New York Times

The New York Times is an internationally influential daily newspaper published in New York and distributed worldwide. The paper's current slogan is "All The News That's Fit To Print."

History

Nicknamed "The Gray Lady" or The Times, this newspaper was founded as The New-York Daily Times in 1851 by Henry J. Raymond and George Jones as a sober alternative to the more partisan newspapers that dominated the New York journalism of the time.

In its very first edition on September 18, 1851, the paper stated, "We publish today the first issue of the New-York Daily Times, and we intend to issue it every morning (Sundays excepted) for an indefinite number of years to come."

Adolph Ochs acquired the Times in 1896, and under his guidance the newspaper achieved an international scope, circulation, and reputation. It is currently owned by the New York Times Company, in which descendants of Ochs, principally the Sulzberger family, maintain a dominant role.

The Times Today

The Times enjoys the reputation of being a generally reliable source of news. The editorial position of the Times is often regarded as liberal in its interpretation of social issues and events. However, it does have a mix of editorial columnists, ranging in approximate political position from Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and Bob Herbert on the left to William Safire and David Brooks, formerly of the Weekly Standard magazine, on the right.

Many conservatives believe that the Times news coverage, as well as its editorial board, has a liberal slant. Many books have been written about the reliability of the New York Times and its impact on the political community. Comparisons have been made between the Times and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, both of which are also published in New York have a much more conservative slant, at least on their editorial pages.

In 2003, the Times admitted to journalism fraud committed over a span of several years by one of its reporters, Jayson Blair, and the general professionalism of the paper was questioned, though Blair was immediately fired following the incident. Questions of affirmative action in journalism were also raised, since Blair was African American. Several top officials, including the chief of its editorial board, also resigned their posts following the incident.

In 2004, the Times made another significant admission of journalistic failings, publishing an editorial letter admitting that its flawed reporting during the buildup to war with Iraq helped promote the misleading belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. [1]

A second self-criticism by Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent went further. "The failure was not individual, but institutional," Okrent wrote. "War requires an extra standard of care, not a lesser one. But in the Times's WMD coverage, readers encountered some rather breathless stories built on unsubstantiated 'revelations' that, in many instances, were the anonymity-cloaked assertions of people with vested interests. Times reporters broke many stories before and after the war - but when the stories themselves later broke apart, in many instances Times readers never found out. ... Other stories pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulders of editors. ... The aggressive journalism that I long for, and that the paper owes both its readers and its own self-respect, would reveal not just the tactics of those who promoted the WMD stories, but how the Times itself was used to further their cunning campaign." [2]

Executive editors

• Turner Catledge (1964-1968)
• James Reston (1968-1969)
• position vacant (1969-1976)
• Abe Rosenthal (1977-1986)
• Max Frankel (1986-1994)
• Joseph Lelyveld (1994-2001)
• Howell Raines (2001-2003)
• Bill Keller (2003- )

Other SourceWatch resources

• Judith Miller

Contact details

• Web: http://www.nytimes.com/

External links

• The Editors, "The Times and Iraq," New York Times, May 26, 2004.
• Daniel Okrent, "Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?" New York Times, May 30, 2004.
• Allan M. Siegal (Chairman), "Preserving Our Readers Trust", New York Times, May 2, 2005. (Pdf file).
• Katharine Q. Seelye, "Times Panel Proposes Steps to Build Credibility", New York Times, May 9, 2005
• Erica Iacono, "Panel's suggestions to up 'Times' credibility spark some concerns", PR Week, May 16, 2005. (Sub req'd.)
• Robert Scheer, "The New York Times' Misguided Crusade", AlterNet, October 18, 2005.
• Byron Calame, "When the Newspaper Is the News", "The Public Editor ", New York Times, December 4, 2005.
• Joe STrupp, "Want to e-Mail a 'New York Times' Columnist? Better Subscribe to TimesSelect", Editor & Publisher, January 17, 2006.
• Patrick O’Connor and Jonathan Allen, "GOP bill targets NY Times", The Hill, June 28, 2006.

Note: Portions of this article are taken from a corresponding article in the Wikipedia.