The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a
conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
daily
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
tabloid
Tabloid may refer to:
* Tabloid journalism, a type of journalism
* Tabloid (newspaper format), a newspaper with compact page size
** Chinese tabloid
* Tabloid (paper size), a North American paper size
* Sopwith Tabloid, a biplane aircraft
* ''Ta ...
newspaper published in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established in 1801 by
Federalist
The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters called themselves ''Federalists''.
History Europe federation
In Europe, proponents of de ...
and
Founding Father
The following list of national founding figures is a record, by country, of people who were credited with establishing a state. National founders are typically those who played an influential role in setting up the systems of governance, (i.e. ...
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757July 12, 1804) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first United States secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795.
Born out of wedlock in Charlest ...
, and became a respected
broadsheet
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...
in the 19th century under the name ''New York Evening Post''. Its most famous 19th-century editor was
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the ''New York Evening Post''. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry ...
. In the mid-20th century, the paper was owned by
Dorothy Schiff
Dorothy Schiff (March 11, 1903 – August 30, 1989) was an American businesswoman who was the owner and then publisher of the ''New York Post'' for nearly 40 years. She was a granddaughter of financier Jacob Schiff. Schiff was interested in soci ...
, a devoted liberal, who developed its tabloid format. In 1976,
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
bought the ''Post'' for US$30.5 million.
Since 1993, the ''Post'' has been owned by Murdoch's
News Corp
News Corporation, stylized as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The second incarnation of the News Corporation (1980–2013), original News Corporation, it was formed ...
. Its distribution ranked
4th in the US in 2019.
History
19th century
The ''Post'' was founded by
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757July 12, 1804) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first United States secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795.
Born out of wedlock in Charlest ...
with about US$10,000 () from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the ''New-York Evening Post'', a
broadsheet
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...
. Hamilton's co-investors included other New York members of the
Federalist Party
The Federalist Party was a Conservatism in the United States, conservative political party which was the first political party in the United States. As such, under Alexander Hamilton, it dominated the national government from 1789 to 1801.
De ...
, such as
Robert Troup
Robert Troup (1757 – January 14, 1832) was a soldier in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New York. He participated in the Batt ...
and
Oliver Wolcott
Oliver Wolcott Sr. (November 20, 1726 December 1, 1797) was an American Founding Father and politician. He was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation as a representative of Connecticut, and t ...
, who were dismayed by the election of
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
as U.S. president and the rise in popularity of the
Democratic-Republican Party
The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party and also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early ...
.
[Emery & Emery, p. 74.] The meeting at which Hamilton first recruited investors for the new paper took place in
Archibald Gracie
Archibald Gracie (June 25, 1755 – April 11, 1829) was a Scottish-born shipping magnate and early American businessman and merchant in New York City and Virginia whose spacious home, Gracie Mansion, now serves as the residence of the Mayor of ...
's then-country weekend
villa
A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became s ...
that is now
Gracie Mansion
Archibald Gracie Mansion (commonly called Gracie Mansion) is the official residence of the Mayor of New York City. Built in 1799, it is located in Carl Schurz Park, at East End Avenue and 88th Street in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan. T ...
. Hamilton chose
William Coleman as his first editor.
[
The most famous 19th-century ''Evening Post'' editor was the poet and ]abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the ''New York Evening Post''. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry ...
. So well respected was the ''Evening Post'' under Bryant's editorship, it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
, in 1864.
William Leggett, in addition to literary and drama reviews, began to write political editorials. Leggett's espoused a fierce opposition to central banking
A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union,
and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central ba ...
and support for the organization of labor unions. He was a member of the Equal Rights Party. He became a co-owner and editor at the ''Post'' in 1831, eventually working as sole editor of the newspaper while Bryant traveled in Europe in 1834 through 1835.
Another co-owner of the paper was John Bigelow
John Bigelow Sr. (November 25, 1817 – December 19, 1911) was an American lawyer, statesman, and historian who edited the complete works of Benjamin Franklin and the first autobiography of Franklin taken from Franklin's previously lost original ...
. Born in Malden-on-Hudson, New York, John Bigelow, Sr. graduated in 1835 from Union College, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi
The Sigma Phi Society () was founded on the Fourth of March in the year 1827, on the campus of Union College as a part of the Union Triad in Schenectady, New York. It is the second Greek fraternal organization founded in the United States. Society and the Philomathean Society, and was admitted to the bar in 1838. From 1849 to 1861, he was one of the editors and co-owners of the ''Evening Post''.
Another owner with Bryan and Bigelow was Isaac Henderson.[Mayer-Sommer, Alan P. (May 2010). ]
o many controls; so little control: The case of Isaac Henderson, Navy Agent at New York, 1861-4
. ''Accounting History
''Accounting History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the history of accounting. The journal's editors-in-chief are Carolyn FowlerVictoria University of Wellington, Carolyn CorderyAston University and Laura MaranRMIT Un ...
''. 15 (2): 173–198. doi:10.1177/1032373209359324. ISSN
An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs ...
1032-3732. S2CID
Semantic Scholar is an artificial intelligence–powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI and publicly released in November 2015. It uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries ...
155059092. Retrieved July 15, 2020. This led to the involvement of his son Isaac Henderson
Isaac Henderson Jr. or Isaac Austin Henderson (February 13, 1850 – March 31, 1909) was an American newspaper publisher, novelist, and dramatist. He was associated with the ''New York Evening Post'' for ten years.
