June 15, 2020

"'Now there’s an IQ test,' said another prominent Hamptons media figure. 'I’d have to be insane to let you quote me.'"

From "Newsrooms Are in Revolt. The Bosses Are in Their Country Houses/Those who can afford it left the city, shining a spotlight on class divisions in the media" (NYT).
Were media leaders in the right place to cover the horror of the early days of the outbreak, when they weren’t being kept awake by sirens? And did they overplay the violent fringes of protests, when they’ve been overwhelmingly peaceful and the city’s broader mood has been a kind of revolutionary good cheer? Walking with a television executive past boutiques on Newtown Lane in East Hampton last week, I tried to convince him that his teenage children would be fine walking around their native Upper East Side unaccompanied. During the protests, the city could look terrifying on television, and reporters on the scene faced violence, mostly from police; but the mood away from the police billy clubs was not exactly the Reign of Terror. (Though stay tuned: When The New York Times forced out the opinion editor James Bennet over a controversial column a week ago, two employees reacted in Slack with a slackmoji of the word “guillotine,” prompting internal complaints, a Times reporter said. “We encourage constructive, honest dialogue among our colleagues but there are lines that can be crossed, and this was one of them,” Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in response.)

72 comments:

Paco Wové said...

"the horror of the early days of the outbreak"

The horror! The horror!

Jesus. Grow a pair, dude.

DarkHelmet said...

It's true that the newsrooms are revolting.

Once upon a time I would have had some mild interest in what happens to NYT leadership and staff. Now I just want them all to go away a quickly as possible. They seem to be accommodating that wish.

Paco Wové said...

According to relatives in NYC, "overwhelmingly peaceful" is not an accurate descriptor.

Saint Croix said...

I am starting to suspect both the lockdown and the racial unrest happened because this is an election year in the U.S.

This is not to say that COVID-19 was manufactured by the media. Obviously it wasn't. It's a worldwide phenomenon. And people have died.

But the media has escalated the danger, which they often do. Fear sells newspapers. "If it bleeds, it leads."

And this also explains why the media does not care about COVID-19 when there is racial unrest and protests in the streets.

Anything that unseats Donald Trump is newsworthy. So truth and facts get kicked to the wayside. That's why an editorial in the NYT by a United States Senator "puts lives at risk," but COVID-19 is not dangerous at all for black protesters.

Everything you do or say is partisan, NYT, especially in an election year. And you are getting wackier and more dishonest by the day.

Kevin said...

We encourage constructive, honest dialogue among our colleagues but there are lines that can be crossed, and this was one of them

Some organizations have lines that cannot be crossed.

Apparently those are decided afterwards by the lower-level staff at the NYT.

Balfegor said...

I guess New York is a large city so 450 businesses getting vandalized is reasonably small beer. A thousand people arrested for looting and other violence (so far) seems high to me, but perhaps still quite modest compared to the size of the protests.

But after seeing clips of news reporters describing protests as "mostly peaceful" while Minneapolis burns in the background, I can't say I find the claim particularly credible.

cacimbo said...

Miles of NYC storefronts are boarded up.I think most of us find that gives a creepy scary wartime vibe NOT feelings of revolutionary good cheer.

Gusty Winds said...

Looks like the new generation of journalists are out-crazy-flanking their journalism professors. That's not easy to do.

Lawrence Person said...

"Overwhelmingly peaceful" has joined the list of thought-terminating cliches used by the left to indicate they're lying.

Here's some video of the aftermath of those "overwhelmingly peaceful" riots in Minneapolis.

rehajm said...

During the protests, the city could look terrifying on television, and reporters on the scene faced violence, mostly from police; but the mood away from the police billy clubs was not exactly the Reign of Terror.

Almost makes it sound like the protests are fake, like some sort stage production intended to create a mood.

But we all know that isn't true...

JackWayne said...

I think it’s amazing that there are 2 employees in the NYT staff that are sane.

TreeJoe said...

A simple question: Did private retail stores and commercial operations hire private security to protect their property during recent riots in NYC? If so, how many? How many stores were vandalized and/or looted? How much total property was destroyed and stolen?

Any metrics here?

