Archive [December 1999]

I was honored to speak to one of the great newspapermen of the century, A. M. Rosenthal. I caught up with the Pulitzer Prize winner a week after he penned his last column for The New York Times, which he had served for more than 55 years — as U.N correspondent, foreign correspondent, city editor, executive editor, and columnist.

Rush: I’ve wanted to ask this of somebody who writes columns for The New York Times for a long time.

Rosenthal: Ask any questions you want.

Rush: When you write a column for The Times, for whom are you writing?

Rosenthal: For two groups of people. One consists of one, which is myself, in the sense that I want to say something that I think is important to me. And number two, for readers of The Times. Not those who will always agree with me. In fact, many times they don’t. But basically, readers of The New York Times who I think will be interested in what I have to say.

Rush: The readers of The New York Times comprise a lot of people — many of them are those with the power to implement policy. Are you writing for them, or are you writing for news consumers? The Times has that ability to reach the policymakers, an opportunity that not too many people have.

Rosenthal: Yes. Occasionally, I write for them. For instance, in one of my last columns, I wrote a piece warning Israel — to which I’m friendly, the existence if not the government of the day, or any government they have — but I wrote a piece about the danger Israel was letting itself into by selling arms to China. I said that it was against its own interest to do so, and I also said that one day the United States government would publicly criticize Israel.

Rush: There’s a front-page story in today’s New York Times: “U.S. SEEKS TO CURB ISRAEL ARMS SALES TO CHINA: CLINTON ADMINISTRATION PRESSURING ISRAEL NOT TO SELL.” Do you think you had something to do with this?

Rosenthal: Probably, with the timing. I do not believe it was the only issue, but the fact that the piece appeared when it did spurred people in the government who are opposed to military aid to China, whether American or Israeli, to take some actions to ward off Israel. And I’m glad that they did. I’m pro-Israel. I’m not pro- this government or that government. But I’m pro- the existence of Israel. And my major interest in Israel is its maintenance of its security, which I believe is slipping. I knew this story would be read very carefully and taken very seriously because of the very fact that my columns on Israel, critical or not, are based on the desire for the survival of Israel.

Rush: Are you surprised the Administration did this, given that, at least to me it appears, the Clinton Administration has no qualms with arming China itself, yet it asked Israel not to do so?

Rosenthal: No. I’m not surprised. It is the essence of hypocrisy for the United States to provide the Chinese with all kinds of technological and computer facilities and load the place with business and billions of dollars of fortune which enable it to buy it elsewhere and then criticize other countries. However, I was not dealing with the question of American hypocrisy in this case. I was dealing with the fact that the Israelis were stepping on very A) dangerously icy territory; and B) immoral territory. I believe that Israel has a right to a special claim in the world that I think is based on the fact that it should have a special morality. I am all in favor of people judging Israel by a double standard, that is, expecting more of Israel than they do of another country, because Israel quite rightly expects more of the rest of the world. It doesn’t usually get it. It expects more. I’m not against a double standard. But I’m very much against Israel and any other country selling munitions or material that can be made into armaments to China. And since I criticized my own country for helping the Chinese communists and their politburo and their army, I cannot pretend that I cannot see what Israel is doing when I get the information.

Rush: Why would Israel wish to do this? Is it beyond economics?

Rosenthal: Let me say something to you that I learned in a lifetime of covering diplomacy and foreign affairs. Never underestimate the stupidity of a government, whether it’s ours or foreign. I think it’s a stupid thing to do, because eventually it will lead to their loss of moral righteousness — it’s not a dirty word, righteousness — and also lead to their helping the Chinese inevitably supply the people the Israelis are most afraid of, namely, Iran and Iraq.

Rush: You’ve carved out what I think is a unique beat — not too many people are writing about the things you write about: human rights, anti-drug legislation, the security of Israel, political justice, world affairs, morality in foreign policy. Did you have any journalistic competition? Or did you have this beat pretty much to yourself?

Rosenthal: On the rather hard-nosed security attitude I have, I think Charles Krauthammer has it. There may be a couple of other columnists who do.

Rush: You see — not too many, is my point.