Early life
Henderson was b ...
Jr. who became the paper's publisher, stockholder, and member of its board in 1877, just five years after graduating from college.[" Isaac Austin Henderson", ''Catholic Encyclopedia'', vol. Volume 7, 1913, retrieved May 16, 2022] Henderson Sr.'s thirty year tenure with the Evening Post ended in 1879 when it was learned that he had defrauded Bryant the entire time. Henderson Jr. sold his interest in the newspaper in 1881.
In 1881, Henry Villard
Henry Villard (April 10, 1835 – November 12, 1900) was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway.
Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kin ...
took control of the ''Evening Post'', as well as ''The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'', which became the ''Post''s weekly edition. With this acquisition, the paper was managed by the triumvirate of Carl Schurz
Carl Schurz (; March 2, 1829 – May 14, 1906) was a German revolutionary and an American statesman, journalist, and reformer. He immigrated to the United States after the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and became a prominent member of the new ...
, Horace White
Horace White (October 7, 1865 – November 27, 1943) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He was the 37th Governor of New York from October 6, 1910 to December 31, 1910.
Life
He attended Syracuse Central High School, Cornell U ...
, and Edwin L. Godkin. When Schurz left the paper in 1883, Godkin became editor-in-chief. White became editor-in-chief in 1899, and remained in that role until his retirement in 1903.
In 1897, both publications passed to the management of Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard
Oswald Garrison Villard (March 13, 1872 – October 1, 1949) was an American journalist and editor of the ''New York Evening Post.'' He was a civil rights activist, and along with his mother, Fanny Villard, a founding member of the NAACP. I ...
, a founding member of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...
and the American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
.
1918 to 1976
Villard sold the paper in 1918, after widespread allegations of pro-German sympathies during World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
hurt its circulation. The new owner was Thomas Lamont, a senior partner in the Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
firm of J.P. Morgan & Co. Unable to stem the paper's financial losses, he sold it to a consortium
A consortium (plural: consortia) is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for ...
of 34 financial and reform political leaders, headed by Edwin Francis Gay
Edwin Francis Gay (October 27, 1867 – February 8, 1946) was an American economist, Professor of Economic History and first Dean of the Harvard Business School.Morgen Witzel (2004) "Edwin Gay (1867-1946)" in: ''Fifty key figures in management''. ...
, dean of the Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
, whose members included Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
. Conservative Cyrus H. K. Curtis
Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis (June 18, 1850June 7, 1933) was an American publisher of magazines and newspapers, including the ''Ladies' Home Journal'' and ''The Saturday Evening Post''.Ingham, John N. Biographical Dictionary of American Business ...
, publisher of the ''Ladies Home Journal
''Ladies' Home Journal'' was an American magazine last published by the Meredith Corporation. It was first published on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States. In 18 ...
'', purchased the ''Evening Post'' in 1924 and briefly turned it into a non-sensational tabloid
Tabloid may refer to:
* Tabloid journalism, a type of journalism
* Tabloid (newspaper format), a newspaper with compact page size
** Chinese tabloid
* Tabloid (paper size), a North American paper size
* Sopwith Tabloid, a biplane aircraft
* ''Ta ...
in 1933.[ In 1928, ]Wilella Waldorf
Wilella Louise Waldorf (November 22, 1899 – March 12, 1946) was an American drama critic and newspaper editor.
Early life
Wilella Louise Waldorf was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, the daughter of John Maurice Waldorf and Carrie Thr ...
became drama editor at the ''Evening Post''. She was one of the first women to hold an editorial role at the newspaper, During her time at the ''Evening Post'', she was the only female first-string critic on a New York newspaper. She was proceeded by Clara Savage Littledale, the first woman reporter ever hired by the ''Post'' and the editor of the woman's page in 1914.[Littledale, Clara Savage. Edited by Barbara Sicherman, 1934– and Carol Hurd Green, 1935–; in Notable American Women: The Modern Period (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 458–459]
In 1934, J. David Stern
Julius David Stern (April 1, 1886 – October 10, 1971) was an American newspaper publisher, best known as the liberal Democratic publisher of ''The Philadelphia Record'' from 1928 to 1947. He published other newspapers including the ''New York P ...
purchased the paper, changed its name to the ''New York Post'',[ and restored its broadsheet size and liberal perspective. For four months of that same year, future U.S. Senator from Alaska ]Ernest Gruening
Ernest Henry Gruening ( ; February 6, 1887 – June 26, 1974) was an American journalist and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, Gruening was the governor of the Alaska Territory from 1939 until 1953, and a United States Senator from A ...
was an editor of the paper.
In 1939, Dorothy Schiff
Dorothy Schiff (March 11, 1903 – August 30, 1989) was an American businesswoman who was the owner and then publisher of the ''New York Post'' for nearly 40 years. She was a granddaughter of financier Jacob Schiff. Schiff was interested in soci ...
purchased the paper. Her husband George Backer was named editor and publisher. Her second editor and third husband Ted Thackrey Theodore Olin Thackrey (November 17, 1901 – October 24, 1980) was an American journalist and publisher, best known as the editor of the ''New York Post'' in the 1940s, and the founder of the leftist New York City newspaper '' The Daily Compass''.
