Reply #16: Very revealing piece.

[robertpaulsen]

I saw the documentary An Unreasonable Man, but I don't remember anything about how Abe Rosenthal effectively censored and in a very real way shut him out of the national discourse. I can't understand why anyone would try to paint Rosenthal as a liberal. To believe that corporatist is a lefty, one would have to ignore this section of his wiki bio:



Writer Mark Hertsgaard cited the Times as having the Iran Contra story a year before it broke (in November 1986) but wrote that Rosenthal killed the story because of his support for Ronald Reagan.

Rosenthal supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and openly suggested that the U.S. should give Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and Sudan an ultimatum that orders these countries to deliver documents and information related to weapons of mass destruction and terrorist organizations. Otherwise, "in the three days the terrorists were considering the American ultimatum, the residents of the countries would be urged 24 hours a day by the U.S. to flee the capital and major cities, because they would be bombed to the ground beginning the fourth day."<8>

Rosenthal has also been reported to be extremely homophobic, with his views supposedly affecting how the New York Times covered issues regarding gay people (such as AIDS).<9> According to former New York Times journalist Charles Kaiser, "Everyone below Rosenthal (at the New York Times) spent all of their time trying to figure out what to do to cater to his prejudices. One of these widely perceived prejudices was Abe’s homophobia. So editors throughout the paper would keep stories concerning gays out of the paper."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._M._Rosenthal

Corporate McPravda indeed.