FrankRep
06-26-2009, 03:01 PM
New York Times Deigns to Notice JBS (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5047)
Thomas R. Eddlem | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
26 June 2009
The New York Times deemed a story on the John Birch Society “fit to print” in its June 26 edition. Written by roving columnist Dan Barry, about the worst that could be said of it and the author was that it had a snarky headline “Holding Firm Against Plots by Evildoers. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26Land.html?_r=1&sq=john%20birch&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all)” Or, it could be the subtitle on the landing page for Barry's This Land section of the Times website: "The John Birch Society, right-wing relic of the ’60s, remains ever-vigilant to protect the United States." As editors often write story headlines, the reporter may not have even written either one.
Barry’s column is sold by the Times as a foray “beneath news stories and into obscure and well-known corners of the United States.” We can tell for sure from the tone of the story that he sees the JBS among the more “obscure” rather than “well-known” within his assignment.
The moderate tone of the story has caused me to second-guess my life membership in the John Birch Society. Was the organization not worthy of a full frontal assault from the most prominent journalistic scion of the political establishment? My faith in the JBS was almost shaken.
The story even had an accompanying audio/pictorial slideshow that demonstrated the JBS had a real brick-and-mortar office, with secretaries, researchers, warehouse, and all that stuff. It documented that the JBS was among the larger political education organizations outside of the Manhattan/Washington Beltway axis. What’s up with all that stuff giving an accurate picture of the JBS?
Barry did elect to lead the article with the obligatory reference to a 1960s folk song featuring the John Birch Society, in this case the Chad Mitchell Trio’s “The John Birch Society.” Why he chose that over Bob Dillon’s B-side 45 “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” I’ll never know.
But I’m wondering: where’s the obligatory Chip Berlet quote? Chip Berlet of the left-wing Political Research Associates styles himself an expert on the right, and he can always be relied upon for a quote to place the Birchers somewhere within the grassy knoll fringes of society.
Instead, Barry chose to quote actual JBS people almost exclusively. I haven’t heard much from Chip lately. I hope he’s well. Maybe Chip had taken an early summer vacation, and couldn’t be reached for comment. While press organs never look for such opposing quotes when profiling super-ultra-mega-left-wing or establishment Republican organizations, they always do so with constitutionalist organizations like the John Birch Society … or they always used to. Now the Times is being fair to the JBS too.
Considering the reporter in question, I really shouldn’t have expected an attack. If the Times had decided to run a hit-piece on the JBS, sending Barry probably wouldn’t have been their first choice. Barry’s most recent articles (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/us/columns/danbarry/index.html) for the New York Times featured a story on the new HBO series about a male prostitute, as well as stories about the American hot dog and a French bakery in Northern New Hampshire. That’s not exactly a résumé for a reporter practiced in cheap shots and deceptively cropped quotes.
But my concern for the JBS goes beyond this mere article. It’s almost part of a trend by the Times. Back in 2004, a similar column by Peter Applebome (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/nyregion/22towns.html?scp=3&sq=&st=nyt) almost painted the JBS in a sympathetic light. Applebome did say the JBS was “an organization whose founder traced his view of a global conspiracy back to an occult Bavarian group known as the Illuminati, founded in 1776, [and] may have limited chances of becoming all that mainstream.” But he talked about how the JBS had taken a number of positions that “sounds a little like a disaffected Nader voter or tuned-out suburbanite” rather than what used to be painted as an extremist by the Times. “But if the society at its peak was indeed at the outer edges of American politics, it's a little hard these days to be sure whether it's mellowed a tad or the country has shifted a bit in its direction.”
Admittedly, they’re hardly calling the JBS a centrist organization. And back in 2004, when the JBS was criticizing Bush for a foolish war in Iraq and the domestic excesses of the misnamed Department of Homeland Security, it did sound a lot like what the Left was churning out. However, the difference was that the JBS had simply stood by its long-held constitutional principles of avoiding entangling alliances and limiting government in those cases. But this latest represents a marked change of tone from America’s most influential newspaper.
I’ve long accepted the fact that I’m at the political center as a constitutionalist, but it really burns me that the New York Times is almost hinting that I may not be an extremist because of my JBS membership. If the Times isn't calling itself my enemy, I'm wondering, am I doing something wrong? Maybe that’s their evil plan.
We Birchers have been so used to hearing attacks from establishment newspapers like the Times for so long that a little fairness might fake us into thinking it’s the JBS that has changed. And then they can get us JBS members to quit and kill the organization through kindness.
If that’s their plan, it won’t work on me.
But, of course, it could instead be that they just wanted to run a fair story.
