i’m reading last call at the hotel olympia by deborah cohen, about american foreign correspondents in europe in between the world wars, and these two paragraphs have been living rent free in my head all day - ThreadSky

dansolomon.com • 175 days ago

i’m reading last call at the hotel olympia by deborah cohen, about american foreign correspondents in europe in between the world wars, and these two paragraphs have been living rent free in my head all day

1 / 2

Comments

sandnesharry.bsky.social•174 days ago

That is the effect of "Der große lüge" (the big lie).
Bits of it stays on for a long time.

nhl88.bsky.social•174 days ago

Behind the Bastards did an excellent podcast episode about this exact thing like 3 weeks ago. Dorothy Thompson 4 life.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Xt4xGrdzNvjIZe75bRdkq?si=_FmoI8YZTYaW90-XsPNSVg

ghostyspook.bsky.social•174 days ago

There was a book I read about that period and an American ambassador who kept meeting with hitler and sending stuff home like guys this is bad news…in the garden of beasts

penbird42.bsky.social•174 days ago

teh NYTimes is thoroughly Zionist, however it's a myth that the Sulzbergers themselves are completely Jewish.

moonmayor.bsky.social•174 days ago

I have a collection of early National Geographic, and there's an issue from, I think, 1936, praising Hitler for returning the country to a more peaceful and idealic place. It's really uncomfortable

lizamazel.bsky.social•173 days ago

yeh, I'm calling shenanigans on the "overcorrecting for the anti German brigading last time." At the very least, that's not the ONLY reason.

hapax001.bsky.social•174 days ago

"there must be two sides of the problem" is the fundamental problem. there are not two sides of a fact.

altibel.bsky.social•174 days ago

Thx for the tip! For those who want to add to their ToRead list, the full name is Last Call at the Hotel Imperial

dansolomon.com•174 days ago

yes, thank you, not sure where my brain swapped in olympia

gbaji.bsky.social•175 days ago

When covering democracy v. authoritarianism, you are not only allowed to take a side but in fact obligated to do so. "Objectivity" doth make cowards of us all.

dansolomon.com•175 days ago

i would say that a reporter has a responsibility to objectively report the truth, which requires looking at things that are happening and saying clearly that they are happening. any other kind of objectivity is a false idol that a lot of editors worship

dansolomon.com•174 days ago

*hotel imperial, not olympia, my brain just did that thing

dansolomon.com•175 days ago

there really is nothing new under the sun

dansolomon.com•175 days ago

i don’t think they did this because sulzberger liked hitler and wanted him to win! there is a long history of newsroom leaders in this country tying themselves in knots chasing some ideal of neutrality even if they end up distorting the truth to achieve it, and believing that doing so is courageous

lizamazel.bsky.social•173 days ago

there is a certain kind of well off liberal who is as firmly rooted in denial and the status quo as the stodgiest old school conservative, with whom they share a lot.

for example: my dad.

that also said: antisemitism was (is) too much part of the zeitgeist to let them off the hook here.

wishda.bsky.social•174 days ago

I'd love to read a history of how the pre-Times Ochs' family navigated running a "Unionist" paper that was beloved by Confederates in Civil War-era Tennessee.

dansolomon.com•175 days ago

anyway, history doesn’t repeat, it rhymes, etc

dansolomon.com•175 days ago

just the self righteous confidence of this man in chicago insisting that his reporters in berlin must have the story wrong about hitler because stating the bare facts felt like editorializing

dansolomon.com•175 days ago

it’s this, it’s always been this

justhere4coffee.bsky.social•175 days ago

I forget who it comes from, but the quote "life has a liberal bias" really covers how all of this has played out and continues to. You can't cover the sins of both/all parties equally if one party's whole campaign is based on sins! At some point you need to highlight that they're just sin machines.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply