Ashley Rindsberg - The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Timess Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History

by Ashley Rindsberg

Midnight Oil Publishers

Midnight Oil Publishers LLC

Copyright 2021 by Ashley Rindsberg

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address:

Cover design: Jamie Keenan

Interior design: Julie Karen Hodgins

Ebook design: Luca Funari

ISBN: 978-1-736-70330-4

FIRST EDITION

www.MidnightOilPublishers.com

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson

T his book is the result of a years-long (almost decades-long) process. As such there are many people to whom I owe my gratitude. First and foremost are my parents, Steve and Denise Rindsberg, without whose love and support nothing would have been possible, let alone this book. I also have to thank the books earliest readers and supportersemotional, psychological and spiritualmy comrades in arms, Lionel Harkham, Daniel Fink and Rafi Harkham. The climb would not have been possible without their providing me a base camp. Jason Ressler offered invaluable and unstinting support along the way, particularly in helping shove the massive monolith that is a book out through the narrow window of publishing and into the world. My brother Tony Rindsberg generously lent me his expertise in connecting this book with its intended readers. And I extend my gratitude to my mother-in-law, Rachel Golding, who has offered her support and enthusiasm for this project.

Lastly and certainly mostly, I owe endless amounts of gratitude to my wife, Jane Rindsberg, who has borne every gripe, every hesitation, each moment of intellectual handwringing (and everything in between) with equanimity, love and generosity. Without her always there I dont know where I would ever be.

T hose who still trust the New York Times to tell them all they need to know about the most important issues of the day, and who live their lives accordingly, should look into the Gray Ladys rich history of pumping out Big Liesa history that will come as quite a shock to her devoted readers. The paper that, for over four years, feverishly likened Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler was unabashedly pro-Hitler in the Thirties, serving as a sturdy fount of Dr. Goebbelss propaganda (reporting, just as his newspapers did, that Poland invaded Germany on Sept. 1, 1939). The paper that, for twenty years, has made Vladimir Putin out to be a second Stalin was unabashedly pro-Stalin in its coverage of the famine in Ukraine (there wasnt one, according to the Times) and the show trials (legitimate, according to the Times). And the paper that persistently envisions an imaginary Holocaust in Syria blacked out the real one at the time, having carefully downplayed the Nazis persecution of the Jews from 1933.

These are just a few of the grave journalistic wrongs that the Gray Lady has perpetrated in her time, and that are cogently recounted here by Ashley Rindsberg, who also digs into her eerie celebration of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the reporter under contract with the Pentagon); its rock-star treatment of Fidel Castro as an ardent democrat; its fierce cheer-leading for the coup that killed Ngo Dinh Diem (an operation that prolonged the war in Vietnam); its amplifying outright fabrications in its coverage of the Second Intifada and the US occupation of Iraq (which it helped bring about, by stoutly echoing Bush/Cheneys scary lie about Saddam Husseins weapons of mass destruction); and, more recently, its elaborate fantasy that the Americans who fought for independence from Great Britain were fighting mainly to keep slavery going (a crackpot notion that, despite historians objections, the Times continues flogging in the nations classrooms, its glossy educational materials presenting that woke fantasy as fact).

Some may argue with the authors thesis as to why the Times has such a spotty record, but no one can refute his cogent demonstration that Americas newspaper of record has serially misinformed its readers, often with disastrous consequences; and that is why this book is so important at this moment, with the New York Times still riding highand still routinely misinforming millions, on urgent subjects of all kinds. No paper with a past like the Gray Ladys can be trusted to deliver all the news thats fit to print, or to identify fake news. And so the time has come to knock her off her pedestal, by following Ashley Rindsbergs bold example. Whether we agree with it (or him) politically or not, we too must read that all-too-influential paper