A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The New York Times cannot serve the truth and Power, too – so truth is jettisoned. While Barack Obama’s team deployed its imperial powers to help eject Egypt’s elected president from office, “the Times depicted the Obama administration as totally unruffled by the turmoil in Cairo – as if the U.S. had little stake in the outcome.”
The U.S. was a Passive Observer in Egypt – If You Believe the New York Times
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
“Susan Rice advised him that the coup was about to begin.”
One consumes U.S. corporate media at the risk of one’s sanity. Schizophrenia, for example, appears to be the permanent mental state at the New York Times , which cannot figure out which global reality is operative on any given day. Last week, the Times almost simultaneously painted a picture of two different and contradictory worlds – or, at least, two very different Obama administrations. On Friday, June 5, in the wake of the military coup against Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the Times depicted the Obama administration as totally unruffled by the turmoil in Cairo – as if the U.S. had little stake in the outcome. The Times headline proclaimed
By Saturday, July 6, the article had been replaced
Morsi rejected the offer. His top foreign policy advisor stepped out of the room to call the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, and tell her so. But, when he came back, he said he’d been on the phone with Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor, in Washington, who advised him that the coup was about to begin.
“If there are contradictions in the narrative, they can always be papered over with more lies in the next edition. ”
So, of course, the U.S. was deeply involved in the events that were swirling in Cairo – it would have been bizarre beyond belief if the superpower had, indeed, been “ambivalent” or “aloof” about the fate of the Arab world’s most populous country. What is amazing, is the ability of an organization as large as the New York Times to accommodate two opposite realities within its own pages, and pass off both as the truth, without shame or even visible embarrassment.
The New York Times and its corporate colleagues are not in the business of providing reliable information, but of rationalizing and sanitizing the behavior of those in power. If there are contradictions in the narrative, they can always be papered over with more lies in the next edition.
However, the lies told by the Times and its ilk cannot alter the reality of U.S. decline; they can only make Americans oblivious to the facts. The United States will get the kind of civilian front men it wants in Egypt: international corporate citizens like economist el-Hazem Beblawy, as interim prime minister, and Mohamed ElBaradei, the darling of the global rich, as a vice president. But the U.S. is also now dependent on Muslim fundamentalists as the foot soldiers of imperialism in Syria and North Africa, even as it double-crossed its Muslim Brotherhood friend, former president Morsi. And the Arab royals of the Persian Gulf have their own plans for the region. The superpower isn’t as super as it used to be – but you won’t find out why in the New York Times .
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
Two weeks before, the armed forces had fought off the highly coordinated attacks on six cities by about 12,000 jihadist and separatist fighters on April 25.
The Ruto regime claims a Pan-African mandate when it sends police to Haiti, but it attacks and arrests Pan-African delegates when they gather in Nairobi.
Communiqué issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba — Havana, May 7, 2026
In this week’s segment, we discuss a military attack carried out by Western-backed insurgents against the African nation Mali and the imperialist attempt to destabilize the Alliance of Sahel States.…
The Supreme Court ruling in the case Louisiana v. Callais eliminated a majority Black congressional district in the state of Louisiana and put such districts at risk across the country. Alanah Odoms…
