Outsider Theory The Paper of Record's Dismal Record
Critics often present recent ideological convulsions at the New York Times as an embarrassing deviation from the paper's illustrious history. Ashley Rindsberg, author of The Gray Lady Winked, joins me to explain why they're wrong. The Times, as he documents, has been plagued by scandal after scandal over the past hundred years, and its journalistic and editorial failures reveal more continuity than declining standards. Rindsberg also explains why the standard critiques of the paper from the right and the left are incomplete: far more than any consistent ideological agenda, the Times pursues the agenda of the powerful dynastic family that owns and controls it, whose interests are in tension with the paper's supposed commitment to truth and the public good.