Given the results on Super Tuesday, the following critique -- published almost a month ago -- obviously doesn't take the most recent Democratic primary evolution into consideration (read: it preceded the DNC's recent "Dim-pire Strikes Back" pro-Biden shenanigans).
However, as an explanation of why I recently severed our household's ties with the New York Times after more than a decade of subscribing, this essay does a fine job, indeed.
We're just one of many, and I really enjoy reading a tactile Sunday newspaper, but I could no longer in good conscience give money to a newspaper prone to running "hit pieces" (the author's term) against Bernie Sanders. One can only speculate about the newspaper's activities behind the scenes.
The author appears to have had a digital subscription. Our was Sunday delivery with digital access included. That's $12 a week, or a honking $624 a year. I can think of far better things to do with that kind of money than pay Thomas Friedman to write his dirtbag bilge.
For now, here's David Blass: Why I just cancelled my New York Times subscription: Democratic primary coverage as “fit” to print as Trump is to serve.
... Unfortunately, though some of the examples I’ve cited are particularly transparent, this type of reporting is the rule rather than the exception for Sanders in both the press and in cable news coverage. I used to think the New York Times was above the journalistic chicanery I saw elsewhere in the media, but the facts speak for themselves.
Coming to terms with this made me a more cynical person. Perhaps that’s a good thing; seeing grays between black and white can make us more tolerant and empathetic. But for now, my biggest unanswered question is for the Times’ board of directors: Is this your best attempt at self-preservation? ...
... I’ve subscribed to the New York Times since 2016. That might not sound like a long time, but it’s most of my adult life. As of today, I’ve lost my trust in the Times and have neither a use for its coverage nor a desire to support a thinly veiled purveyor of the propaganda Noam Chomsky described in Manufacturing Consent. In fact, in a 2010 interview, six years before the New York Times would all but write off Trump’s chances at the presidency, Chomsky offered the following:
If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? […] [That enemy] will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. […] I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.
Before abandoning all hope, our clairvoyant also had some thoughts about Senator Sanders:
Well, Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system. Maybe there are two of them in the world, you know. But he’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat. His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower.
And in the wake of the 2016 election, he offered an antidote:
[If] the Sanders movement offered an authentic, constructive program for real hope and change, it would win […] Trump supporters back.
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