From Spatium Trientis, I have been observing the "old gray lady," The New York Times, America's liberal iconic press, the so-called premier print newspaper of America, increasingly coming unglued.
Wracked by diminishing revenues, evaporating advertising dollars,hounded by good ole Rupert Murdoch, the Aussie media mogul of News Corp, facing increasingly stiff competition from Rupert's multi-hydra headed global media behemoth, with the Wall Street Journal and New York Post breathing down the necks of its Jewish family owners, i.e. the Schulzberger family, which has historically wielded and micromanaged this "old gray lady," the New York Times has stooped so low nowadays to "do the news" instead of "reporting the news;" to engage in what journalist professionals know to be "yellow journalism" refined at its best by the late Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Pulitzer.
Those "good ole boys and girls" who are working inside the old building of the New York Times are distressed because they know the good ole days when the White boys and girls can dominate and hog the limelight is fast fading away.
Welcome to the world of blogosphere; of citizen journalism; of Al Jazeera; of Sina.com, of CCTV, and of Rupert's vast global media behemoth, News Corporation.
The lunches of most of America's white-owned news media are being eaten alive.
And Google, YouTube, and the net are the new kids on the block.
For some background on how a century ago, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer used and exploited their newspapers in the West Coast and East Coast to war-monger and ignite a war against Spain. The story of the incident of USS Maine in Cuba was distorted, dramatised and whip up a "patriotic" frenzy in America which started the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the enunciation of the "Monroe Doctrine." Click on for background on what "yellow journalism" means:
http://alt.tnt.tv/movies/tntoriginals/roughriders/jour.home.html
Fast forward to 2008, we are now experiencing historical "deja vu." Only this time it is not William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, but one Arthur Ochs Shulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, America's "gray ole lady," increasingly besieged by new media, including blogosphere, the net, Google, and YouTube.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., a member of the family that has controlled the paper since 1896. Sulzberger is widely seen as being under increasing pressure lately as dissident investors have pressed the company for board representation as the company's circulation figures have plummeted amidst an industry-wide circulation downturn and a migration of readers and advertisers to the internet.
Guess what, a century later, the New York Times is now using the playbook of William Randolph Hearst and what used to be the San Francisco Examiner's sum and substance of "yellow journalism" as a "last ditch" Hail Mary pass to boost the vanishing circulation and revenues of the New York Times ! Wiki the New York Times and check out the background of the Sulzberger and the Jewish family which has owned the "ole gray lady" for over the century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times
Rumours are swirling that Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch recently acquired, his flagship rival to the New York Times, is poised for the kill of a dying New York Times. And Rupert Murdoch, the Aussie media mogul, is not fond of what the NYT had done in stabbing Murdoch behind his back. Something the Rupert never forgets. There is no love lost between the Schulzberger family and Rupert.
As the vultures fly overhead, the rumours swirling around New York city is that Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York city, with his billions, is considering taking over from the Schulzberger to attempt to resuscinate this liberal "gray old lady" destined to fade away and die a slow death, if not rescued.
And guess what the New York Times is now publishing, a la "William Randolph Hearst" in the style of yellow journalism a century ago.
Look what they just dug up and circulated, in the name of "regime change" in Myanmar? A 1990 classic op ed, entitled "Are Invasions Sometimes OK" by one Steve Sasser:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/opinion/11opclassic.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Another USS Maine incident to justify an invasion of Myanmar in the name of promoting "democracy" and "human rights" Pax-Americana ?
Recent history is replete with American adventurism in Asia-Pacific. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution, based on a fabricated boat incident in the coast of Vietnam, hurled the United States into a quagmire in Vietnam, to which American society to this day has not fully recovered, with its "broken" war vets and the residues of war in terms of the Vietnamese Diaspora and the tragic story of the Cambodians and Hmongs now refugees in America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident
If you go further back, click on the "Boxer Rebellion" in China, and the eight-nation imperialist intervention in China, consisting of an expeditionary force encompassing troops from Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
History repeats itself, I am afraid.
And Americans, insular and historic-amnesic, will never know what their increasingly dumbed-down leaders and dumbed-down nation, and their biased news media, the New York Times, do in the name of so-called "democracy," the Europeanised version of it of course.
Moral justification to invade another country, Myanmar ?
Are you kidding ? America has not even finished their war in Aghanistan and Iraq? And now they are proposing to start an invasion of Myanmar ?
And pick a fight with Iran and China, to boot?
This time, the stridency is not coming from America's right but from America's liberals and left, and yes, the Greens.
Liberal-Green-neo-fascists, I call these fanatics and war-mongerers. And the New York Times, that "gray old lady" is leading the charge this time. Not William Randolph Hearst, who made yellow journalism a greedy endeavor which made him fabulously rich.
There's money to be made in wars, after all. And Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq can validate and justify that war means profits.