...
became co-publisher and co-editor with Schiff in 1942. Together, they recast the newspaper into its modern-day tabloid format. In 1948, ''The Bronx Home News
''The Bronx Home News'' (originally ''The Home News'') was a newspaper from The Bronx.
''The Bronx Home News'' was originally known as ''The Home News.'' It was founded in 1907 by James O'Flaherty, Jr. with its initial publication on January 26, ...
'' merged with it. In 1949, James Wechsler
James Arthur Wechsler (October 31, 1915 – September 11, 1983) was an American journalist who worked as a newspaper columnist, Washington bureau chief, editor-in-chief, and editorial page editor of The ''New York Post''. He was a prominent vo ...
became editor of the paper, running both the news and the editorial pages. In 1961, he turned over the news section to Paul Sann and stayed on as editorial page editor until 1980.
Under Schiff's tenure the ''Post'' was devoted to liberalism, supporting trade unions and social welfare, and featured some of the most popular columnists of the time, such as Joseph Cookman
Joseph Cookman (February 6, 1899 – August 12, 1944) was an American journalist, critic and a founder of The Newspaper Guild.
Life and career
Early life
Born in 1899, in Batley, England, Joseph was the oldest of three children born to John ...
, Drew Pearson, Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
, Max Lerner
Max Lerner (December 20, 1902 – June 5, 1992) was a Russian Empire-born American journalist and educator known for his controversial syndicated column.
Background
Maxwell Alan Lerner was born on December 20, 1902 in Minsk, in the Russian Empi ...
, Murray Kempton
James Murray Kempton (December 16, 1917 – May 5, 1997) was an American journalist and social and political commentator. He won a National Book Award in 1974 (category, "Contemporary Affairs") for ''The Briar Patch: The People of the State of ...
, Pete Hamill
Pete Hamill (born William Peter Hamill; June 24, 1935August 5, 2020) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and editor. During his career as a New York City journalist, he was described as "the author of columns that sought to capture th ...
, and Eric Sevareid
Arnold Eric Sevareid (November 26, 1912 – July 9, 1992) was an American author and CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of elite war correspondents who were hired by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow and nicknamed " Murrow's&n ...
, in addition to theatre critic Richard Watts Jr.
Richard Watts Jr. (1898–1981) was an American theatre critic.
Born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Watts was educated at Columbia University. He began his writing career as the film critic for the ''New York Herald Tribune'' before assuming the ...
and gossip
Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others; the act is also known as dishing or tattling.
Gossip is a topic of research in evolutionary psychology, which has found gossip to be an important means ...
columnist
A columnist is a person who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Column (newspaper), Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs. They take the fo ...
Earl Wilson.
1976 to present
In November 1976, it was announced that Australian Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
had bought the ''Post'' from Schiff with the intention she would remain as a consultant for five years. It later emerged that Murdoch bought the newspaper for US$30.5 million. The ''Post'' at this point was the only surviving afternoon daily in New York City and its circulation under Schiff had grown by two-thirds, particularly after the failure of the competing ''World Journal Tribune
The ''New York World Journal Tribune'' (''WJT'', and hence the nickname ''The Widget'') was an evening daily newspaper published in New York City from September 1966 until May 1967. The ''World Journal Tribune'' represented an attempt to save th ...
''; however, the rising cost of operating an afternoon daily in a city with worsening daytime traffic congestion, combined with mounting competition from expanded local radio and TV news cut into the ''Post''s profitability, though it made money from 1949 until Schiff's final year of ownership, when it lost $500,000. The paper has lost money ever since.[
In late October 1995, the ''Post'' announced plans to change its Monday through Saturday publication schedule and begin issuing a Sunday edition, which it last published briefly in 1989. On April 14, 1996, the ''Post'' delivered its new Sunday edition at the cost of 50 cents per paper by keeping its size to 120 pages.] The amount, significantly less than Sunday editions from ''The New York Daily News
The New York ''Daily News'', officially titled the ''Daily News'', is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, NJ. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in ta ...
'' and ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', was part of ''Post''s efforts "to find a niche in the nation's most competitive newspaper market".
Because of the institution of federal regulations limiting media cross-ownership after Murdoch's purchase of WNEW-TV (now WNYW
WNYW (channel 5) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Secaucus, New Jersey–licensed MyNetworkTV flagship W ...
) and four other stations from Metromedia
Metromedia (also often MetroMedia) was an American media company that owned radio and television stations in the United States from 1956 to 1986 and controlled Orion Pictures from 1988 to 1997. Metromedia was established in 1956 after the DuMo ...
to launch the Fox Broadcasting Company
The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with master control operations an ...
, Murdoch was forced to sell the paper for $37.6 million in 1988 to Peter S. Kalikow
Peter Stephen Kalikow (born December 1, 1942) is president of H. J. Kalikow & Company, LLC, a New York City-based real estate firm. He is a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), , a real-estate magnate with no news experience. In 1988, the ''Post'' hired Jane Amsterdam
Jane Ellen Amsterdam (born June 15, 1951) is a former American magazine and newspaper editor. After successive magazine editorships during the 1970s, she joined ''The Washington Post'' as section editor. She later became founding editor of ''Manh ...
, founding editor of ''Manhattan, inc.
''Manhattan, inc.'' was an American monthly magazine published in New York City. From 1984 to 1990 it profiled the rich and powerful figures of New York City's business world, and featured stories by prominent freelancers such as John Seabrook, Ron ...
