My Times : A Memoir of Dissent

Rating:
Summary: A Great Writer About The NY Times And His Times
Review: I bought Mr. Hess' book out of curiosity. I knew Mr. Hess from the days when he was a commentator on a local TV station before Rupert Murdoch bought the station and destroyed it. I expected to try the book and give up after 50 or so pages. Well, I couldn't put it down! Mr. Hess is a very good writer who never bores you.

I lived through the years that he writes about. He explains for me many of the things that I felt were not right about those years as well as the lack of reporting by The New York Times. I have to ask myself where my head was during that period.

I highly recommend this book. It gave me an eye-opening view of The New York Times, politicians, and the sad level of reporting in the United States. It should be required reading by reporters and would-be reporters.

Rating:
Summary: Stripping the Times Bare
Review: With a diamond-hard honesty rare, if not unique, among today's journalists, John L. Hess has written a memoir that deflates the gas-filled balloon that is the New York Times. A reporter and editor for the Times for 24 years, Hess shows how from the moment Adolph Ochs purchased the newspaper in 1896 it has cozied up to corrupt politicans and wealthy businessmen. In a blurb on the jacket, Kurt Vonnegut terms the newspaper a "mighty crowd-control engine," and indeed Hess provides many examples of the Times leading the way in suppressing news and information that might educate the public as to how they are being bilked. No one could read this book and still think that the Times is a liberal, much less an honest, newspaper.