Yeah, maybe that’s it.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5047
Thomas R. Eddlem | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
26 June 2009
The New York Times deemed a story on the John Birch Society “fit to print” in its June 26 edition. Written by roving columnist Dan Barry, about the worst that could be said of it and the author was that it had a snarky headline “Holding Firm Against Plots by Evildoers. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26Land.html?_r=1&sq=john%20birch&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all)” Or, it could be the subtitle on the landing page for Barry's This Land section of the Times website: "The John Birch Society, right-wing relic of the ’60s, remains ever-vigilant to protect the United States." As editors often write story headlines, the reporter may not have even written either one.
Barry’s column is sold by the Times as a foray “beneath news stories and into obscure and well-known corners of the United States.” We can tell for sure from the tone of the story that he sees the JBS among the more “obscure” rather than “well-known” within his assignment.
The moderate tone of the story has caused me to second-guess my life membership in the John Birch Society. Was the organization not worthy of a full frontal assault from the most prominent journalistic scion of the political establishment? My faith in the JBS was almost shaken.
The story even had an accompanying audio/pictorial slideshow that demonstrated the JBS had a real brick-and-mortar office, with secretaries, researchers, warehouse, and all that stuff. It documented that the JBS was among the larger political education organizations outside of the Manhattan/Washington Beltway axis. What’s up with all that stuff giving an accurate picture of the JBS?
Barry did elect to lead the article with the obligatory reference to a 1960s folk song featuring the John Birch Society, in this case the Chad Mitchell Trio’s “The John Birch Society.” Why he chose that over Bob Dillon’s B-side 45 “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” I’ll never know.
But I’m wondering: where’s the obligatory Chip Berlet quote? Chip Berlet of the left-wing Political Research Associates styles himself an expert on the right, and he can always be relied upon for a quote to place the Birchers somewhere within the grassy knoll fringes of society.
Instead, Barry chose to quote actual JBS people almost exclusively. I haven’t heard much from Chip lately. I hope he’s well. Maybe Chip had taken an early summer vacation, and couldn’t be reached for comment. While press organs never look for such opposing quotes when profiling super-ultra-mega-left-wing or establishment Republican organizations, they always do so with constitutionalist organizations like the John Birch Society … or they always used to. Now the Times is being fair to the JBS too.
Considering the reporter in question, I really shouldn’t have expected an attack. If the Times had decided to run a hit-piece on the JBS, sending Barry probably wouldn’t have been their first choice. Barry’s most recent articles (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/us/columns/danbarry/index.html) for the New York Times featured a story on the new HBO series about a male prostitute, as well as stories about the American hot dog and a French bakery in Northern New Hampshire. That’s not exactly a résumé for a reporter practiced in cheap shots and deceptively cropped quotes.
But my concern for the JBS goes beyond this mere article. It’s almost part of a trend by the Times. Back in 2004, a similar column by Peter Applebome (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/nyregion/22towns.html?scp=3&sq=&st=nyt) almost painted the JBS in a sympathetic light. Applebome did say the JBS was “an organization whose founder traced his view of a global conspiracy back to an occult Bavarian group known as the Illuminati, founded in 1776, [and] may have limited chances of becoming all that mainstream.” But he talked about how the JBS had taken a number of positions that “sounds a little like a disaffected Nader voter or tuned-out suburbanite” rather than what used to be painted as an extremist by the Times. “But if the society at its peak was indeed at the outer edges of American politics, it's a little hard these days to be sure whether it's mellowed a tad or the country has shifted a bit in its direction.”
Admittedly, they’re hardly calling the JBS a centrist organization. And back in 2004, when the JBS was criticizing Bush for a foolish war in Iraq and the domestic excesses of the misnamed Department of Homeland Security, it did sound a lot like what the Left was churning out. However, the difference was that the JBS had simply stood by its long-held constitutional principles of avoiding entangling alliances and limiting government in those cases. But this latest represents a marked change of tone from America’s most influential newspaper.
I’ve long accepted the fact that I’m at the political center as a constitutionalist, but it really burns me that the New York Times is almost hinting that I may not be an extremist because of my JBS membership. If the Times isn't calling itself my enemy, I'm wondering, am I doing something wrong? Maybe that’s their evil plan.
We Birchers have been so used to hearing attacks from establishment newspapers like the Times for so long that a little fairness might fake us into thinking it’s the JBS that has changed. And then they can get us JBS members to quit and kill the organization through kindness.
If that’s their plan, it won’t work on me.
But, of course, it could instead be that they just wanted to run a fair story.
Yeah, maybe that’s it.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5047