'', as its first female editor, and within six months the paper had toned down the sensationalist headlines. Within a year, Amsterdam was forced out by Kalikow, who reportedly told her "credible doesn't sell ... Your big scoops are great, but they don't sell more papers."
When Kalikow declared bankruptcy in 1993,[ the paper was temporarily managed by ]Steven Hoffenberg
Steven Jude Hoffenberg (January 12, 1945 – August 2022) was an American businessman and fraudster. He was the founder, CEO, president, and chairman of Towers Financial Corporation, a debt collection agency, which was later discovered to be a ...
,[ a financier who later pleaded guilty to ]securities
A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any for ...
fraud
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...
, and for two weeks by Abe Hirschfeld
Abraham Jacob Hirschfeld (December 20, 1919 – August 9, 2005) was an American real estate investor, Broadway producer and political candidate from New York City. He was the owner of several buildings in Manhattan. He served as treasurer for the ...
, who made his fortune building parking garages. After a staff revolt against the Hoffenberg-Hirschfeld partnership, which included publication of an issue whose front page featured the iconic masthead picture of founder Alexander Hamilton with a single teardrop running down his cheek, the ''Post'' was again purchased in 1993 by Murdoch's News Corporation. This came about after numerous political officials, including Democratic governor of New York Mario Cuomo
Mario Matthew Cuomo (, ; June 15, 1932 – January 1, 2015) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 52nd governor of New York for three terms, from 1983 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party, Cuomo previously served as t ...
, persuaded the Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
to grant Murdoch a permanent waiver from the cross-ownership rules that had forced him to sell the paper five years earlier. Without that FCC ruling, the paper would have shut down.[ In December 2012, Murdoch announced that Jesse Angelo had been appointed publisher.
Various branches of Murdoch's media groups, ]21st Century Fox
Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., doing business as 21st Century Fox (21CF), was an American multinational mass media corporation that was based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was one of the two companies formed on June 28, 2013, f ...
's Endemol Shine North America
Endemol Shine North America is the American division of Endemol Shine Group that was founded on March 15, 2002 as a merger of Shine Americas, Shine USA, and Reveille Productions.
Endemol Shine North America produces and distributes scripted and ...
and News Corp
News Corporation, stylized as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The second incarnation of the News Corporation (1980–2013), original News Corporation, it was formed ...
' New York Post created a ''Page Six TV'' nightly gossip show based and named after the Post's gossip section. A test run in July would occur on Fox Television Stations
Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS; alternately Fox Television Stations Group, LLC), is a group of television stations located within the United States, which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Fox Corp ...
. The show garnered the highest ratings of a nationally syndicated entertainment newsmagazine in a decade when it debuted in 2017. With ''Page Six TV''s success, the ''New York Post'' formed New York Post Entertainment, a scripted and unscripted television entertainment division, in July 2018 with Troy Searer as president.
In 2017, the ''New York Post'' was reported to be the preferred newspaper of U.S. president Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
, who maintains frequent contact with its owner Murdoch. The ''Post'' had promoted Trump's celebrity since at least the 1980s. In October 2020, the ''Post'' endorsed Trump for re-election, citing his "promises made, promises kept" policy. Weeks after Trump was defeated and he sought to overturn the election results, the ''Post'' published a front-page editorial asking the president to "stop the insanity", stating that he was "cheering for an undemocratic coup", commenting: "If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match." The ''Post'' characterized Trump attorney Sidney Powell
Sidney Katherine Powell (born 1955) is an American lawyer, attorney, former United States Attorney, federal prosecutor, and conspiracy theorist who attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, attempted to overturn the 202 ...
as a "crazy person", and his former national security advisor Michael Flynn
Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and conspiracy theorist who was the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned in light of ...
’s suggestion to declare martial law as "tantamount to treason."
Around March 2021, Keith Poole, a top editor at '' The Sun'', another Murdoch-owned tabloid, was appointed as the editor in chief of the ''New York Post'' Group. Around the same time, at least eight journalists had left the paper.[
]
Content, coverage, and controversies
The ''Post'' has been criticized since the beginning of Murdoch's ownership for sensationalism
In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emotion ...
, blatant advocacy
Advocacy is an Action (philosophy), activity by an individual or advocacy group, group that aims to influence decision making, decisions within political, economic, and social institutions. Advocacy includes activities and publications to infl ...
, and conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
bias
Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, ...
. In 1980, the ''Columbia Journalism Review
The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...
'' stated that the "''New York Post'' is no longer merely a journalistic problem. It is a social problem—a force for evil."['']Columbia Journalism Review
The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...
'', volume 18, number 5 (Jan/Feb 1980), pp. 22–23.
The ''Post'' has been accused of contorting its news coverage to suit Murdoch's business needs, in particular avoiding subjects which could be unflattering to the government of the People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, where Murdoch has invested heavily in satellite television.
In a 2019 article in ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', Ken Auletta
Kenneth B. Auletta (born April 23, 1942) is an American author, a political columnist for the New York Daily News, and media critic for ''The New Yorker''.
