When Cuba’s corrupt and murderous dictator Fidel Castro died in 2016, The New York Times published a glowing tribute to the brutally repressive tyrant. But when NFL coach Sam Wyche passed away last week, the “paper of record” decided to lead its obituary with an obscure controversy the coach was involved in 30 years ago that few remember.
For The New York Times, Fidel Castro murdering tens of thousands of innocent Cubans, imprisoning hundreds of thousands, and enslaving millions was just a side note barely worth mentioning. But Sam Wyche barring a female reporter from an NFL locker room thirty years ago, well that’s an important event that should be the centerpiece of his obituary. This is what “fake news” looks like.
Beckett Adams has more at the Washington Examiner:
Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong got nicer obituaries from New York Times than late NFL coach
Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro got friendlier obituaries in the New York Times than the NFL coach who took the Cincinnati Bengals to Super Bowl XXIII.
I guess that makes sense. After all, say what you will about the men whose genocidal actions killed literally millions of people, but at least Castro and Chairman Mao never barred a female sports reporter from a men’s locker room.
“Sam Wyche, who led Cincinnati to the Super Bowl, dies at 74,” reads the headline to the obituary the New York Times published this week.
The subhead then adds of the late NFL coach: “He was praised as a hard-driving coach willing to go against the grain. He was also fined for keeping a female reporter out of the team’s locker room.”
The first paragraph of the New York Times’ Wyche obituary is also keen to remind readers that the late coach was a problematic person.
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The issue here is not that the Wyche obituary goes straight into highlighting what the author believes is a problematic chapter in the coach’s impressive career. Supposedly unflattering details are fair game. The problem is that the New York Times has a bizarre history of selectively praising and condemning the recently departed, emphasizing supposed transgressions for some while ignoring actual war crimes for others. Just look at how the same news organization marked the deaths of Castro and Mao.
“Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary who defied the U.S., died Friday. He was 90,” reads the headline to the New York Times’ Nov. 26, 2016, obituary for the Cuban tyrant.
The article’s opening lines state, “Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died on Friday. He was 90.”
Read the entire article HERE.
The New York Times evidently cannot go against its nature, just like the scorpion in the fable.