After the Tall Timber (73 page)

What will come of all this? I used to think one needed
The New York Times
, and perhaps one does, but not this
Times
. A reader has neither the time, nor the inclination, nor the resources to approach his newspaper with sufficient skepticism to doubt every single element of every story; to look in vain to the corrections column and find a correction of middle initials; and then to scour the earth for some good faith source of factual information. When there were many newspapers, with conflicting political positions, there was at least some equivalent of what is, in the law, the adversary system, and the idea that through this conflict some sort of truth is sorted out. Such conflicts may exist today among magazines, which also have the time, in the absence of daily deadlines, for genuine research and even for thought. But if a reader has reason, as he clearly does, to distrust his newspaper—not its Jayson Blairs, but its whole conception of what is important, what is true, what part genuine self-doubt as opposed to searching for scapegoats and examining other people’s datelines plays in the process of finding out and reporting what is true—then the news itself will cease to matter to him. The paper will continue for a while, in its self-regard based on the values and achievements of another time. But that’s it. In the absence of a basis for trust, the news itself becomes unascertainable, even ceases to exist—or is reduced, as is now almost the case, to contending strategies of public relations.

Then one remembers something Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to quote from Michael Polanyi: People change their minds. Institutions can change as well. On May 11, 2003, Sulzberger was interviewed by
The Wall Street Journal
. Echoing the by now famous remarks quoted in his own paper earlier in the day, to the effect that there would be no searching the newsroom for “scapegoats” (“The person who did this is Jayson Blair. Let’s not begin to demonize our executives—either the desk editors or the executive editor or, dare I say, the publisher”), he said, “This is not a Howell problem, this is not an Arthur Sulzberger problem—this was a bad man doing bad things.”

Whatever is meant by “scapegoat,” “demonize,” “venality,” “police state,” and even “ripping off the company,” this is an odd formulation of the problem. Venality? Ripping off the company? Institutions change, but this is not the language of a change for the better in a newspaper. What is needed is the return of someone who would want to be remembered for having kept the paper straight.

The American Spectator
October 2003

RENATA ADLER
was born in Milan and raised in Connecticut. She received a B.A. from Bryn Mawr, an M.A. from Harvard, a D.d’E.S. from the Sorbonne, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an honorary LL.D. from Georgetown. Adler became a staff writer at
The New Yorker
in 1963 and, except for a year as the chief film critic of
The New York Times
, remained at
The New Yorker
for the next four decades. Her books include
A Year in the Dark
(1969);
Toward a Radical Middle
(1970);
Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al., Sharon v. Time
(1986);
Canaries in the Mineshaft
(2001);
Gone: The Last Days of
The New Yorker (1999);
Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Decision That Made George W. Bush President
(2004); and the novels
Speedboat
(1976, Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Novel) and
Pitch Dark
(1983).

MICHAEL WOLFF
, currently a contributing editor at
Vanity Fair
and a columnist for
The Guardian, USA Today
, and British
GQ
, is one of the most prominent journalists and pundits in the nation. He has written numerous best-selling books, including
The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch, Burn Rate
, and
Autumn of the Moguls
. He appears often on the lecture circuit and is a frequent guest on network and cable news shows.