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Comment by martey | Hacker News Reader

> World Was 2, they uncritically accepted Walter Durranty letting Stalin ghostwrite for him, specifically w.r.t. Stalin's man-made famine in Ukraine, because America was allied with Stalin.

Duranty's New York Times articles were written in 1931, a decade before America entered World War II. They not only predate an American alliance with the Soviet Union, but they also predate the United States having any diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union whatsoever.

> Go back through the major wars in American history and you can find the New York Times championing the cause of war before each of these.

Are there other major American newspapers who have a history of dissenting against war? Wasn't the New York Times' behavior in most of the conflicts you mention in line with American popular opinion?

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> Wasn't the New York Times' behavior in most of the conflicts you mention in line with American popular opinion?

Dear god, what? I love the unintentional satire its so funny. "Its fine if the media lies to the people if the people believe the lies." That's low even for this stemlord dumpsterfire of a platform

> "Its fine if the media lies to the people if the people believe the lies."

That is low, but that's neither a direct quote or not an accurate paraphrase of my comment. While I realize that the comment I replied was edited after my response to talk about lying in more recent conflicts (which might be causing your confusion), I don't think you (like OP) are trying to make the argument that the New York Times is bad because of their reporting in the 1930s.

The American political apparatus was already normalizing relations with the Soviet Union due to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931, which is when WW2 truly started), due to the great depression in America making alliance with the Soviets look economically advantageous for America, and due to political instability in Germany and Italy. There was a strong sense of shit hitting the fan soon and that America would be with the Soviet Union through it. FDR officially recognized the Soviet Union in 1933, during the peak of Stalin's famine in Ukraine, which the New York Times was actively denying.

As for other newspapers, the Times isn't worse but bears the brunt of the criticism because they are after all America's foremost, most influential newspaper.

Your comment is full of historical revisionism. The Second World War has little or nothing to do with the Holodomor. The Times' lack of reporting on it has nothing to do with American foreign policy (both Duranty and Gareth Jones were British) and everything to do with credulous reporters. The idea that America and the Soviet Union would be natural allies was not the majority viewpoint in the 1930s (outside of American communist propaganda) and is clearly disproved by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

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