Early life and education
The son of an Italian American father and a Jewish American mo ...
wrote that Murdoch "doesn't hesitate to use the ''Post'' to belittle his business opponents", and went on to say that Murdoch's support for Edward I. Koch
Edward Irving Koch ( ; December 12, 1924February 1, 2013) was an American politician, lawyer, political commentator, film critic, and television personality. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and was mayo ...
while he was running for mayor of New York "spilled over onto the news pages of the ''Post'', with the paper regularly publishing glowing stories about Koch and sometimes savage accounts of his four primary opponents."
According to ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
's campaign team credited Murdoch and the Post for his victory in New York in the 1980 United States presidential election
The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory. ...
. Reagan later "waived a prohibition against owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market", allowing Murdoch to continue to control the ''New York Post'' and ''The Boston Herald
The ''Boston Herald'' is an American daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston, Massachusetts, and its surrounding area. It was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States. It has been awarded eight Pulit ...
'' while expanding into television.
In 1997, ''Post'' executive editor Steven D. Cuozzo
Steven D. Cuozzo (born January 17, 1950) is an American writer, newspaper editor, restaurant critic, real estate columnist, and op-ed contributor for the ''New York Post''.
Early life
Steven D. Cuozzo was born on January 17, 1950, in Ocean Hill, ...
responded to criticism by saying that the ''Post'' "broke the elitist media stranglehold on the national agenda."
In a 2004 survey conducted by Pace University
Pace University is a private university with its main campus in New York City and secondary campuses in Westchester County, New York. It was established in 1906 by the brothers Homer St. Clair Pace and Charles A. Pace as a business school. Pac ...
, the ''Post'' was rated the least-credible major news outlet in New York, and the only news outlet to receive more responses calling it "not credible" than credible (44% not credible to 39% credible).
The ''Post'' commonly publishes news reports based entirely on reporting from other sources without independent corroboration. In January 2021, the paper forbade the use of CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
, MSNBC
MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...
, ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', and ''The New York Times'' as sole sources for such stories.
Style
Murdoch imported the tabloid journalism
Tabloid journalism is a popular style of largely sensationalist journalism (usually dramatized and sometimes unverifiable or even blatantly false), which takes its name from the tabloid newspaper format: a small-sized newspaper also known as ...
style of many of his Australian and British newspapers, such as '' The Sun'', which remains one of the highest selling daily newspapers in the United Kingdom. This style was typified by the ''Post''s famous headlines such as "Headless body in topless bar" (written by Vincent Musetto
Vincent Musetto (May 1941 – June 9, 2015) was an American newspaper editor and film critic for the ''New York Post''. He retired from the ''New York Post'' in 2011. He was best known for having written the headline ''Headless body in topless ...
). In its 35th-anniversary edition, ''New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
'' magazine listed this as one of the greatest headlines. It also has five other ''Post'' headlines in its "Greatest Tabloid Headlines" list.
The ''Post'' has also been criticized for incendiary front-page headlines, such as one referring to the co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group
The Iraq Study Group (ISG) also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission was a ten-person bipartisan panel appointed on March 15, 2006, by the United States Congress, that was charged with assessing the situation in Iraq and the US-led Iraq War and ...
—James Baker
James Addison Baker III (born April 28, 1930) is an American attorney, diplomat and statesman. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 10th White House Chief of Staff and 67th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President ...
and Lee Hamilton
Lee Herbert Hamilton (born April 20, 1931) is an American politician and lawyer from Indiana. He is a former member of the United States House of Representatives and a former member of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council. A member of the ...
—as " surrender monkeys", and another on the murder of Hasidic
Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of contem ...
landlord Menachem Stark
Menachem ("Max") Stark (July 15, 1974 – January 3, 2014) was an American real estate developer whose badly burned body was found smoldering in a dumpster outside a gas station in Great Neck, New York.
The cousins Erskine Felix, Kendel Felix, ...
reading "Slumlord found burned in dumpster. Who didn’t want him dead?"
Page Six
The gossip section Page Six was created by James Brady
James Scott Brady (August 29, 1940 – August 4, 2014) was an American public official who served as assistant to the U.S. president and the seventeenth White House Press Secretary, serving under President Ronald Reagan. In 1981, Brady b ...
and is currently edited by Emily Smith Emily Smith may refer to:
*Emily Smith (author), English children's author
*Emily Smith (gymnast) (born 1986), Canadian trampolinist
*Emily Smith (singer) (born 1981), Scottish folk singer
*Emily Smith (field hockey) (born 1992), Australian field h ...
. Columnist Richard Johnson Richard or Dick Johnson may refer to:
Academics
* Dick Johnson (academic) (1929–2019), Australian academic
* Richard C. Johnson (1930–2003), professor of electrical engineering
* Richard A. Johnson, artist and professor at the University of ...
edited Page Six for 25 years. February 2006 saw the debut of ''Page Six Magazine'', distributed free inside the paper. In September 2007, it started to be distributed weekly in the Sunday edition of the paper. In January 2009, publication of ''Page Six Magazine'' was cut to four times a year.
Beginning with the 2017–18 television season, a daily syndicated series known as ''Page Six TV'' came to air, produced by 20th Television
20th Television (formerly 20th Century Fox Television, 20th Century-Fox Television, and TCF Television Productions, Inc.) is an American television production company that is a division of Disney Television Studios, part of The Walt Disney Compa ...
