Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • January 18, 2012 sible. Their ace reporter in the Soviet Union, Walter Duranty, walked through a planned famine in the Ukraine in 1932-33 where six to 12 million peasants starved to death and Duranty reported that everything was fine. When an honest reporter named Gareth Jones told the truth, Duranty – who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Russia – was somewhat embarrassed. Jones died shortly afterward. The newspapers blamed the Japanese Army or Chinese bandits for shooting Jones while he was in the outlying provinces of China. Jones’ family and Malcolm Muggeridge, who also denounced the Stalinist planned famine, blamed the NKVD, and the Jones family had evidence. The NY Times was urged to return Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize, which he won as a sycophant for Stalin and a silent partner in the Ukrainian genocide. The Times has not done so. LIFE magazine publisher Henry Luce banned stories about American Indians during the last great wave of thefts of Indian land, but Luce loved locomotives. The staff used to joke about finding an American Indian with a war bonnet and a point of view and having him pose on a locomotive. Luce was also obsessed with Nationalist China and his readers were routinely treated to stories about the glories of Chiang Kai-shek that made even patriotic Chinese-Americans who feared Japan and hated communism somewhat embarrassed. J.D. Salinger, in “The Catcher in the Rye,” has Holden’s snobbish friend “Luce” dating an older Chinese woman: a telltale allusion. America’s inability to understand China has never entirely gotten over Luce. Honesty was not always appreciated. Frank Tillman Durdin, a Times correspondent, wrote the figures for the Nanking atrocities in 1937 that hold water: about 17,000 Chinese dead, most of them soldiers killed in battle, some of them executed by their own Battle Police, some executed by their Japanese adversaries. The Chinese figures widely reported bear only an exponential relationship to Durdin’s numbers or to the reports of Americans on the scene not the inflated figures reported by the Red Chinese today and depicted in feature films starring name-brand German or American actors. Responsible reviewers would have no choice but to question these figures. One bets they won’t. American industrial workers and older U.S. veterans are not fond of either China or Japan, but national advertising may influence editorial policy in both cases. John Rabe, the “Good Man of Nanking,” reported 50,000 murders and about 1,000 rapes in his first account, but later signed off on the Durdin figures. Note that Rabe worked for Siemens – which had a major presence in pre-industrial China, threatened by industrial Japan -- and that Rabe reported to Hitler, who before 1940 supported not Japan, but Chiang Kai-shek’s China. Were there wheels within wheels? I used to see that stuff myself. I was an honorably discharged veteran with a tiny non-combat medal and a limp when I started reporting. I noticed that when fellow service veteran reporters covered the same 100-person peace demonstrations as anti-war resisters, the veterans would report 50 scraggly demonstrators while the peace advocates would report 200 handsome, beautiful, and heroic demonstrators. The actual head count was point of departure for both sides. I myself have worked on a couple of papers – not this one – where the standing orders were that certain institutions not be touched except in the most favorable way possible. In other words, accept their self-generated propaganda and pretend you believe it, and hope everyone else does. I was never asked or told to write about these institutions, so I never felt honor-bound to quit. I know others who developed some personality problems when they found they had been turned from honest reporters to under-paid public relations people. I don’t go around knocking on doors to get the goods on non-political suicide victims or sober people killed in car crashes. Dredging up that sort of thing is cruel and invades people’s right to privacy. I also draw the line at writing stories about institutions where the hype doesn’t match the reality. When you open a newspaper, you should know what you get: fact separated from opinion. When you are presented with an electronic news report, especially the TV broadcasts, what you get is opinion – not such much the reporter’s opinion as what the station manager and the advertisers want. What else you get is constant coverage of whatever celebrities the sponsor thinks the public wants to know about. I have covered some big names from all over the spectrum, including Bella Abzug on the left and Patrick Buchanan on the right. What was on TV in each case was a camera caricature. In person, Abzug was not at all strident. She was very intelligent and better-looking than she appeared on TV news shows. Buchanan was immensely well informed. I have never once heard or read him denying the Holocaust. I have read him commenting that the attack on Pearl Harbor was provoked and that the United States didn’t belong in Iraq. Who’s sorry now? I have also heard people interviewed in French or German and listened while the TV crew’s English translations of what they said bore only a marginal relationship to the original. When you open a newspaper written by people who have to sign what they write, and who resist celebrity feeding frenzies to offer a reasonably balanced account of what happened, you gain background to help you make decisions that could affect your day, your week, and your life. Keep