Rosenthal: Not on the human rights issue. I don’t say this happily. I’ve always written a lot about human rights — usually in the totalitarian countries. Although there are violations of human rights in the United States, I think it is ludicrous to compare the two.

Rush: Exactly right.

Rosenthal: I used to write only about civic human rights. One day, Michael Horowitz, a good conservative human rights fighter, called me up and asked, “Why don’t you ever write about religious human rights?” He said, “You write about freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom from police torture — but you never write about the persecution of religious people, particularly the Christians in China and in the Sudan.” He let me have it. I said okay, okay — I’d think about it. I wanted to get him off the phone.

When I thought about it, I realized the man was perfectly right. So I began studying and developing contacts in the field. I began writing about the persecution of Christians in China and Sudan.

Rush: Why do you think so few others, in what I call the mainstream press, have written about these subjects?

Rosenthal: What puzzled me in the beginning, and still does to some extent, was that American Christians — plus American Jews — were reacting with passivity toward what was going on. At one point they could say they didn’t know about it. But after I began writing and other papers picked it up, they still reacted with passivity. The people doing business with China said nothing. The American government was very reluctant to touch it. That puzzled me very much. And I don’t think Jewish congregations did enough.

Some Americans did react as I did, in anger and in horror, at Chinese Christians being persecuted by being arrested, beaten if they did not go to government-authorized churches. But within the American churches there was not unanimity. A wonderful man, John Cardinal O’Connor of New York, spoke out in his homilies every week and in his column in the Catholic newspaper. Others preferred to follow the policy of, “Don’t rock the boat; don’t upset the dictator; don’t make it worse.” But I lived in communist countries as a correspondent, and I know that the one thing that is true is that the prisoners and the oppressed want attention. They don’t want people to worry that it will be worse, because it is already. The only way they can get out of their prisons in the gulags in China is if the world notices them. So that was phony.

I made a pest of myself at dinner parties. During the evening I’d turn to some minister and say, “I know you must be doing something about the persecution of Christians in China and the Sudan, where they’re slaughtered.” And they’d look at me and say, “What persecutions?”

At one high-brow party in Connecticut I was talking to two people; one of them was one of the richest men in the country and the other was the headmaster of a local socially high-rated preparatory school for young men. And I asked him, and he said he never heard of it. I said, “Don’t tell me you never heard of it. You don’t want to hear about it.” I make myself popular that way. They said they’d look into it, but I never heard from them again.

On the other hand, I get enormous mail on this from some of the clergy, both Christian and Jewish, and reactions from readers. Christian and some Jewish congregations, who want to get into the struggle against it.

Rush: But I can count on one hand the number of journalists who’ve devoted themselves to the issue. And you’re it. I can’t think of too many.

Rosenthal: I really don’t know why not. I know that after my stories came out, one or two people did devote themselves. But it is not a subject of constant interest the way I think it should be. Let me tell you, if religious persecution was a constant subject in the American press, if American mayors, journalists, presidents, greeted every Chinese who came over here with accusations about this and made it uncomfortable for them, instead of giving them Stetson hats, it would have some effect. They wouldn’t become democracies, but it would ease the persecution of their victims.

Rush: The theory appears to be that if we just keep economic channels open that will eventually have an inroad whereby we will be able to pressure them.

Rosenthal: Yes. Well, I would like to give you the curt word for “baloney” on that. I lived in the communist countries in Eastern Europe when they were good and communist — Stalinist and thereafter. And economic progress does not bring liberalization. There are plenty of rich countries, rich in a comparative sense — Germany certainly was under Hitler; Italy certainly was under Mussolini; the Japanese were not starving. The idea that if you give people some more money that it will eliminate totalitarianism is the curt equivalent of baloney. Sometimes it happens, but only when there is real pressure for the elimination.

Rush: There has to be a moral foundation behind the push.

Rosenthal: You have to have a moral foundation and a determination. It was steady pressure that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was not Gorbachev. What he wanted to do was to save the Soviet Union.

Rush: Oh, I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that!

Rosenthal: What do you mean? For years I’ve been saying it — you just haven’t been listening to me.

Rush: No, no, — I mean, I know you’re unique. Nowhere else in The New York Times would that ever be said.

