[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 156 (Monday, November 8, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14307-S14308]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        THE DEPARTURE OF A.M. ROSENTHAL FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, Please read these remarks! A.M. 
Rosenthal has just this past Friday concluded fifty-five years as a 
reporter, editor, and columnist for The New York Times. There has been 
none such ever. Nor like to be again. Save, of course, that this moment 
marks a fresh start for the legendary, and although he would demur, 
beloved Abe.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that A.M. Rosenthal's last 
column and an editorial from Friday's Times be printed in the Record.
  The material follows:

                [From The New York Times, Nov. 5, 1999]

                               On My Mind

                          (By A.M. Rosenthal)

       On Jan. 6, 1987, when The New York Times printed my first 
     column, the headline I had written was: ``Please Read This 
     Column!'' It was not just one journalist's message of the 
     day, but every writer's prayer--come know me.
       Sometimes I wanted to use it again. But I was smitten by 
     seizures of modesty and decided twice might be a bit showy. 
     Now I have the personal and journalistic excuse to set it 
     down one more time.
       This is the last column I will write for The Times and my 
     last working day on the paper. I have no intention of 
     stopping writing, journalistically or otherwise. And I am 
     buoyed by the knowledge that I will be starting over.
       Still, who could work his entire journalistic career--so 
     far--for one paper and not leave with sadnesses, particularly 
     when the paper is The Times? Our beloved, proud New York 
     Times--ours, not mine or theirs, or yours, but ours, created 
     by the talents and endeavor of its staff, the faithfulness of 
     the publishing family and, as much as anything else, by the 
     ethics and standards of its readers and their hunger for ever 
     more information, of a range without limit.
       Arrive in a foreign capital for the first time, call a 
     government minister and give just your name. Ensues iciness. 
     But add ``of The New York Times,'' and you expect to be 
     invited right over and usually are; nice.
       ``Our proud New York Times''--sounds arrogant and is a 
     little, why not? But the pride is individual as well as 
     institutional. For members of the staff, news and business, 
     the pride is in being important to the world's best paper--
     you hear?--and being able to stretch its creative reach. And 
     there is pride knowing that even if we are not always honest 
     enough with ourselves to achieve fairness, that is what we 
     promise the readers, and the standard to which they must hold 
     us.
       I used to tell new reporters: The Times is far more 
     flexible in writing styles than you might think, so don't 
     button up your vest and go all stiff on us. But when it comes 
     to the foundation--fairness--don't fool around with it, or we 
     will come down on you.
       Journalists often have to hurt people, just by reporting 
     the facts. But they do not have to cause unnecessary cruelty, 
     to run their rings across anybody's face for the pleasure of 
     it--and that goes for critics, too.
       When you finish a story, I would say, read it, substitute 
     your name for the subject's. If you say, well, it would make 
     me miserable, make my wife cry, but it has no innuendo, no 
     unattributed pejorative remarks, no slap in the face for joy 
     of slapping, it is news, not gutter gossip, and as a reporter 
     I know the writer was fair, then give it to the copy desk. If 
     not, try again--we don't want to be your cop.
       Sometimes I have a nightmare that on a certain Wednesday--
     why Wednesday I don't know--The Times disappeared forever. I 
     wake trembling; I know this paper could never be recreated. I 
     will never tremble for the loss of any publication that has 
     no enforced ethic of fairness.
       Starting fresh--the idea frightened me. Then I realized I 
     was not going alone. I would take my brain and decades of 
     newspapering with me. And I understood many of us had done 
     that on the paper--moving from one career to another.
       First I was a stringer from City College, my most important 
     career move. It got me inside a real paper and paid real 
     money. Twelve dollars a week, at a time when City's free 
     tuition was more than I could afford.
       My second career was as a reporter in New York, with a 
     police press pass, which cops were forever telling me to 
     shove in my ear.

[[Page S14308]]

