Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

in 1976 or ’77, New York Times advertising and stock values began to drop very slightly. There were immediately articles about this in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, pointing out what was going on—Business Week in fact said, if the New York Times doesn’t realize that it’s a business, it’s not going to be in business any longer.54 Well, what was happening was that the Times had taken a mildly supportive editorial position on a New York tax bill that business was opposed to, and advertising started slipping off a little, stocks started dropping very slightly. And the Times then shifted its entire editorial staff: John Oakes went out, all the liberal editors went out, and a whole bunch of new people came in. All it took was a slight change on the stock market. Now, in that case it was a matter of such a slight deviation that you’d need a microscope to see it—suppose they took a major deviation, what would happen to their stock?