How the paper that published the Pentagon Papers died. From Johannes Wahlstrom at unz.com:
Working with the government to suppress stories, covering up election fraud in the ruling party and ruthlessly campaigning against the main US opposition leader, The New York Times has sentenced itself to wither away into irrelevance. Remembered only in history books as a relic of the Cold War, much like its sister newspaper Pravda of the Soviet Union. The New York Times R.I.P.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Bill Keller at The New York Times building on Manhattan. Keller was the long time editor in chief of the newspaper and Sulzberger its proprietor. We met at what must have been the 50th floor of the company headquarters, on 8th Avenue. I write company headquarters, instead of newspaper, because this part of the building was accessible only through a separate elevator-system and was strictly off-limits for the regular New York Times reporters. We spoke for about an hour and a half for the film Mediastan that I was shooting at the time, and now in hindsight, I’m both grateful and surprised by how honestly the administrative and real heads of the enterprise described the nature of their work. Grateful, because the degree of openness they exhibited is a rarity in the backrooms of journalism. Surprised, because what they were doing wasn’t journalism, at least not in the sense that I had been taught in journalism school in Sweden. No, the work that Keller and Sulzberger were describing was something entirely different, and as such it was a shame that this part of the building was off-limits to the journalists of their own newspaper. Because, as I would soon realize, the upper levels of the New York Times building was a place where a variety of important political decisions were negotiated and taken. A space, ironically, very far from scrutiny of the pubic eye.
The walls of the meeting-room were I sat down with Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. were adorned by signed portraits of important people that had visited this off-limits place. The editor at the company proudly explained that this was the “Hall of Fame”, and that The New York Times was like an embassy for important people from across the world. There was also the obligatory centrepiece – I had filmed the same thing so many times in the Middle East and in the Central Asian republics, but I must admit that I was surprised to see it here – at the head of the table was a framed and signed photograph of the president. The handwritten message on it said: “To Arthur- thank you for a memorable editorial board meeting. Barack Obama”.
This off-limits part of the building was not only where the president would sit in on editorial board meetings, it was also the place where Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was received when he successfully negotiated to be removed from “The Axis of Evil” list after 9/11. At that point in time The New York Times was still considered perhaps the most important publication in the world, and what it wrote was thought to have a direct impact on the life and death of nations. Because of this, many powerful people would put a lot of effort and money into gaining preferable coverage from The New York Times. These floors, Bill Keller told me, was where the proprietor and the editors of the newspaper would meet with and negotiate deals with powerful visitors. In retrospect, whatever “deal” that Gaddafi struck with The New York Times, the exonerating article penned by Judith Miller didn’t save his life, nor did it save his nation from the might of the US air force.
To continue reading: An Obituary of The New York Times
