Postscript on the problem with "news" coverage Murdoch-style: Joyce Purnick recalls the New York Post takeover

"[Rupert Murdoch] never touched my copy, and his editors never touched my copy. . . . You could say I and other serious reporters at the paper, political ones, you know, they're figleafs. They could say, 'We're honest, we play it straight. Look at what Joyce wrote, look at what Mike wrote.' But it didn't matter what we wrote, because we were surrounded by propaganda for Ed Koch. You know, there were all those photos, and all those poll stories and all those headlines. . . . The paper had become a propaganda tool."

-- former New York Times writer-editor (and onetime New York Post political reporter) Joyce Purnick, yesterday on The Takeaway

by Ken

There was one thing I meant to mention in writing yesterday about what ought to be the real scandal of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp as a pretend "news" organization.

In connection with its coverage of developments in the phone-hacking scandal engulfing News Corp's U.K. operation, News International, NPR's Morning Edition included an interview with WNYC political analyst Joyce Purnick, who is best known for her many years as a writer (both reporter and columnist) and editor at the New York Times, but who was a reporter for the New York Post at the time the once-liberal paper was taken over by the Murdochites in 1976.

I don't think it's the same interview, but one that covers the same ground, which you can hear on the website of The Takeaway, WNYC's other morning news show, coproduced with PRI. Purnick has told the interviewer that the Post changed "overnight at the time, into "a Fleet Street" paper. In the interview I heard she was asked specifically whether her copy was tampered with; she covers the same ground here.

INTERVIEWER [at 4:36]: Joyce, surely Rupert Murdoch wasn't walking around the paper telling people what stories to write and encouraging them to write, I guess, nice things about Ed Koch?
JOYCE PURNICK: Well, in fact, he did often come into the newsroom in the early morning right before the paper went to print and make changes, but no, of course, he didn't personally go around and say, "Here's what you write," and in a very interesting way, he never touched my copy, and his editors never touched my copy. I was basically the chief political reporter, and I had a reputation in New York, as a pretty good one, for integrity -- and you could say I and other serious reporters at the paper, political ones, you know, they're figleafs. They could say, "We're honest, we play it straight. Look at what Joyce wrote, look at what Mike wrote." But it didn't matter what we wrote, because we were surrounded by propaganda for Ed Koch. You know, there were all those photos, and all those poll stories and all those headlines. It didn't matter that somewhere in the back of the paper or the middle of the paper I had a short story that was perfectly legitimate. It didn't matter, that's the point. The paper had become a propaganda tool.

And then the interviewer makes clear that her interest is exclusively instances of illegality, which Purnick says she's reasonably confident didn't happen. She goes on to say, "I think that the Post and other Murdoch properties push the envelope. Fox News distorts like crazy," but no, she doesn't think they break the law.

By the way, on a different Takeaway webpage I found a version of this, to which the first reader comment, from "D.L.Mc from Staten Island,NY," was:

"Fox News distorts like crazy" from a former NY Times editor - irony.

I trust it isn't necessary to break down for DWT readers why, for all the faults of the NYT, such a "comparison" is evidence of total absence of useful brain function.

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