When media doesn't seek to quantify something, they are telling me they are seeking to minimize attention to the topic. When they immediately run the numbers on it and highlight key stats, they are telling me they are seeking to maximize attention on it. It's a pretty simple equation - if they do neither, it's cause they aren't talking about the subject period.

DanTheMan said...

>>During the protests, the city could look terrifying on television, and reporters on the scene faced violence, mostly from police.

Violence from the police? Were they using the wrong pronoun, or wearing inappropriate Halloween costumes? Perhaps they published a conservative op-ed?

Meanwhile, there was absolutely no violence from those looting, smashing storefronts, and burning down buildings.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Anyone recall how any number of bad jokes aimed at 'solving all the world's problems' would end with the punchline 'kill all the lawyers'?

It's now 'kill all journalists'. But it's not really funny is it? You know why? Because the punchline is actually a real solution to the issue.

They could all die tomorrow and I really wouldn't fret except to realize the horror with which the vaccum created would be filled almost immediately, possibly by individuals with even less scruples. Hard to imagine I know...

I truly hate these people and what they've done.

DanTheMan said...

>>Everything you do or say is partisan, NYT, especially in an election year. And you are getting wackier and more dishonest by the day.

You should consider the possibility that they have been like this for the last decade or two, and now they no longer try to hide it.

Abdul Abulbul Amir said...

“Overwhelming peaceful” = Widespread looting, arson, assault, and some murders. David Dorn is the medias forgotten man.

MD Greene said...

Leave it to the NYT to get outside its traditional haunts of the UWS and the nicer parts of Brooklyn to give us the Real Story of Covid-19 as seen from the Hamptons.

I'm starting to like the WSJ better for basic news -- informed pieces on the multiple failures of the NYC medical system, the spread of the disease among families in cramped quarters, including a large African American clan in Gadsden, AL and Native Americans in the Southwest interior.

Buncha navel gazers, and boring ones at that.

Birkel said...

Whistling past the graveyard, pretending revolutions are filled with good cheer.

Idiot will be put against the wall in the first tranche.

Fernandinande said...

What another prominent Hamptons media figure really meant:

"I'd have to be honest to let you quote me."

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

This is great because the NYT staff have always acted as if they were above such petty squabbles, but were more than happy to report other news organizations problems. Now the NYT is ground zero.

Sebastian said...

"there are lines that can be crossed, and this was one of them"

Because invoking the guillotine makes progs' murderous inclinations too obvious?

tim maguire said...

Every time I hear about the "largely peaceful" protests, I think of a woman in my twitter feed who quipped, "I got pregnant in a largely sex-free day."

TrespassersW said...

Tea party protests were entirely peaceful. The protests to end the small-business-killing lockdowns were entirely peaceful. The annual March for Life to protest abortion is entirely peaceful. (And all those protesters cleaned up after themselves to boot). And yet we see how they are treated by the so-called "journalists" at the NYT.

mikee said...

Emotional or economic or even physical decapitation is ok, but symbolic representations of what actually happened are verboten by the Stasi, because it is telling the truth.

That boot on your neck isn't from a police officer, New York.

robother said...

The reporter concedes that there might be a Reign of Terror in the newsrooms. I presume he's following up today with a "Not that there's anything wrong with that" clarification.

Steven said...

These people are either lying or blind.

I live in New York. The overwhelming sense is a kind of foreboding that the city is going to return to the bad old days of 30 years ago. The pandemic and the lockdown response has already caused massive unemployment, restaurants and stores that have been in business for decades are bankrupt. Kids are out of school and there's been an increase in just general mischief. Graffiti everywhere, groups smoking pot. Which, I don't care if people smoke up, but doing it so blatantly and frequently is a signal that things are going the wrong way. Then came the protests. Some were peaceful, but rioting was rampant not "limited to a few locations". Throughout the city there was looting. I live far from most of the 'trendy' areas of the city and there were looters up here.

The mood is not one of "revolutionary good cheer" it is one of anxiety and despair.

MayBee said...

"revolutionary good cheer". I'm sure there are plenty of people with revolutionary good cheer.
There are also people, I am certain, who feel overwhelmed or feel there business has been destroyed or know they don't have a job right now, but they are not interesting to reporters.

Revolutionary good cheer. This is the news.

