>It is always fun to shock American lefties at parties trashing their beloved
>NYT, especially given that, unlike most Europeans, I normally try to avoid
>gratuitous yank-bashing. It may or may not be, like Doug says, the voice of
>the American ruling class, but the really remarkable thing about it is just
>how mediocre it is. The problem is lack of reference points. Compared to the
NYT's foreign coverage is particularly disasterous - but that's also true of virtually all US media. The yanks tend to be, after all, very provincial and navel-gazing. As Herbert Gans once argued, US media covergae is, for the most part, a small town morality play.
BTW, I find a decent foreign coverage at http://www.stratfor.com
Although they call themselves an "open source intelligence" - they are in fact, what decent journalism ougyht to be: a critical review and analysis of news coming from all over the world. But comparing it the pulp fiction drivel spoon-fed by NYT and other US media - that indeed may pass for "intelligence" in all meanings of the term.
wojtek