!
I took it as commenting on the likes of the NY Times, not the prior comment. Shows how slippery a fish this language be.
It's a toss up whether Zionism or McCarthyism will prove most poisonous to Western "civilization."
There’s a prohibitive odds-on favourite. Bernays was seminal.
As the West's MSM act as cheerleaders and propagandists for their various governments and institutions, your words, your voice tell the truth of what has happened, and is happening, to democracy, justice, decency, fairness, honor, and compassion here in America and around the world.
Dear Chris, your truth-telling is a balm which eases for a while my aching, grieving heart. From the bottom of that heart, thank you for your courageous work. Be safe. Be well.
❤❤
Chills as a read this article, Chris Hedges. The courage to speak up and speak out re the infamous NYTs and your personal experiences and memories of Joe Lelyveld. Thank you for Being:)
bingo.
The New York Times has unfortunately committed itself to serving as a propaganda outlet on behalf of Wall Street and the Pentagon. I’ve written elsewhere about how NYT editors swung the 2004 election for Bush by sitting on a story about illegal and unconstitutional mass surveillance programs that he authorized until after the election. More recently, I’ve documented the Times’ coverage of civil rights concerns about police body cameras that editors suppressed for nearly a decade. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/the-new-york-times-shows-upa-decade
This was heart warming to know there are still ethical and caring journalists
bingo Meg.
.
post-AI perhaps they'll become
a Tribe tho MUX's satellites're
sure to help make commun-
ication Challenging - who
Owns the innerweb?
I think I agree with Paul Tillich: while I read your post, I could plug in one of the industries in which I spent 35 years (commercial/industrial lighting), from its dispicable practices and willingness to sacrifice everything for the almighty dollar to the pathetic know-nothings who headed the corporations and acted like they were so much better (instead of more ass-kissing) than those who worked under them. Leadership? Hardly. I also worked as an adjunct instructor of composition and research, whrere I witnessed (and it's still falling) the lack of quality or ethics in reporting . . . even at the New York Times. As of about 1998, I told my students they could no longer use this formerly touted source as reliable evidence to support their claims. Your Requiem assures me that as I went against the grain of academia (another institution that has sold out), I wasn't wrong or misinformed. Thank you, Mr. Hedges.
I’m grateful for your decision not to be a company man, to be a voice I have come to trust.
lay this bird to rest
RIP NYTs
I wish them not a minute’s rest and that their grave is roiled by wild animals and journalistic honey badgers that will uncover the depth and betrayal of what I anticipate will be unprecedented corruption for an American national paper. ALL (well some anyway) OF THE NEWS ( well not news really. but agenda-pushing vs news - same thing , right? ) FIT ( the F word is fabrication) TO PRINT .
So, Elon Musk started what has been the "wokeist purge" and corporations began to take his lead. Media is just at the tail-end of this trend... even later than NGO purges.
These are toxic grievance-oriented employees that have been tolerated because there was a need for employees and this is what the education system had/has been providing.
But there have been some pretty massive layoffs.
We are moving to a point where all of these people are going to be unemployable. It is already happening. And the education system is going to have to take responsibility for the damage it has caused.
See OECD PISA for a damning assessment of American education up to and including adolescence. Teachers have been warning about this for 30 years.
Another fine piece illustrating Hedges' nuanced moral intelligence. His respect for Lelyveld as an editor, and thinker, while still recognizing his human short-comings, is a case in point. This is why I trust the judgement of Hedges. He knows the world does not come to us in neat little parcels marked good and bad.
What is worthy of respect in this life does not arrive neatly packaged and labeled. Rather, it is an essence we have worked to discover by sifting through a painful mountain of moral debris, positive and negative. Serious moral minds work hard as any miner in a deep shaft. Such work requires great expenditure of energy and thought. That is why so few are truly good at it.
And Hedges is truly good at it.
A reframe which will help diminish the regular disappointment:
The theologian Paul Tillich writes that all institutions are inherently demonic, that the moral life usually requires, at some point, that we defy institutions, even at the cost of our careers.
Thank you.