New York City, New York May 3, 2021 (Issuewire.com) - The Gray Lady Winked: How The New York Times’ Misreporting, Fabrications, and Distortions Radically Alter History (Midnight Oil Publishers; May 3, 2021; ISBN 978-1-736-70330-4; Hardcover; TK pages; $27.99), by author and journalist Ashley Rindsberg, was released today, offering readers the first-ever comprehensive look at how major journalistic failures at The New York Times—the world’s most influential news outlet—change the course of history.
The Gray Lady Winked is available for purchase on Amazon in hardcover and ebook formats.
In 10 gripping chapters, The Gray Lady Winked tells the stories behind the New York Times’ most catastrophic journalistic failures, taking readers on a journey marked by treachery, betrayal, malfeasance, and incompetence.
The Gray Lady Winked weaves these devastating episodes together to present a powerful narrative that explores the intersection of media, power, and politics and shows in stark relief what happens when the truth is abandoned in favor of self-interest and ideology—and what this means for our future as much as for our past.
These are the stories that mattered most, including the Times’s disastrous coverage of the: Second World War; Holocaust; Rise of the Soviet Union; Cuban Revolution; Vietnam War; Second Palestinian Intifada; Atomic Bombing of Japan; Iraq War; Founding of America.
“We’re at a point in time where the core function of journalism—bringing the facts to the world and holding power accountable—has never been more crucial,” says The Gray Lady Winked author Ashley Rindsberg. “For precisely this reason, we have to ensure our most important news outlets remain dedicated to their mission of gathering the facts and telling the truth—in the words of the former owner and publisher of the New York Times—‘without fear or favor.’”
Chapter by chapter, The Gray Lady Winked unpacks episodes of major journalistic failure at the New York Times. These are the stories you haven’t heard, including the:
- Revelation the Times’ Berlin bureau chief during WWII was a known Nazi-collaborator & the catastrophic ways this played out in the paper’s war reporting.
- The still untold story behind the Times’ infamous Russia correspondent, Walter Duranty, and why the scandal is much bigger than anyone knows.
- High-level manipulation by Times correspondents David Halberstam & Neil Sheehan resulting in the overthrow of the Vietnamese government at a critical time.
- Propagation of a jihadist myth by two Times Mideast reporters during the Second Palestinian Intifada that motivated the murder of an American reporter.
- The Times’ owners deliberate effort to bury news of the Holocaust—and what this meant for the doomed effort to save Europe’s Jews.
- The Times’ creation of the myth of Fidel Castro as a democratic leader out a communist rebel on the brink of defeat.
- Attempt to rewrite American history with the infamous 1619 Project as part of a deliberate effort to commandeer America’s national story for political aims.
***PRAISE FOR THE GRAY LADY WINKED**
“The New York Times is by far the most influential newspaper in the world and thus receives far too little journalistic scrutiny due to its power to affect careers. Any book that casts a critical eye on the Paper of Record's history, as this book does, is performing a valuable service.”
—Glenn Greenwald, Journalist and New York Times Bestseller
“The Best Book of the Year.”
—John Solomon, Journalist, founder, Just The News
“In an account brimming with fascinating, if morbid, detail, Ashley Rindsberg rigorously exposes the dark side of the New York Times. For 99 years—since a 1922 description of Hitler as someone ‘actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism’—it has labored under the shadow of its dynastic owners' triad of problems: capitalist guilt, Jewish self-hatred, and an ambition for power, wealth, and status. The Times' importance means the family's issues have done much damage.”
–Daniel Pipes, President, Middle East Forum
“With the researcher’s eye for the damning detail and the novelist’s feel for the egos and appetites that animate great characters, Ashley Rindsberg has produced an eminently readable account of why a formerly great American newspaper betrayed its principles and how its decline made us all the poorer. Anyone curious about the New York Times’s path to perdition would do well to begin with this well-crafted story of ideological convictions obscuring grim realities, big personalities obscuring dogged truth-tellers, and unearned reputations obscuring a slow and sad fall from grace.”
—Liel Leibovitz, Editor-at-Large, Tablet Magazine
"Rindsberg's timely book deals with the abuse of information for political purposes. It is a brave piece of a historical journey into the annals of the New York Times. It shows us how what is now considered to be a new phenomenon, Fake News, belonging to the social media era or to the Trump presidency, began much earlier, and does not belong to only one particular political camp. Rindsberg has an important story to tell to anyone who has ever opened the pages of the New York Times."
—Adi Schwartz, Author, The War of Return
“This book is a bracing, urgent reminder of the devastating real-world consequences that arise when an important institution falls in love with the sound of its own voice and puts its power in the service of myth creation on behalf of elites."
—Jenny Holland, Author & Former Times Staffer
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