, which was part of the 21st Century Fox
Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., doing business as 21st Century Fox (21CF), was an American multinational mass media corporation that was based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was one of the two companies formed on June 28, 2013, f ...
side of Rupert Murdoch's holdings, and Endemol Shine North America
Endemol Shine North America is the American division of Endemol Shine Group that was founded on March 15, 2002 as a merger of Shine Americas, Shine USA, and Reveille Productions.
Endemol Shine North America produces and distributes scripted and ...
. The show was originally hosted by comedian John Fugelsang
John Joseph Fugelsang (born September 3, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, writer, television host, political commentator and television personality.
Early life and education
Fugelsang was born on Long Island, New York. Of Danish, German, a ...
, with contributions from ''Page Six'' and ''Post'' writers (including Carlos Greer), along with regular panelists Elizabeth Wagmeister
Elizabeth Ivy Wagmeister (born July 20, 1990) is an American journalist, reporter, and writer. She is the chief correspondent at ''Variety'', and co-host of “Actors on Actors,” produced by PBS SoCal and Variety Media. She was named onto ' ...
from ''Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' and Bevy Smith
Beverly "Bevy" Smith (born November 2, 1966) is an American television personality and business woman. She is best known for her work as a co-host on Bravo's fashion-themed talk show ''Fashion Queens''. Smith is the creator of "Dinner with Bevy", ...
. In March 2018, Fugelsang left the show, with the expectation that a new host would be named, though by the end of the season, it was announced that Wagmeister, Greer and Smith would be retained as equal co-hosts.
In April 2019, it was confirmed that the series would end after May 2019; by then, it was last in average viewership out of all U.S. syndicated newsmagazine programs, behind the similar tabloid-inspired program ''Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
TV''.
Erroneous reporting and defamation cases arising from bombings
Richard Jewell
Richard Allensworth Jewell (born Richard White; December 17, 1962 – August 29, 2007) was an American security guard and law enforcement officer who alerted police during the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlant ...
, a security guard wrongly suspected of being the Centennial Olympic Park bomber, sued the ''Post'' in 1998, alleging that the newspaper had libeled him in several articles, headlines, photographs, and editorial cartoon
A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine a ...
s. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska
Loretta A. Preska (born January 7, 1949) is an American federal judge who is currently a senior U.S. District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Born in Albany, Preska received law degrees from F ...
largely denied the ''Post''s motion to dismiss, allowing the suit to proceed. The ''Post'' subsequently settled the case for an undisclosed sum.
In several stories on the day of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing
The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, w ...
, the ''Post'' inaccurately reported that twelve people had died, and that a Saudi Saudi may refer to:
* Saudi Arabia
* Saudis, people from Saudi Arabia
* Saudi culture, the culture of Saudi Arabia
* House of Saud
The House of Saud ( ar, آل سُعُود, ʾĀl Suʿūd ) is the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia. It is c ...
national had been taken into custody as a suspect, which was denied by Boston Police. Three days later, on April 18, the ''Post'' featured a full-page cover photo of two young men at the Boston marathon with the headline " Bag Men" (a term that implies criminality) and erroneously claimed they were being sought by police.[ The men, Salaheddin Barhoum and Yassine Zaimi, were not considered suspects, and the ''Post'' was heavily criticized for the apparent accusation.] Then-editor Col Allan
Colin "Col" Allan (born 1953) is an Australian journalist. He served as the editor in chief of ''The Daily Telegraph'' and ''The Sunday Telegraph'' of Sydney, Australia and served as editor in chief of ''The New York Post'' from 2001 to 2016.Bla ...
defended the story, saying they had not referred to the men as "suspects".[ The two men later sued the ''Post'' for ]libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
, and the suit was settled in 2014 on undisclosed terms.
Accusations of racism
In 1989, the ''Post'' described the five black and Latino teenagers arrested following the rape and assault of a white woman in Central Park as coming "from a world of crack, welfare, guns, knives, indifference, and ignorance ..a land of no fathers", and having set out "to smash, hurt, rob, stomp, rape" people who were "rich" and "white". The teenagers’ convictions were later overturned after the confession of a serial rapist, which was confirmed with DNA evidence.
In 2006, several Asian-American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...
advocacy groups protested the use of the headline "Wok This Way" for a ''Post'' article about U.S. president George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
's meeting with Hu Jintao
Hu Jintao (born 21 December 1942) is a Chinese politician who served as the 16–17th general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 2002 to 2012, the 6th president of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 2003 to 2013, an ...
, President of the People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
In 2009, the ''Post'' ran a cartoon by Sean Delonas
Sean Delonas is an American political cartoonist and author whose work was for 23 years published by the ''New York Post'' as part of their Page Six content. His cartoons are currently syndicated worldwide by Cagle Cartoons.
Life and career
Del ...
of a white police officer saying to another white police officer who has just shot a chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
on the street: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill
In economics, stimulus refers to attempts to use monetary policy or fiscal policy (or stabilization policy in general) to stimulate the economy. Stimulus can also refer to monetary policies such as lowering interest rates and quantitative easin ...
." The cartoon dually referred to U.S. president Obama and to the recent rampage of Travis, a former chimpanzee actor. It was criticized as racist
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
,[Roland S. Martin]
Commentary: NY Post cartoon is racist and careless
, CNN, February 18, 2009, Accessed February 19, 2009. with civil rights activist Al Sharpton
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (born October 3, 1954) is an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, talk show host and politician. Sharpton is the founder of the National Action Network. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic ...
calling the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys." The ''Post'' defended itself by stating that the cartoon was deliberately misinterpreted by its critics.
