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Joel Lumer's avatar

Re the comment from a reader that "if you still worked for the New York Times, they never would have printed such a thing without fact-checking it." Some of your readers may take it for granted that most know that is NOT true, but maybe it is best for you as a former writer at that paper to be explicit in pointing out how many times that has proven to be not true.

Please start, possibly, with the infamous front page story about Officer Brian Sicknick and what is now known after the NY Times' much delayed retraction: 1) Sicknick was not hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. He was not hit anywhere on his body with a fire extinguisher and he was not hit in the head with any blunt object. 2) Sicknick was not bleeding from the head and he was not taken from the scene in an ambulance. 3) Sicknick did not suffer a blunt trauma injury and he did not die from a blunt trauma injury to the brain. 4) The US Capitol Police were not the source for the NYT's story. In sum, the story was fabricated by the NYT for its front page and not corrected until many weeks later, or after the second Trump impeachment trial and until after the fabricated "attack" had been cited in the articles of impeachment.

You will be doing us all a great public service if you could help explain - with specific reference to the many particular instances - how the New York Times has transitioned from being a reporter of news to an advocacy journal.

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ThePossum's avatar

Even calling it a "journal" gives it too much gravitas. It's a rag, pure and simple, run by a family that believes in primogeniture. I'm so glad Bari got out, to save us all from their garbage.

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Pat's avatar

Even worse, today the ME said he died of natural causes, there were no injuries on or inside his body. He had two strokes. The ME would, naturally, have had this information at the time they did the autopsy, within days of his death. In other words, the government could have put a stop to the incorrect reporting but they decided that it was too good a narrative to let the truth get in the way. I’m so disillusioned with my government bureaucracies.

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Joel Lumer's avatar

Hi Pat,

I'm reading the mainstream media commentary with all of their spin, but unable to find the ME autopsy or press release. Do you have a link to the actual ME primary source? If so, could you please send it in a reply to this request.

Still scary that the NYT could publish what they did, and the House managers could incorporate that into articles of impeachment, and get away with it without any mainstream condemnation.

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Pat's avatar

Right about the House. The republicans, if they had any backbone at all, should demand the congressional records be set straight and the lie about Sicknick be purged from the records. That lie will live for all of history, which is just wrong on every level.

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Joel Lumer's avatar

And they should have demanded an evidentiary trial in the Senate where the House managers would be required to present witnesses, under oath, to support their allegations and those witnesses should have been subject to cross-examination.

As this case underlines, the rule against hearsay serves a legitimate purpose. We should be ever vigilant not to rush to judgment, not to accept allegation as fact, to require testimony based on first hand knowledge of events and to require authentication of documents before they are allowed into evidence.

Someone on the Republican side of the Senate was asleep at the wheel and it doesn't really matter if that was done intentionally, out of ignorance, or out of lassitude: the result was all the same.

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Pat's avatar

I read it on The Hill, they have a link to WaPo, who spoke with the ME. I don’t have a sub to WaPo so I was unable to read that article. Here is the link to the Hill article. It has been updated since I wrote my first comment, here. The link to the WaPo story is within the article. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/549067-sicknick-had-two-strokes-died-of-natural-causes-after-capitol-riot

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Emily's avatar

I did not know any of that. That is incredibly disturbing.

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memento mori's avatar

Yes! This - a thousand times this. The NYT and other legacy media no longer engage in fact checking. To frame the comment as if NYT fact checks is something like manufacturing consent.

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AV's avatar

I would be interested to understand the same thing. How it happened that a reputable newspaper turned into a total trash with zero credibility. Who allowed that? And why? Perhaps these questions are naive but I would really like to understand that.

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Commentorinchief's avatar

When you finally realize the NYT was never respectable you will have answered your question.

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Mark Silbert's avatar

Mr Sulzberger decided that he can make more money with this model. He likes money.

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publius_x's avatar

He's not wrong. When you needed everyone to buy the printed paper to see the classified ads and stock quotes, you needed to appeal to the largest audience. Now that you need to get people to subscribe to an algorithmized digital addiction device... you need to get something inside the syringe that appeals to those types of people.

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Inna's avatar

Good point. that is why I stopped reading NYT which was my favorite paper several years ago. Now it is not different than Fox news, unfortunately.

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Madjack's avatar

So very sad. From the paper of record to the paper of lies

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memento mori's avatar

Go back to the 1920's-30's and read about how the NYT promoted Stalin and Communism as just fine, maybe even wonderful.

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Inna's avatar

this is sad

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publius_x's avatar

The New York Times printed and proselytized the 1619 project. If ever anything needed a fact-check...

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