The whining from the ivory tower

The New York Times publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote an essay, “How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America.” He warns us that he sees signs of that coming and adds in the subtitle: “Some foreign leaders have ruthlessly curtailed journalism. U.S. politicians could draw from their playbook.” The Washington Post published his piece, so we can view it as a statement of the concerns of the broader journalistic community.

I agree with the author that the restrictions on freedom of expression in the United States are rising. Mr. Sulzberger blames politicians with totalitarian inclinations; I blame the major media outlets, with The New York Times and The Washington Post at the top of the list of the guilty ones.

Readers seek facts and arguments, not lectures

In his more than 4,400-word essay, A.G. Sulzberger did not mention readers even once. If he did, he would need to acknowledge that Americans perceive The New York Times as politically tinted, ergo, biased in reporting about politics. People see it as a one-sided political propaganda platform. Except for the circle of ideologically blindfolded admirers, even regular readers are skeptical of what they read there. The editorial writing boils down to preaching by self-anointed individuals. Readers are not involved; polemics are not heard of.

Blaming others, A.G. Sulzberger is so high in the ivory tower that he cannot see a man on the street. He does not seem to know that the street exists. He might not have intended it, but he writes that the objective of The New York Times is to publish what he believes is the truth, just for its sake. His goal is not to assist a reader like me and millions of other Americans who strive for help in making sense of conflicting messages. He has The New York Times mission statement on the wall in his office, and in another paper, he elaborates on it, but in this article, he writes like a person who has never heard of it.

We all do our best in our jobs and expect journalists to do the same — inform us earnestly. One does not need to be well informed to find inconsistencies in the editorial reporting. Earning the trust takes years of hard work. It takes one politically biased article to lose it. Examples are coming below.

In the defense of Mr. Sulzberger, none of the American media companies is structured to make money by searching for the truth. Each of them seeks the truth to the extent that it supports their political preference and weakens the opponents’ arguments. Readers can never witness the authentic polemic between the two. As a result, people trust no one. None of the mainstream media outlets will talk about it because,  as I wrote, “The concept of truth in the American media is false.” The New York Times is the flagship of this exclusive club.

To the consolation of Mr. Sulzberger, his publication enjoys more public trust than many media outfits leaning in the opposite political direction. I invest my time in critique, seeing a slight chance that The New York Times may find something useful in my ideas.

Readers decide what the truth is

It is a heresy in The New York Times. Mr. Sulzberger and his editors might disagree, but this is a logical conclusion from his essay and the incident I described as “The political debate that has not been.” I am referring to the famous case of the column by Senator Tom Cotton.

The details are in the linked article; let me add why that incident affected my reading of Mr. Sulzberger’s essay.

Senator Cotton is one of those politicians with tyrannical aspirations and presidential ambitions. In 2028, he will be 51. He might be one of those politicians who will try to use his political power to constrain the freedom of the press.

In 2020, Senator Cotton advocated for using the military to stop riots after the murder of George Floyd. He wrote a column about it, and James Bennet, the Times editorial page editor, approved it for publication. As the editors explained, Mr. Bennet was fired because “the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” Nonetheless, they added: “The basic arguments advanced by Senator Cotton — however objectionable people may find them — represent a newsworthy part of the current debate.” Still, there was no debate in the columns of The New York Times.

Despite his claims, as I detail in my linked article, it could be easy to debunk the totalitarian approach proposed by Senator Cotton and portray him as an aspiring tyrant, diminishing his chances of ever being a serious presidential candidate.

The New York Times did not see an opportunity to engage in the debate, showing the readers the illegality and moral abhorrence of the political concepts presented by Senator Cotton. If they could have used arguments that appealed to Senator Cotton’s supporters, they could have put one of those politicians Mr. Sulzberger worries about out of circulation.