Tommy Duncan said...

"...reporters on the scene faced violence, mostly from police..."

They make stuff up and then complain when we label it fake news.

buwaya said...

On the ground reporting from my spies in various spots in California affected by looting does not indicate "revolutionary good cheer". The mood seems more like depression.

Stephanie Toral said...

White liberals are eating their own and cancelling our culture in random, twisted ways.

To quote the great Victor Davis Hanson:

“...we have reached the surreal point at which the nation’s privileged whites on campuses such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, in the top echelon of politics, and the corporate and entertainment worlds, all deplore in the abstract something they call “white privilege” in others who have never really experienced it.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/14/class-not-race-divides-america/

Mr Wibble said...

Anything that unseats Donald Trump is newsworthy. So truth and facts get kicked to the wayside. That's why an editorial in the NYT by a United States Senator "puts lives at risk," but COVID-19 is not dangerous at all for black protesters.


It's a combination of a) a desire to unseat Trump and a willingness to do anything to advance that goal even to the detriment of long-term goals, and b) an internal power-struggle on the left between the older progressives and the young radicals.

MikeR said...

Huh. But he was fired, and the guys with guillotines were not. Some lines are more important than others.

Nonapod said...

the city’s broader mood has been a kind of revolutionary good cheer

I've never heard of a cheerful revolution. Revolutions are generally born out of anger against a status quo.

I admit that I haven't physically been to a real city in a very long time so I suppose it's possible that these protests are "mostly peaceful" and we're all being mislead to believe otherwise. But I tend to doubt it. In the media to me it seems like there's far more of an effort to minimize and downplay the bad behavior than to highlight it. The whole CHAZ fiasco was harldy even mentioned in the media until it became impossible to ignore.

Jamie said...

Last night, my daughter suggested we watch JoJo Rabbit. She had seen it with a former boyfriend and - because she was in love at the time, I assume, and distracted - remembered it as a comedy, which of course it is... of a certain sort, and not the sort she remembered its being. But it takes place in (possibly) Nuremberg in the last days of WWII and has a lot of really, really dark stuff happening, as you might expect.

Good movie. But I see relevance here, in that throughout most of the movie, the town is vibrant, colorful, full of life and general good feeling. Except for when the smiling Gestapo show up at the door, or when the disloyal are hanged from the makeshift gibbet.

So how much does it matter that the protests are "mostly" or even "overwhelmingly" peaceful, when in some areas of almost every city they're clearly the opposite?

Josephbleau said...

A business that gives policy making power to junior employees is not a healthy one. Why is management afraid of these kids?

OldManRick said...

The fear is real.

Store fronts in the Los Angeles South Bay area (the southwest corner of Los Angeles county) were getting boarded up. My nearby grocery store is boarded up but open, about one third the stores in Rivera Village are boarded up - especially the high end stores. Another third are still on lock down.

There were no protests in the area except for half a dozen whites holding signs and yelling at passing motorists to show their wokeness.

The anti-lock down protests at the same corners were five times larger and no stores were boarded up. The Rodney King riots did not cause stores in the area to board up but they happened so fast that no one had time to board up. Rodney King riots caused a immediate shut down in the area.

Local businesses don't believe the Los Angeles city and county officials will provide protection after what happened in Beverly Hills.

Freeman Hunt said...

I'm sick of seeing the phrase "mostly peaceful." If those anti-lockdown protesters had set one building on fire in one city, how might that have been reported?

narciso said...

so the tulsa health director, seems to have hibernated through the last three weeks, pronounces trump rallies, doubleunplusgood,

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Fascinating to watch a huge lie pushed in real time. Yeah, the demonstrations were “overwhelmingly peaceful” in the red towns where the would-be rioters would have gotten their asses kicked if they had tried to riot. They were anything but peaceful in the blue cities.

Bay Area Guy said...

At some point, when the looters ransack the NYT building, they may take a second look at the issues of the day.....

hawkeyedjb said...

"A business that gives policy making power to junior employees is not a healthy one."

Oh, just wait until the Biden Regency takes office.

Ray - SoCal said...

The 300 NYPD injured probably don’t agree:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/07/kerik-600-nypd-officers-resigning/

Or the 700+ police offers injured nationwide:
https://nypost.com/2020/06/08/more-than-700-officers-injured-in-george-floyd-protests-across-us/

tim maguire said...