The Public Enemy
"Public enemy" is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society, though the phrase had been used for centuries to describe p ...
song "A Letter to the ''New York Post''" from their album '' Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Black'' is a complaint about what they believed to be negative and inaccurate coverage blacks received from the paper.
In 2019, the ''Post'' displayed an image of the World Trade Center in flames targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (born October 4, 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2019. She is a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party. Before her election to Congress, Omar served in the Minnesota ...
, one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. A quote by Representative Omar was included. The Yemeni American Merchant Association announced a formal boycott of the paper and ten of the most prominent Yemeni bodega owners in New York agreed to stop selling the paper. As of June 2019, the boycott had extended to over 900 individual stores. Yemeni-Americans own about half of the 10,000 bodegas in New York City.
In 2020, the ''Post'' published an article with the headline "Suspected teen gunman Kyle Rittenhouse
Kyle Howard Rittenhouse (born January 3, 2003) is an American known for shooting three men, two fatally, during the civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020 when he was 17 years old. At his trial in November 2021, a jury found Rittenh ...
spotted cleaning Kenosha
Kenosha () is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the seat of Kenosha County. Per the 2020 census, the population was 99,986 which made it the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Kenosh ...
graffiti before shooting". In response, actress Viola Davis
Viola Davis (; born August 11, 1965) is an American actress and producer. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Tony Awards, she is the only African-American to achieve the Triple Crow ...
posted a photo on Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
comparing the headline with the ''Post'''s 2012 headline about Trayvon Martin
Trayvon Benjamin Martin (February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012) was a 17-year-old African-American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic American. Martin had accompa ...
, which read: "Trayvon Martin had traces of marijuana
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...
in system at time of death, autopsy reveals." The caption stated: "We need to boycott publications that continue to criminalize innocent eople of colorafter they have been murdered by the law!!!"
Hunter Biden laptop story
On October 14, 2020, three weeks before the 2020 United States presidential election
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and the junior U.S. senator from California Kamala Ha ...
, the ''Post'' published a front-page story purporting to reveal "smoking gun" emails recovered from a laptop
A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...
abandoned by Hunter Biden
Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American attorney who is the second son of President of the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife Neilia Hunter Biden. He is also a hedge fund, venture capital, and privat ...
at a computer repair store in Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington ( Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina ...
. The only sources named in the story were Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...
and strategy advisor Steve Bannon
Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump during t ...
. The story came under heavy criticism from other news sources and anonymous reporters at the ''Post'' itself for "flimsy" reporting, including questions about the reliability of its sourcing and the lack of outreach to either Hunter Biden or the Joe Biden campaign for pre-publication comment. More than fifty former U.S. intelligence officials signed an open letter stating that they were "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role" in the story, but emphasized that "we do not know if the emails... are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement." The Director of National Intelligence
The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a senior, cabinet-level United States government official, required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to serve as executive head of the United States Intelligence Commu ...
John Ratcliffe John Ratcliffe or John Ratcliff may refer to:
Politicians
*John Ratcliffe (American politician), former Director of National Intelligence, former congressman in Texas' 4th Congressional District, and former U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of ...
said during a Fox News interview that "the intelligence community doesn’t believe that he emails originated from Russian disinformation
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
because there is no intelligence that supports that." Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist, had previously made public assertions that contradicted professional intelligence assessments.
The FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
took possession of the laptop in late 2019 and reported that they had "nothing to add" to Ratcliffe's remarks concerning Russian disinformation. ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported days after the ''Post'' story that "no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation." Amid mounting pressure, the FBI wrote to Senator Ron Johnson
Ronald Harold Johnson (born April 8, 1955) is an American accountant, businessman, and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Wisconsin, a seat he has held since 2011. A Republican, Johnson was first elected to the U.S. Se ...
and suggested it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop. It was unclear what the Justice Department officials knew about the FBI investigation at the time. Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
reported that the laptop was seized as part of an investigation into money laundering, but did not make clear if the investigation involved Hunter Biden. ''The New York Times'' reported in December 2020 that investigators had initially examined possible money laundering by Hunter Biden but did not find evidence to justify further investigation.
As of 2022, '' Vox'' reported that no evidence had emerged "that the laptop's leak was a Russian plot." In March 2022, ''The New York Times'' and ''The Washington Post'' confirmed that some of the emails were authentic. In April 2022, the editorial board of ''The Washington Post'' wrote the Biden laptop story provided "an opportunity for a reckoning" by American media to ensure "accurate and relevant" stories are covered. They noted that:"The investigation adds new details and confirms old ones about the ways in which Joe Biden's family has profited from trading overseas on his name — something for which the president deserves criticism for tacitly condoning. What it does not do, despite some conservatives' insistence otherwise, is prove that President Biden acted corruptly."
Joan Donovan
Joan Donovan (born 1979/1980) is an American social scientist researcher and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, an affiliate at Data and Society, and is research director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project ...
, the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, said that "This is arguably the most well-known story the ''New York Post'' has ever published and it endures as a story because it was initially suppressed by social media companies and jeered by politicians and pundits alike".