They did not do it because it would have required stepping down to the street from the loftiness of their ivory tower. It would have required some work, and it would have meant not telling their readers ex-cathedra the truth, but they would have needed to present the facts and arguments of both sides and let the readers decide.

It would not mean both-sidesism. One cannot prove an opponent wrong until giving that party a fair chance to present their case. But one can do it only if confident that they possess the knowledge and skills to prevail.

 The New York Times helped Donald Trump, too

Not intentionally, but by being a part of the polarized elite. Americans are fed up with getting spins of half-truths from left and right. Trump gave them a simplified populist alternative. The New York Times had its part in it, as I explained in “Why it seems impossible to trump Trump?”

America today appears as a tangle of unresolvable problems. The role of the government seems to be the common denominator. It is not a good point to start a conversation. The starting question is: How could we economically advance the Americans who are struggling from paycheck to paycheck?

Trump’s solution touches the right subjects: immigration, health care, and climate change.

The New York Times has no valid response. On immigration, it dances around the truth, as I wrote in my polemic with the column by Thomas Friedman. It struck me the most that the writer from the top of the ivory tower does not know what the reporters working on the ground floor found out in the field.

I had the same feeling when writing about Medicare Advantage. At my age, it is an option that is available to me. When I looked at this closely, I saw it as a scam. When searching for more data, I was impressed with the outstanding research done by the Times reporters. I quote it in my linked article. But again, the findings of reporters who walk on the streets are not reflected in the editorial writings. If The New York Times opinion editors do not read my texts, it is my problem; when they do not read what the ground-level journalists report, it is Mr. Sulzberger’s problem.

When looking closer at “Science and money in the climate change debate,” I realized that “It is not about climate, and it is not change,” but it is “The swindle of the century.” Climate has constantly been changing, so trying to stop it is like going “With a hoe against the Sun.” We talk so much about it because “The climate is changing for … capitalism.”

Behind this bold statement is my solid research. I know that The New York Times dismisses all critiques of the climate change policy proposed by their favored political orientation. By that, they ignore my research and the doubts of about half of Americans who support Trump. It is not a way to build credibility.

Goodbye, America; welcome, Amerina

It was the title of a column about Americans seeking their identity as a nation in the changing world. Over the past decades, the wealthiest few among us have benefited more than the rest. Very few ask how it happened, but almost everyone seems to know how to fix it.

Who should lead a public conversation about the future of the nation? There are no takers. All parties are preoccupied with praising their own tails.

The winner will be the one who overcomes that approach and focuses on understanding the sources of our problems and seeking solutions by removing the causes.

In his essay, Mr. Sulzberger does not aspire to turn The New York Times into an intellectual hub guiding his compatriots in understanding our problems and finding solutions. He laments that his political opponents might limit his freedom to express his version of the truth. He does not acknowledge that his opponents have the same concerns; they worry about their freedom of speech in case the politicians  Mr. Sulzberger might agree with prevail in politics.

In Mr. Sulzberger’s grievances, I noticed he is asking for help. I suspect my response is not what he had in mind, but it is the best I could do.

Do I ask for too much?

My formative journalistic experience was for the publication Życie i Nowoczesność, which did everything I suggested above. It was about half a century ago in my native Poland. Życie i Nowoczesność (Life and Modernity) was a tiny weekly insert in Życie Warszawy (Life of Warsaw), one of Warsaw’s primary newspapers.

The journalists there did something banally simple; they earned readers’ trust by obsessively chasing the truth. They were recognized as the yeast of thinking about public matters. It did not work well for those journalists, as apparatchiks shut down the publication after three years. But politicians could not put the genie back into the bottle. The Soviet Union was due to collapse for its own reasons, but it tripped over political changes in Poland. It was one of the most significant political shifts of our times achieved peacefully.

Compared to that, all problems in the United States seem easy to resolve. As I wrote,  “The future has the great past, but the present stands in the way.” By “present,” I see the editorial format of the major media outlets in the United States. It includes The New York Times.