"'Now there’s an IQ test,' said another prominent Hamptons media figure. 'I’d have to be insane to let you quote me.'"

I have a new appreciation for this line, having just read:

MayBee said...
If the NYT came around asking for quotes about a neighbor involved in this kind of incident, would you give them their sound bite? I would not. I'm trying to think what would make me gossip about my neighbor to the NYT.

6/15/20, 7:16 AM

M Jordan said...

Everything in the last four years has been about Trump. Trump is the greatest center of gravity this world has ever known. The coronavirus was merely the flu weaponized to fight this man. Boris Johnson flipped on the idea of a lockdown but it was Trump who made it worldwide. The TV news can be summed up in one word: Trump. Black Lives Matter could be renamed “Against Trump” and no one would notice. The Democratic Party the same. Only Trump could have inspired the Speaker of the House to rip up the SOTU speech on global TV. Hitler couldn’t hold a candle to the power of Trump.

Trump is remarkable. We will not see such a hero/villain again in our lifetimes.

narciso said...

https://dailycaller.com/2020/06/13/counterterrorism-expert-antifa-overthrow-the-government/

Michael K said...

Local businesses don't believe the Los Angeles city and county officials will provide protection after what happened in Beverly Hills.

My son, who is a CalFire fireman, and his family (his wife runs a successful home based business) are in Arkansas and going to Texas to get away and scout where they will move when he retires in two years.

Douglas B. Levene said...

What, the mob forcing Bennett out is OK but sarcastically complaining about the mob is not? Are those people totally deaf to how stupid they sound?

narciso said...

sobhab ahmari,


"Contact-tracing workers hired by the city have been instructed NOT to ask anyone who's tested positive for COVID-19 whether they recently attended a demonstration."

Howard said...

The left evolves and deplorables are beside themselves with flummox.

PM said...

Conversation känvərˈsāSH(ə)n/

a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.

"Let's have a conversation. Get on your knees and apologize to me."

rcocean said...

Newsrooms are only in revolt because the publishers and editors allow it. The SJw's didn't get Bennett fired, Sulzberger fired him. Just Like BLM and Antifa are getting approval from the Billionaires at Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. This is all being orchestrated - or approved of - from ABOVE.

Of course, the Center-Right doesn't want to hear that, because "Rich people Good". Except in this case they aren't.

rcocean said...

Newsrooms are only in revolt because the publishers and editors allow it. The SJw's didn't get Bennett fired, Sulzberger fired him. Just Like BLM and Antifa are getting approval from the Billionaires at Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. This is all being orchestrated - or approved of - from ABOVE.

Of course, the Center-Right doesn't want to hear that, because "Rich people Good". Except in this case they aren't.

Michael K said...

Howard said...
The left evolves and deplorables are beside themselves with flummox.


So does the Plasmodium falciparum and we care more about that than your party "evolving." After all, malaria can be cured. Leftism is lethal.

Yancey Ward said...

Jesus, these fuckers are just lying to themselves.

YouTube is full of videos of the aftermath of the rioting and looting in New York City itself. None of this video appeared on CNN, MSNBC, or even FoxNews- but it was taken by citizens of the city. Who are you going to believe, staffers at the NYTimes, or your lying eyes?

daskol said...

I can't stand to read the NYT, and consider it a sign of his good sense that my father finally cancelled his subscription a couple of years ago. However, I remain deeply interested in the goings-on at the NYT, as I think all people interested in current affairs must to an extent. It is the only newspaper thriving in our new media landscape, and if it was important before, it has become even more central to the global media scape, even as NYC itself may be going the other way. The internal struggles at the NYT, laid out by new NYT columnist Ben Smith while he was still leading Buzzfeed News is a good read. NYT report Bari Weiss offered insight into the internecine struggles there, which represent the end of Bennet's try for the throne. That probably also means a further lean into progressive politics. The NYT has bled subscribers and is utterly ignored by an increasing number of people, and even Althouse either posts from there less or has diversified the sourcing of her inspiration. But while the rest of the media flounders, the NYT consolidates its position and brand, and represents an ever increasing threat to our national discourse. Ben Smith is a huge get for them.

n.n said...