Rosenthal: I was the Executive Editor of The New York Times for many years; I was a foreign correspondent before that. As Executive Editor, I was in charge of the news. I did my best to keep it fair and straight, and I think I pretty well succeeded, if not perfectly. But the editorial expression of The New York Times and the op-ed page were deliberately separated, and still are, from the news sections. I really didn’t pay any attention to the editorialists or the columnists. When I ceased being the Executive Editor and I became a columnist, I still didn’t have anything to do with the editorials, which I sometimes agreed with and often not, but at least I could speak for myself. And during that time, ten years, when I was taking positions that were, to put it politely, not similar — but they dealt with issues like religious oppression that the editorial page for whatever reason was not taking up — nobody ever stopped me. They couldn’t stop me, because I would’ve left. But I got no complaints from anybody on it. They felt whatever they felt but they didn’t say, “Stop writing about this.”

I have a strong feeling that was one of the reasons I was — I don’t know exactly what word it is, my wife hates it when I say I was fired. I really wasn’t fired. I wasn’t continued. Is that a more polite expression?

Rush: That works.

Rosenthal: I’m learning to be polite. But my column was not extended. I had no contract or anything. But whoever it was decided that they had had enough. I don’t know if my political opinions were involved. When I asked if there was any problem with my column, the answer was, “No, no problem — but someday there might be.” What that means, I don’t know. It sounds like Nixon and prior restraint.

Rush: Now look, I’m a consumer of The New York Times and to me —

Rosenthal: — I wouldn’t say a consumer.

Rush: I will. And it seems to me that they’ve gotten rid of a unique voice. I don’t say that to flatter you, I’m just an observer. As I said, your comments about the end of the Cold War and Gorbachev’s relationship to it is a position The New York Times, wherever you go in the paper, doesn’t subscribe to.

Rosenthal: It’s a position I’ve taken ever since he was in. I was not a Gorbachev admirer. I didn’t think he was as bad as the other guys. But he was really trying to preserve the Soviet Union.

Rush: He tried to do two things at once.

Rosenthal: I lived in Poland when it was communist, and I don’t believe in liberalized communism leading to liberalized capitalism.

Rush: It can’t happen.

Rosenthal: It can happen if you give communism a good shove out the door.

Rush: Yes. But he wanted to hold onto both.

Rosenthal: I’ll tell you what bothers me more than anything else, okay? And that is, this country has never been as much in the thrall of a foreign philosophy as it is now to Chinese communism. The American business groups were not that enthusiastic about communist Russia, the Soviet Union — of course, there was no business to be done with them. The political philosophers, the academics, were not constantly praising the communists the way they do China, were not afraid to fight for human rights in Russia as they’re afraid in China. The American businessmen did not put on an exhibition in Moscow that they did in Shanghai recently, where Time-Life-Warner and Fortune got together to sponsor a love-in with the Chinese communists that was purely disgusting. One of them compared the Chinese premier to Abraham Lincoln, for heaven’s sake.

Rush: How do you explain it?

Rosenthal: What was not present in Russia is now present in China — the hope, the mirage, of making billions of dollars. The idea of doing business in China, a billion people, a million mouths, two billion shoes to sell and all of that — the money to be made in selling them modern technology has overwhelmed any other motivation. For American businesspeople the sound of the cash register has overwhelmed anything else.

And let me say, I’ve always been in favor of a so-called opening to China, long before Mr. Nixon was, and long before the Republicans and liberals were. But I meant an opening, and I still do, where the American people and the American government address themselves not simply to the politburo.

This engagement, or what Nixon people call engagement, is engagement with the politburo — and really disengagement with the people who suffer under the politburo, or who are at least ruled by the politburo, namely, the Chinese people. It’s as if we engaged with the Soviet Union by having meetings with Stalin and his successors and doing business with them, billions of dollars.

But they are making billions and we are losing hundreds of billions, which I’m sure you know. It’s a vast loss or drain for us. That’s not engagement. Engagement is doing non-military business, getting to know the society, reaching out, inviting to America some ordinary people or maybe extraordinary people, not just physics scientists, and really making an open, honest effort. There’s no magic. But we made it with other countries — with Russia when it was the Soviet Union. With China, we put it in a separate category and all we do is lick its seat, forgive the vulgarity, but there it is.

