New York Times Plays 'Choose the News'

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist 

The venerable New York Times, a national news rag that wallows in its reputation as "the Old Gray Lady" of journalism, is guilty of doing what all of the major news outlets do to a certain extent:  it creates the news by what it chooses to cover in its pages.  Back in the day, of course, when there were fewer news sources, a big publication like the Times  could also shape the news by what it chose not to cover, but today with all of the outlets available on the internet, its much harder to ignore a story to death.

Here are a couple of "less than critical" stories from this week's "news."   One the New York Times chose to cover and seemingly try to make it a political issue, and the other apparently received none of the Old Gray Lady's ink at all.

In the first instance a photo of newly-sworn in President Biden seemed to show a Rolex watch on his wrist.  The Times ran with that.  Somehow the idea of a public servant sporting a Rolex seemed newsworthy.  Joe Sixpack from Scranton was going to want to know about a man who purported to be just like him wearing a timepiece that might have extended into the four-figure range.  That was news.  Real news.  And if it wasn't, it would be when The New York Times finished with it.

But Joe Biden has been in the Senate almost all of his adult life, and he has undoubtedly been involved in a few business ventures, written a few books, and bought and sold property along the way.  He has, like most Americans, accumulated money across his lifetime through an assortment of honest means, including saving, and he has a wife who works.  It would not be much of a stretch to assume that somewhere along the way he chose to reward himself with a nice wristwatch - or, more likely, it was a gift from his wife or children.  A successful person wearing a Rolex really isn't much of a news story - unless your goal is to stir up some resentment among the working classes.

But on the same day that The New York Times was dragging Biden for wearing an expensive timepiece, there was another story running rampant across many other news sources about a public servant putting on airs - and if the Times covered that story, this poor news consumer could not find the mention.  The other story was about the outgoing President, Donald John Trump, living like some oriental potentate while "serving" the American public.

Trump, it seems, had a special red button on his desk in the Oval Office, and whenever he was feeling stressed or in need of a caffeine buzz, all he had to do was press that red button and a butler would enter bringing him a Diet Coke on a silver tray.  (Seriously!  I checked it out with Snopes, the internet's premier fact-checker, and Snopes says it is true.). But Joe Sixpack out in Scranton has long since conflated Trump with Jesus Christ, so a butler hustling in with a can of Diet Coke on a silver tray was'' not something that The New York times could use to shape public opinion.  Trump-haters already knew he was a self-serving pig, and Trump-lovers felt that the Son of God was entitled to butlers with silver trays playing step-and-fetch-it.  No news there - at least none that appealed to the Times. 

The "red button" story also mentioned that the person moving into the Oval Office, President Biden, immediately had it removed.  The Times certainly had no interest in that because it went against the image of Biden that they were building with the Rolex story!

(Can you imagine the furor that would have been unleashed if President Obama had been spotted wearing a Rolex?   That "news" would have lasted for months!)