Diversity (i.e. color judgment) including racism, sexism, classicism breeds adversity.

n.n said...

The social contagion spread by media, social, and steering (e.g. search) platforms were first-order forcings of panic, anxiety, and excess deaths. Forced cross-contamination (e.g. Cuomo), unlimited immigration, migration, and travel was a secondary forcing of excess deaths, but a primary source of viral contagion. Fortunately, Planned Pathogen protocols, including chaos ("evolution"), seems to have reduced the viability of the virus and its Posterity.

Sam L. said...

I despise, detest, and distrust the NYT. The WaPoo, too.

narciso said...

no they are gaslighting us, tater stelter could be being cooked in a top, and he'd argue about the seasoning, the fda pulls the emergency authorization for hcq despite the bogus surgisphere report,

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

So journalists are revolting. This is news?

Drago said...

Howard: "The left evolves and deplorables are beside themselves with flummox."

This "left evolution" usually involves nothing more than transferring actions and policies of democrats onto republicans.

See: Blame for democrat controlled city corruption and failure.

effinayright said...

Aside from the victim and the few people putting a noose around his neck and actually hanging him, a lynch mob is mostly peaceful.

Right, NYT?

Rabel said...

"At Bloomberg, which is wedded to a culture of absolute neutrality, frustrated employees asked if they couldn’t, at least, tweet Bloomberg editorials supporting protesters."

Therm's a subtle humor there. Got to be.

Jim at said...

I'd be more concerned about the loss of the press if they weren't my sworn enemy.

Gk1 said...

Can confirm colleagues in L.A now afraid to go to work as they afraid violence will flare up when they least expect it. These same people had dutifully put black squares on their Linkein profiles and had been all into the protests up and until violence and uncertainty now surrounds them. They are super pissed at Garcetti for letting it "get out of control" You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

RichardJohnson said...

Inga dixit@ 6/13/20, 9:11 AM
The same sort of extremism is seen by Trumpists who “cancel” or destroy Never Trumpers or even the fellow conservatives who dare to question Trump or Trumpism. Such push back by Trumpists is no less destructive and all encompassing. I see what has happened to those conservatives here and in the general public who have dared to veer from the Trumpist narrative. It’s the same phenomenon.

Lawrence Person @ 6/15/20,8:01
Here's some video of the aftermath of those "overwhelmingly peaceful" riots in Minneapolis.

Yup, just the "same sort of extremism."

gerry said...

class divisions in the media

Class consciousness is not supposed to affect the agitators. Oops.

Krumhorn said...

I am starting to suspect both the lockdown and the racial unrest happened because this is an election year in the U.S.

Bingo!!

Anyone who fails to acknowledge the 24/7/365 internal planning mechanism of the American lefties designed to gain power and how that mechanism influences what we see and hear is simply oblivious to the realities of our daily life.

Resist by any means necessary. Never let a good disaster go to waste.

- Krumhorn

Rory said...

"To quote the great Victor Davis Hanson:"

Very good article!

Banjo said...

My son, who is a CalFire fireman, and his family (his wife runs a successful home based business) are in Arkansas and going to Texas to get away and scout where they will move when he retires in two years.

We lived in Arkansas 16 years before moving last fall. Arkansas is waaay more conservative than Texas, which is getting lots of U-Haul traffic from California. People are messing with Texas, especially in Austin, which is every bit as liberal as Berkeley. We moved just outside of Portland due to the heart-rending pleas of my wife and daughter to help raise my son's new infant so his wife could continue working. Welp, she lost her job to the Wuhan Virus contagion, rendering our help redundant. The last time we went over a Black Lives Matter sign was planted in the front yard, the only one on the block. She and I don't speak now and my son and wife must now dance around that reality. Graham Green said pity was the most corrupting emotion and boy was he right.

Big Mike said...

“We encourage constructive, honest dialogue among our colleagues ..."

How did I know that that next word was going to be "but"?

Openidname said...

"And did they overplay the violent fringes of protests, when they’ve been overwhelmingly peaceful and the city’s broader mood has been a kind of revolutionary good cheer?"


What gaslighting. They've actively censored the violence.