Why? Why does the President get up on some stage in Beijing and speak with Jiang Zemin about democracy, who says “We’re going to do what we are going to do,” and the President nods submissively? I think it’s disgusting.

Rush: Let me ask you a couple of questions about journalism before your time runs out. John Corry, former The New York Times writer, was on C-SPAN’s “Booknotes.” I want to read a quote and get your reaction. Corry said: “It was Abe Rosenthal’s lifelong task — he was dedicated — he was sworn to holding The New York Times in the center, in the political center. And Abe said — and I believe this — that unless you keep hold of The Times, it will drift to the left because reporters and editors will simply follow their natural impulses, predilections. They will go off to the left.” Now, how did you do that?

Rosenthal: John was a reporter who worked for me, a wonderful, honest man. He used to be a member of what I used to call “Abe Rosenthal’s underground.” There were about a half dozen or so reporters who didn’t think like everybody else. They were mavericks, and I loved them. He was one. But what I meant to say is this: I’m the editor of a newspaper in New York. In New York, the atmosphere is left-liberal. Most of the editors and reporters grow up in that atmosphere, as I did. I moved away from it. Others did not. I said, they’re not always setting out to go left at all. But this is the atmosphere in many of the schools they come from. My function was, as I saw it, to keep The Times on center. Not dull, but on center. Straight. Honest.

The Times is like a big horse. You can’t jump on that horse and just tell it, “Okay horse, you go straight down the middle of the path.” A big stallion is going to wander off in any direction he wants. It has to be led or directed. My aim was to move The Times from drifting left, back to center. I said, if I published The New York Times in another city, a more conservative or slightly right-wing city — I don’t know, I’m just making it up, I’m picking Tulsa, okay? I like Tulsa — if The New York Times was printed in Tulsa there might be a drift off-center to the right. I’d say my function then would be to pull that horseback to the center. And in that case, I’d have to be pulling it in the other direction.

It’s not scientific. I’m saying you have to watch. If you’re a paper like The Times that tells its readers it is straight, whose editor believes in it being straight and the publisher I then worked with, Arthur Sulzberger, also believes in it, then you have to make sure that it’s going in the right direction, in the center.

Rush: But why were you the only one who did that? Why doesn’t that happen in journalism today? Why are the horses allowed to drift to the left in so many places?

Rosenthal: If there were say, 200 publishers and editors running 100 news organs who believed in that, you would get it. If they sat down, generation after generation, year after year, and taught their staffs what it was that we wanted: We want a straight newspaper; therefore, we will not accept certain adjectives, certain turns of thought, and certain omissions and certain commissions, it’s not that difficult.

You read a straight story, you know what it is. If you read a crooked story, I mean crooked in the sense of twisted, you know from the way the lead was written, from the ways anecdotes are selected, from the way in the end there is a twist and a dagger from what I call the cruel commas. If you read the lead and there are two commas in it after “Rush Limbaugh,” watch out. Let us make this up: “Abe Rosenthal, the son of the billionaire publisher, today got the coveted job of foreign editor of The New York Times.” Say that sentence, word for word, is true. The man in question is the son of somebody important, and he did get the job. But it implies that they’re connected. I call them the cruel commas, because that is an innuendo which does not prove that’s why this guy got the job. As soon as I used to see the cruel commas, I would take action.

Now also, before I hired somebody, I talked to this person, I read his or her clippings for hours, looking very carefully for unnecessary cruelty, undeserved innuendo, unsubstantiated facts, or anonymous pejorative remarks.

I don’t think you can make a paper that is crystal pure. I’m saying you can get a bunch of men and women together, reporters and editors, who have the same belief that whether we wind up being fair every time is not the only issue. The issue is, are we trying all the time? Or have we accepted loose reporting, anonymous accusations? The answer is, more and more papers are accepting it.

Rush: It seems to me is that there is a template now that exists in American journalism, that conservatism is automatically to be suspected, that it is extreme, that liberalism is good and just. And that template then guides whatever is written about someone depending on whether they fall on the liberal or conservative side.