turning those pages, and don’t just click the mouse for your news. Friends I haven’t seen for a few weeks or a few months sometimes ask me if I am okay. I suspect they are not inquiring after my metabolic health. They want to make sure I still have a job. No doubt about it: It’s open season on newspaper people. We are beset by electronic alternatives, most notably the Internet, that can obviously deliver the word about what happening faster than any newspaper. Many people choose to get their news from television or radio. Who reads newspapers any more? Quite a few people still read this newspaper. I know this because people stop me to tell me they loved (or hated) my last column, that they sometimes admire me and sometimes want to kill me, or that they appreciate the fact that I cover both sides when I’m writing general news instead of personal opinion. What I write under the Outlaw Journalist logo is what I think. What I write under a plain byline is what I saw happen, hopefully free of hype, rumor, gossip, or whatever is politically correct at the moment. Newspaper work is a sort of anomaly. It’s a profession where the only entry standard is how well you do the job, and whether you can prove that what you wrote bears some resemblance to what actually happened or, if it doesn’t, the mistakes all occurred without malice, the other factor along with truth in a libel conviction. If you have truth and an absence of malice, you beat the rap. If you have falsehood and the presence of malice, you are sunk. There is an old adage in the profession: No AP reporter has ever successfully been sued for libel, but many former AP reporters have. Getting it straight should be enough, but sometimes it isn’t. Many newspapers and magazines exercise a deliberate bias for a number of reasons. People who worked at TIME and Newsweek explained the difference to me. The TIME reader is construed as a Type A personality who sees him or herself as toughminded and hard-headed – the kind of person who thinks most of the world’s problems can be solved by a good air strike somewhere. The writing, analysis, and world-view, including history, were presented to reflect this perceived personality. The Newsweek reader is seen as more reflective, perhaps somewhat more liberal, and less belligerent. This person is more amenable to negotiation. Newsweek articles are geared toward this type of reader. U.S. News & World Report was condensed news for people who had no time for sports or culture. The smaller news magazines, which came labeled as conservative or liberal, also reflected the preferences of their perceived audiences perhaps more than they did those of their publishers. Newspapers, similarly, reflected the perceived preferences of their audiences. The New York Times is for college educated liberals, the Wall Street Journal is for college-educated conservatives, and the other papers are mostly for blue-collar folks who are convinced that most politicians and bankers are greedy crooks. The New York Times’ liberalism wasn’t always respon- Why we need newspapers Ramsey On Jan. 8 at 5:27 a.m., Patrolman Paul Vassallo was dispatched to the Mahwah Police Department to take custody of a 35-year-old Suffern, New York resident who was arrested for a Ramsey traffic warrant. At 7:32 p.m. that day, the Ramsey Police Department was advised of a drunk driver on North Franklin Turnpike. Patrolman Tom Banta located the vehicle and conducted a motor vehicle stop. At the conclusion of the investigation, a 55-year-old man from Mahwah was arrested for driving while intoxicated. On Jan. 2 at 9:33 a.m., Patrolman Craig Weber was dispatched to a Main Street business for a suspicious person. At the conclusion of the investigation, a Wyckoff man, 66, was arrested for hindering apprehension by providing a false name to the officer. On Jan. 1 at 2:19 p.m., Patrolman Paul Vassallo was dispatched to an Interstate Shopping Center business for a shoplifter in custody. At the conclusion of the investigation, a Mahwah woman, 26, was arrested for shoplifting. Patrolman Mike Parise conducted a motor vehicle stop on North Central Avenue at 8:50 p.m. on Dec. 30 after observing the driver of the vehicle litter onto the roadway. During the stop, it was determined that a passenger in the vehicle had an active traffic warrant. A 31-year-old Wayne Borough police department handles multiple incidents as New Year begins woman was arrested. At 9:15 p.m. that day, Detective Brian Huth was patrolling Erie Plaza when he observed an occupied vehicle. At the conclusion of the investigation, a 20-year-old West Milford man was arrested for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. On Dec. 27 at 7:09 p.m., Police Officer Diane Bornkamp was dispatched to Prince Street for a suspicious vehicle. Upon arrival, the officer was notified of a trespasser. At the conclusion of the investigation, a Ramsey man, 34, was arrested. Patrolman Jeff Guilfoyle located a motor vehicle crash on Hilltop Road at 1:19 a.m. on Dec. 24. At the conclusion of the investigation, a 33-year-old Mahwah man was arrested for driving while intoxicated. On Dec. 23 at 12:07 p.m., Patrolman Matt Rork was dispatched to an Interstate Shopping Center business for a shoplifting incident. At the conclusion of the investigation, a Bergenfield woman, 21, was arrested for shoplifting. At 11:52 p.m. on Dec. 23, Patrolman Anthony Fiore was dispatched to a motor vehicle crash on Spring Street. At the conclusion of the investigation, a 50-year-old Mahwah resident was arrested for driving while intoxicated and refusal to submit to breath testing.