New York Times (11/21/17)
The New York Times‘ obituary (11/21/17) for pioneering media critic Edward Herman was not entirely unsympathetic; it ended, after all, with a quote from FAIR founder Jeff Cohen’s remembrance of Ed (FAIR.org, 11/14/17).
But it does contain a rather glaring error—one that illustrates a frequent criticism that Ed made of media outlets like the New York Times.
In the obituary, the Times‘ Sam Roberts wrote of the classic book that Ed co-wrote with Noam Chomsky:
Manufacturing Consent was severely criticized as having soft-pedaled evidence of genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda and, during the Bosnia war, Srebrenica.
The problem with this statement is that Manufacturing Consent was published in 1988—years before the 1994 Rwandan genocide or the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The book does deal at length with the Cambodian mass murders. It cites as the best analysis of Cambodian losses before, during and after Khmer Rouge rule the work of historian Michael Vickery, who estimated that the Khmer Rouge executed some 200,000 to 300,000 people, with a total of about 750,000 excess deaths (out of a population of about 7 million) due to killings, famine and disease, during their three-year reign. Vickery found that a lesser but comparable figure, about half a million, were killed in the US bombing of Cambodia beginning in 1969 and the concurrent Cambodian civil war.
The book did not argue that the Khmer Rouge’s Pol Pot was not guilty of mass murder, but rather that different standards of evidence and vastly different levels of outrage were applied to atrocities committed by the United States compared to those of official enemies—the latter having “worthy victims” and the former “unworthy,” in the book’s terminology.
Herman and Chomsky note that they came under sustained attack—referred to as “apologists for Khmer Rouge crimes” and the like—for insisting that the same standards be applied to mass violence, regardless of the perpetrators. As the authors say:
Charges against dissident opinion require no evidence and…ideologically useful accusations will stand merely on the basis of endless repetition, no matter how ludicrous they may be.
The New York Times‘ posthumous accusation that Manufacturing Consent was criticized for downplaying atrocities that happened years after it was published certainly falls in the “ludicrous” category.
ACTION:
Ask the New York Times to correct the claim that Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent was criticized for “having soft-pedaled evidence of genocide” that hadn’t happened yet.
CONTACT:
Email: nytnews@nytimes.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nytimes
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It has been a while since I read either book, but wasn’t it “The Political Economy of Human Rights,” published in 1979, that was accused — also inaccurately — of downplaying Khmer Rouge atrocities?
Both books cover Cambodia
The last thing the NY Times writes about Mr. Herman and the NY Times mades a WRONG accusation………hmmm, I can hardly wait to see what the NY Times writes for the obits of Bush, Cheney, Rice , Powell and the Rumfilled man.: )
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing in regard to certain inaccuracies contained in Sam Roberts’ obituary of Edward S. Herman and to request that a correction be published immediately.
As a renowned journalist writing for the “paper of record” should realize, Manufacturing Consent was published years before either the genocide in Rwanda or the killings in Srebrenica, yet Mr. Roberts nonetheless suggests that Herman & Chomsky were somehow errant in not mentioning these events. It is also disingenuous to repeat groundless claims that their book in any way “soft-pedaled evidence of genocide in Cambodia.” Such assertions appear to border on a deliberate misreading of their work.
Ordinarily, I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Roberts and his work and hope that a correction to these significant errors will be forthcoming.
Sincerely,
Michael Laird
and remember folks that respectful communication is suggested. And Herman yes his views on Srebrenica where controversial and I didn’t agree with his entire assessment on that and Yugoslavia but on Rwanda he wasn’t at all a genocide denialist, he was someone who was saying it was more of brutal civil war and that the genocide and atrocities where actually committed by none other then that crook Paul Kagame a darling of the West who later chased and caused bloodshed in the Congo and this was in Herman’s book with David Peterson “The Politics of Genocide”.
I think its important to mention another glaring error in the obituary. The paragraph reads: “One case study, for example, asked why a single Polish priest murdered by the Communists was more newsworthy than another cleric killed by a Washington-sponsored Latin American dictator.” If you look at Manufacturing Consent pp. 37 – 86 and specifically the table on pp. 40 and 41 it refers to 100 murdered religious people. So it’s not ‘another’ cleric but a ratio of 100 to 1 in this case. Which points to not just a case of poor editorial judgement but a deep institutional bias. It’s the institutional analysis that make Manufacturing Consent still such an important work almost 30 years after its original publication.
The New York Times story has been updated to make clear that the duo, Herman and Chomsky, soft-peddled over the years, not just in the book Manufacturing Consent.
It now reads: “Dr. Herman and Professor Chomsky were severely criticized over the years as soft-pedaling evidence of genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda and, during the Bosnia war, Srebrenica.”
They gave noticeably more page-time to their critics than their advocates, but from the Times it is no wonder.
Really? Fascinating. Did they mention Herman and Petersons’ book “Enduring Lies” specifically? I am sure that they wouldn’t want to.
The thing I like about both Herman & Chomsky’s works is the more balanced perspective that they contain instead of the one-sided cheerleading for ‘our team’ that is all too common in the MSM (and which distorts events by a twisted or absent context).
I’ll bet that the NYT didn’t dare to direct readers to Edward Herman and David Petersons’ later book examining the propaganda surrounding the Rwandan Genocide. For that matter, Why doesn’t Jim mention it?
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” – H.L. Mencken