The Gray Lady Winked

How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History

By: Ashley Rindsberg

Narrated by: Esosa Edosomwan

Think a newspaper can’t be responsible for mass murder? Think again.

As flagship of the American news media, the New York Times is the world’s most powerful news outlet. With thousands of reporters covering events from all corners of the globe, the Times has the power to influence wars, foment revolution, shape economies and change the very nature of our culture. It doesn’t just cover the news: it creates it.

The Gray Lady Winked pulls back the curtain on this illustrious institution to reveal a quintessentially human organization where ideology, ego, power and politics compete with the more humble need to present the facts. In its 10 gripping chapters, The Gray Lady Winked offers readers an eye-opening, often shocking, look at the New York Times’s greatest journalistic failures, so devastating they changed the course of history.

• How its World War II Berlin bureau chief, a known Nazi collaborator, skewed coverage in favor of the Third Reich for over a decade.
• Its notorious coverup of the Ukraine Famine, a genocide committed by Stalin, showing that it was the newspaper's owners who directed the coverup in order to advance their own financial and ideological interests.
• The “1619 Project," a cynical, ideologically driven attempt to revise American history by rooting the nation's birth in slavery instead of liberty.

The result is an essential look at the tangled relationship between media, power and politics in a post-truth world told with novelistic flair to reveal a uniquely powerful institution’s tortured relationship with the truth.

Most importantly of all, The Gray Lady Winked presents a cautionary tale that shows what happens when the guardians of the truth abandon that sacred value in favor of self-interest and ideology - and what this means for our future as much as for our past.

©2021 Ashley Rindsberg (P)2021 Ashley Rindsberg

Well Researched and Written!

Rindsberg does an excellent job of detailing the New York Times’ neglect of accurate reporting over several decades. It’s a shame the paper still has not returned its Pulitzer earned for Soviet propaganda reported by Walter Duranty.

Deeply Disturbing

I originally purchased this to learn more about the 1619 Project's propaganda initiative, but I'm glad that I listened to the entire book. The author did a great job detailing multiple NYT mistakes and coverups and revealing their extremely concerning bias on many topics as well as the why behind their seemingly bizarre choices regarding certain topics and individuals.

The narrator and audio production, however, left a bit to be desired due to mispronunciations, improperly used words (though those could have been typos in the original book), poor editing (repeated phrases), and audio variations (some sections were clearly recorded later, possibly with a different microphone, as there was an echo and the audio was not the same as the rest of the performance).

In Defense of the Narrator

Listening to this audiobook, I had a feeling that people would roast the narrator in their reviews. Although there were several words mispronounced and some editing mistakes, I did not feel the narration took anything away from the overall quality of the audiobook. Esosa Edosomwan has a pleasant and neutral voice, which should be the only requirements from a narrator. I would choose a narrator that made pronunciation mistakes over one that tries to add drama or importance to works by the tone of her voice. And I’d especially choose the former over a male narrator that tries to mimic a female character’s voice or pronounces the “h” in what, which, where, etc.

Narrator is nearly illiterate

The book is good, but the narrator (who has a nice speaking voice) mispronounced so many common words that it left me simply appalled. I guess ANYONE can narrate books now, even those who can’t pronounce common words.

EYE OPENING

Should be required reading for anyone who ever reads any newspaper. I k ew the NYT was biased but did not know how egregious and down right treasonous some of their reporters had been.