The New York Times' descent into 'advocacy over journalism' has been the most disappointing media story of the decade.
It's bad enough that the paper’s management is striving to regain control over its ideologically-charged employees. Now, they’re embroiled in an internal investigation aimed at ferreting out employees who leaked internal information in their crusade for social justice.
This is a guest post by John Moody, who was the Executive Vice President of News at Fox News and built that division from the ground up. — Ken
The internal treason at the New York Times, portrayed in an excellent Wall Street Journal investigation, is only the latest proof that the inmates can’t be allowed to take over, or run, the asylum. The Times leadership must accept the blame for letting selfish, inexperienced, spoiled, woke, and in many cases, incompetent employees tell them what to do or how to run a once-great paper.
Unforgivably, some Times staffers (seems vulgar to bestow that status) complained about a well-reported story that said Hamas used rape and torture against women when it invaded Israel last October 7. Fast as a rubber ball bouncing off a wall, the Woke Brigade complained that Palestinian suffering — clearly the equivalent of rape, right MeToo? — hadn’t gotten equal space.
It’s not just the Times leadership that has caved to an emboldened and ignorant staff. CBS fired Catherine Herridge, an all-star investigative reporter (and someone I had the privilege of working with at Fox) for shining a light on Hunter Biden. It confiscated her personal files, then abandoned her when a judge wanted to know her sources.
NBC allowed its on-air “talent” (quote marks intended) to force it to get rid of Ronna McDaniel because they couldn’t abide any conservative opinion.
CNN endured years of well-deserved embarrassment because it wanted to keep its woke, if sleepwalking, audience happy. Didn’t work.
Here’s the simple truth. News is a tough business. Nobody likes the news all the time, some people hate it all the time, and there will always be criticism of what is reported. But that’s different than cringing every time some pajama-clad moron writes a nasty post. Even if the moron is an employee.
Journalism requires leaders who can take a punch and keep on leading, who will protect their troops, and make sure that what’s on the air, on the screen, on the front page, or on your phone is factual, not fanciful.
Say goodnight, Gray Lady.
–John Moody
PS: John is the author of The Hui Trilogy, available on Amazon. They’re good reads!
Love to see Leftist media at war with itself long overdue since 2016+ Media was fine earlier but now who cares
Purge NYT & turn Hq into a homeless center then
Who needs the NYT One sided bias political reporting
Ken this is a great read, however I'm 72 years old and I do remember when journalism was great because it gave 2 sides to a story and when the story was done you knew the total who, what, when, where and how, you don't get remotely close to that now. I don't even watch hardly any news anymore because of woke journalism. Keep up the great work on this venue and I will continue to be informed.