       I got a two-week assignment at the brand-new United 
     Nations, and stayed eight years, until I got what I lusted 
     for--a foreign post.
       I served The Times in Communist Poland, for the first time 
     encountering the suffocating intellectual blanket that is 
     Communism's great weapon. In due time I was thrown out.
       But mostly it was Asia. The four years in India excited me 
     then and forever. Rosenthal, King of the Khyber Pass!
       After nine years as a foreign correspondent, somebody 
     decided I was too happy in Tokyo and nagged me into going 
     home to be an editor. At first I did not like it, but I came 
     to enjoy editing--once I became the top editor. Rosenthal, 
     King of the Hill!
       When I stepped down from that job, I started all over again 
     as a times Op-Ed columnist, paid to express my own opinions. 
     If I had done that as a reporter or editor dealing with the 
     news, I would have broken readers' trust that the news would 
     be written and played straight.
       Straight does not mean dull. It means straight. If you 
     don't know what that means, you don't belong on this paper. 
     Clear?
       As a columnist, I discovered that there were passions in me 
     I had not been aware of, lying under the smatterings of 
     knowledge about everything that I had to collect as executive 
     editor--including hockey and debentures, for heaven's sake.
       Mostly the passions had to do with human rights, violations 
     of--like African women having their genitals mutilated to 
     keep them virgin, and Chinese and Tibetan political prisoners 
     screaming their throats raw.
       I wrote with anger at drug legitimizers and rationalizers, 
     helping make criminals and destroying young minds, all the 
     while with nauseating sanctimony.
       As a correspondent, it was the Arab states, not Israel, 
     that I wanted to cover. But they did not welcome resident 
     Jewish correspondents. As a columnist, I felt fear for the 
     whittling away of Israeli strength by the Israelis, and still 
     do.
       I wrote about the persecution of Christians in china. When 
     people, in astonishment, asked why, I replied, in 
     astonishment, because it is happening, because the world, 
     including American and European Christians and Jews, pays 
     almost no attention, and that plain disgusts me.
       The lassitude about Chinese Communist brutalities is part 
     of the most nasty American reality of this past half-century. 
     Never before have the U.S. government, business and public 
     been willing, eager really, to praise and enrich tyranny, to 
     crawl before it, to endanger our martial technology--and all 
     for the hope (vain) of trade profit.
       America is going through plump times. But economic strength 
     is making us weaker in head and soul. We accept back without 
     penalty a president who demeaned himself and us. We rain 
     money on a Politburo that must rule by terror lest it lose 
     its collective head.
       I cannot promise to change all that. But I can say that I 
     will keep trying and that I thank God for (a) making me an 
     American citizen, (b) giving me that college-boy job on The 
     Times, and (c) handing me the opportunity to make other 
     columnists kick themselves when they see what I am writing, 
     in this fresh start of my life.
                                  ____


                [From The New York Times, Nov. 5, 1999]


                  a.m. rosenthal of the new york times

       The departure of a valued colleague from The New York Times 
     is not, as a rule, occasion for editorial comment. But the 
     appearance today of A. M. Rosenthal's last column on the Op-
     Ed page requires an exception. Mr. Rosenthal's life and that 
     of this newspaper have been braided together over a 
     remarkable span--from World War II to the turning of the 
     millennium. His talent and passionate ambition carried him on 
     a personal journey from City College correspondent to 
     executive editor, and his equally passionate devotion to 
     quality journalism made him one of the principal architects 
     of the modern New York Times.
       Abe Rosenthal began his career at The Times as a 21-year-
     old cub reporter scratching for space in the metropolitan 
     report, and he ended it as an Op-Ed page columnist noted for 
     his commitment to political and religious freedom. In between 
     he served as a correspondent at the United Nations and was 
     based in three foreign countries, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 
     1960 for his reporting from Poland. He came home in 1963 to 
     be metropolitan editor. In that role and in higher positions, 
     he became a tireless advocate of opening the paper to the 
     kind of vigorous writing and deep reporting that 
     characterized his work. As managing editor and executive 
     editor, Abe Rosenthal was in charge of The Times's news 
     operations for a total of 17 years.
       Of his many contributions as an editor, two immediately 
     come to mind. One was his role in the publication of the 
     Pentagon Papers, the official documents tracing a quarter-
     century of missteps that entangled America in the Vietnam 
     War. Though hardly alone among Times editors, Mr. Rosenthal 
     was instrumental in mustering the arguments that led to the 
     decision by our then publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, to 
     publish the archive. That fateful decision helped illustrate 
     the futile duplicity of American policy in Vietnam, 
     strengthened the press's First Amendment guarantees and 
     reinforced The Times's reputation as a guardian of the public 
     interest.
       The second achievement, more institutional in nature, was 
     Mr. Rosenthal's central role in transforming The Times from a 
     two-section to a four-section newspaper with the introduction 
     of a separate business section and new themed sections like 
     SportsMonday, Weekend and Science Times. Though a journalist 
     of the old school, Abe Rosenthal grasped that such features 
     were necessary to broaden the paper's universe of readers. He 
     insisted only that the writing, editing and article selection 
     measure up to The Times's traditional standards.
       By his own admission, Abe Rosenthal could be ferocious in 
     his pursuit and enforcement of those standards. Sometimes, 
     indeed, debate about his management style competed for 
     attention with his journalistic achievements. But the scale 
     of this man's editorial accomplishments has come more fully 
     into focus since he left the newsroom in 1986. It is now 
     clear that he seeded the place with talent and helped ensure 
     that future generations of Times writers and editors would 
     hew to the principles of quality journalism
       Born in Canada, Mr. Rosenthal developed a deep love for New 
     York City and a fierce affection for the democratic values 
     and civil liberties of his adopted country. For the last 13 
     years, his lifelong interest in foreign affairs and his 
     compassion for victims of political, ethnic or religious 
     oppression in Tibet, China, Iran, Africa and Eastern Europe 
     formed the spine of his Op-Ed columns. His strong, 
     individualistic views and his bedrock journalistic 
     convictions have informed his work as reporter, editor and 
     columnist. His voice will continue to be a force on the 
     issues that engage him. And his commitment to journalism as 
     an essential element in a democratic society will abide as 
     part of the living heritage of the newspaper he loved and 
     served for more than 55 years.

                          ____________________