[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

<bullet> 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.<bullet>

____________________