Rosenthal: I’m not so sure. I’m hardly a man of the left, as you know. I think that often happens. If that’s the case it could be wiped out by a publisher and editor of more papers saying, we don’t want that. We don’t regard liberals as communists. We don’t regard conservatives as fascists. Unless you can prove either one. We want this paper not to glide in that direction; we not only want it, we insist upon it.

Rush: Ask any journalist, “What is your objective?” They say, to be fair. Why isn’t accuracy the objective?

Rosenthal: We assume accuracy. But accuracy is not enough. If it’s not accurate, it’s garbage. If it is a natural mistake, an error, then you correct it. But if your inaccuracy is based on prejudice, then it’s dangerous and plenty of it is. As I say, you have to assume accuracy. You have to assume you get it right. If you’re talking about inaccuracy, and there’s plenty of that, it’s sloppy journalism. It’s very often not a philosophy, it’s just slovenly journalism and lack of suitable layers of control.

Rush: But if you’re going to assume there is accuracy —

Rosenthal: No, no — I don’t assume there will be. I will assume that it is the fundamental job of the journalist. I assume that you have two legs and are a good guy, okay?

Rush: So, accuracy is automatic.

Rosenthal: No. It’s fundamental. If you’re not accurate, you don’t belong in the business. And I know plenty of people who are habitually inaccurate. They can’t get the story right from their notebook to the paper.

Rush: By that standard, 99 percent of the people who’ve written about me shouldn’t be journalists. Because there’s so little that’s accurate, it’s laughable.

Rosenthal: The other day some guy wrote something that turned out really trashy. I said, “Did you call me?” He said, “Yes, I did.” I said, “Really? What was the time you called?” He said 3:00. I said, “ What’s your deadline?” He said 8:00. I said, “Between three and eight you had no time to call a second time? You know that’s baloney. You could’ve called a second time.” He said, “Well, I didn’t do it. I couldn’t get you.” I said, “Not being able to get a source does not absolve you from inaccuracy.”

Rush: And what does fairness mean?

Rosenthal: Reporters and critics very often have to write stories that hurt somebody. It’s the nature, in a sense, of the business. Somebody was caught stealing money. Or somebody was involved in some other scandal.

Rush: Caught with an intern.

Rosenthal: Well, okay. Let’s say somebody’s being investigated. Or somebody puts on a bad performance. I would tell my writers: The thing to do — in fact, do this every time — when you finish the story, read it over to yourself and mentally substitute your name for the name of the person who is going to be injured. Or substitute The New York Times for the name of the company which is going to be injured. If after you’ve read this you say to yourself, “My wife is going to cry when she sees this in the paper. I may cry. It’s going to damage me” — but if you can also say, “Professionally speaking I cannot object to this piece. There is no innuendo. It is as factual as any reporter could get it. There are no cruel commas in it. Nothing that I, as a newspaperman, would say is unfair. ‘Though I don’t like it, I’ve got to admit it’s fair” — then it’s a good story. And if you can’t do that, do not turn the story into the copy desk. We are not policemen. Take it back to your desk and rewrite it till it is fair. That’s how you do it.

Rush: Just listening to you here for the past hour, your intellectual energy is amazing, Have you had any job offers yet?

Rosenthal: Yes. I won’t discuss them because I’m not sure which one I will take, if I will take any of them. I set myself a month to find out what I can find out about my future and I am quite hopeful about it.

Rush: Keep writing. There will be a race to your door.

Rosenthal: I’m a newspaperman and I have been all my life and I like writing with some regularity. I’d like to come out once a week, twice a week. I don’t want to come out every six months with a piece on foreign affairs.

Rush: Where do you go from The New York Times?

Rosenthal: There is no other newspaper that I consider as good and as great an audience as The New York Times. Okay. I can sit around bellyaching about that for the rest of my life but I can’t do anything about it. Who knows? I’m interested in television and the Internet too.

Rush: Well, we wish you the best.

Rosenthal: I’ve enjoyed talking to you very much.

Rush: It’s been a thrill. Thank you for your time.

Rosenthal: Thank you. If I decide to repeat some of my words of wisdom some other day, you will not object?

Rush: Not at all.

Rosenthal: Because talking to you excited me enough to want to write another piece.