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Comment by imbokodo | Hacker News Reader

I once read the New York Times from 1917 to 1922 on microfilm, guided somewhat by an index. Every article was about how the government of "Mr. Lenine and Mr. Trotzky" was on the verge of collapse. It gave a very false picture - well, the Times still gives a false picture of Russia today.

If you have access to microfilm, instructive is an article from June 23, 1918 titled "Lenine ready to resign". Of course this was another false story - although he was shot two months later which caused an illness in him that caused him to slowly withdraw until his death five years after.

But there are many stories of this type. Ultimately, however, dominant communist power in Russia ended because Russian communists themselves decided to hold Multi-Party elections (to be even more tangential - some think Lenin would have had a coalition government of Bolsheviks and left socialist revolutionaries if he had not been shot and retired to Gorki).

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The Times's highly inaccurate coverage of the Russian Revolution was an inspiration for Walter Lippmann's commentary on improving media accuracy, in the first decades of the 20th century:

The analysis shows how seriously misleading was the Times by its reliance on the offical purveyors of information. It indicates that statements of fact emanating from governments and the circles around governments cannot be taken as judgements of fact by an independent press. They indicate opinion, they are controlled by special purpose, and they are not trustworthy news.

Even more problematic than official sources, the authors continue, are the semi-official anyomous reports often relied upon.

All the more reason to shun official Information Ministers and Spokesmen, press briefings, and the like.

The quote comes from "A Test of the News", the researchers were Walter Lippman and Charles Merz, the publication The New Republic, and the date, August 4, 1920.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

https://archive.org/stream/LippmannMerzATestoftheNews/Lippma...

You don't need microfilm to read the NY Times; the entire archive is available on their website.

> I once read the New York Times from 1917 to 1922 on microfilm

You read ~1800 newspapers from 100 years ago?

Anyway, can you provide a basis that substantiates any claim in the parent? I don't mean one link to one article, which tells us nothing about an overall trend. Ironically, there is nothing like HN for unsubstantiated claims about Russia like the parent, which are ceaseless.

> You don't need microfilm to read the NY Times; the entire archive is available on their website.

This was not the case when I did this thirty years ago.

> You read ~1800 newspapers from 100 years ago?

I concur with your observation that if you stop reading that sentence after the first few words, it makes less sense than if you read the whole sentence.

> Anyway, can you provide a basis that substantiates any claim in the parent?

I already did.

> I don't mean one link to one article

August 13, 1918 NY Times front page - article headline "Red leaders flee, reach Kronstadt, entire Bolshevist government escaping from Moscow". Of course history shows us that the Bolshevist government did not collapse in August 1918.

> there is nothing like HN for unsubstantiated claims about Russia like the parent, which are ceaseless

I have received ceaseless upvotes for my comments on the lies the Times has told about Russia over the past century, and I wish to thank the товарищи who gave them to me - from wherever they are in the world.

> August 13, 1918 NY Times front page - article headline "Red leaders flee, reach Kronstadt, entire Bolshevist government escaping from Moscow". Of course history shows us that the Bolshevist government did not collapse in August 1918.

That doesn't establish anything in the original claim. First, the quote says the government left Moscow; it didn't say the government collapsed permanently. Similarly, saying De Gaulle fled France doesn't say that France's free government had collapsed permanently. It would have been false to say Mao and the Chinese Communists didn't flee to northwest China (the Long March); should the newspaper have reported that they were in Beijing? Are you saying the Bolshevik government didn't leave Moscow? Can you provide a basis for that? Second, it's just one headline and you had claimed a trend that lasted for years; one headline, even if mistaken, is not a sign of bias; nobody would say that newspapers are perfect and errors happen for many reasons. Finally, it's from a century ago; I don't see what it says about anything current; does the Russian government of 100 years ago tell us about the current organization? Does IBM of 100 years ago tell us how the current organization functions?

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