After the 2016 election, social media companies were criticized for allowing false political information to proliferate on their platforms, including from Russian intelligence, suggesting it may have assisted Trump's election. Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
initially limited the spread of the ''Post'' story on their platforms, citing supposed policies restricting the sharing of hacked material and personal information; Twitter also temporarily suspended the ''Posts account. This decision proved controversial, with many critics, including Republican senator Ted Cruz
Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas from ...
, deriding it as censorship. NPR reported that Twitter initially declined to comment how it reached this decision or what evidence it had supporting this. ''The New York Times'' initially reported that the story had been pitched to other outlets, including Fox News, which declined to publish it due to concerns over its reliability.
The ''Times'' also reported that two writers at the ''Post'' declined to have their names attached to the story, and ultimately the story only listed two bylines: Gabrielle Fonrouge, who "had little to do with the reporting or writing of the article" and was unaware of her byline prior to the story's publication, and Emma-Jo Morris, a former producer for Fox News's ''Hannity
''Hannity'' is an American conservative television political talk program on Fox News hosted by Sean Hannity. Episodes air live at 9:00 p.m. from Monday through Thursday, while episodes that air on Fridays are pre-recorded, with a repeat ...
'' who had no prior bylines with the ''Post''. In response to the concerns about the veracity of the article, former ''Post'' editor-in-chief and current advisor Colin Allan responded in an email to the ''Times'' that “the senior editors at ''The Post'' made the decision to publish the Biden files after several days’ hard work established its merit." Giuliani said he gave the story to the ''Post'' because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out." The accuracy of the Hunter Biden laptop story resulted in increased scrutiny of Twitter and Facebook limiting the spread of the story by conservatives, who argued that their actions "proves Big Tech's bias".
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
reported on November 1 that "no evidence has emerged that the documents are the product of Russian disinformation, as some experts initially suggested, but many questions remain about how the materials got into the hands of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has met with Russian agents in his effort to dig up dirt on Biden." CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
reported that Giuliani and other Trump allies met with Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach
Andrii Leonidovych Derkach ( uk, Андрій Леонідович Деркач; born 19 August 1967) is a Ukrainian politician and businessman. He has been a member of the Ukrainian Parliament from 1998 to January 2023, serving seven terms, wi ...
, whom the U.S. government later assessed was a longtime Russian intelligence agent, sanctioning him for distributing disinformation about Joe Biden. Earlier in September 2020, the ''New York Post'' itself reported that Derkach was a "pro-Russian member of Kiev's parliament" and stated "Derkach also met with former New York Mayor Giuliani in Kiev in December last year to dig up dirt on Biden."
Other controversies
In 1997, a national news story concerning Rebecca Sealfon
The Scripps National Spelling Bee (formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and commonly called the National Spelling Bee) is an annual spelling bee held in the United States. The competition began in 1925, and was initially organiz ...
's victory in the Scripps National Spelling Bee
The Scripps National Spelling Bee (formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and commonly called the National Spelling Bee) is an annual spelling bee held in the United States. The bee is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W. Scri ...
circulated. Sealfon was sponsored by the '' Daily News'', a direct in-market competitor. The ''Post'' published a picture of her but altered the photograph to remove the name of the ''Daily News'' as printed on a placard she was wearing.
In 2004, the ''Post'' ran a full-page cover photo of 19-year-old New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
student Diana Chien jumping to her death from the twenty-fourth story of a building.
In 2012, the ''Post'' was criticized for running a photograph of a man struggling to climb back up onto a subway
Subway, Subways, The Subway, or The Subways may refer to:
Transportation
* Subway, a term for underground rapid transit rail systems
* Subway (underpass), a type of walkway that passes underneath an obstacle
* Subway (George Bush Interconti ...
platform as a train approached, along with the headline "DOOMED." Facing questions over why he didn't help the man, the photographer claimed he was not strong enough and had been attempting to use the flash on his camera to alert the driver of the oncoming train.
In December 2020, the ''Post'' published a story outing an emergency medical technician
An emergency medical technician (EMT), also known as an ambulance technician, is a health professional that provides emergency medical services. EMTs are most commonly found working in ambulances. In English-speaking countries, paramedics are ...
who made additional income from posting explicit photographs of herself to the subscription website OnlyFans
OnlyFans is an internet content subscription service based in London, United Kingdom. The service is used primarily by sex workers who produce pornography, but it also hosts the work of other content creators, such as physical fitness experts ...
. The publication was widely criticized on social media as "doxxing
Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...
someone simply for trying to earn a living."
In April 2021, Facebook blocked users from sharing a ''Post'' story about home real estate purchases by Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...
co-founder Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac (née Cullors-Brignac; born June 20, 1983) is an American activist, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, artist and writer. Cullors created the hashtag in 2013 and has written and spoken widely abo ...
, saying that it violated its privacy and personal information policy. In response, the ''Post'' argued that it was an arbitrary decision since other newspapers, magazines and websites highlight the real estate purchases of high status individuals. News Media Alliance
The News Media Alliance (formerly known as the Newspaper Association of America until 2016[Kamala Harris
Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th vice president of the United States. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well ...]
were being distributed to migrant children at an intake facility in Long Beach, California. Fox News then published a story about the matter, followed by numerous Republican politicians and pundits commenting on it, in some cases speculating that taxpayers were funding the supposed book handouts for Harris's personal profit. Responding to questions from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy
Peter James Doocy (born July 21, 1987) is an American journalist and a White House correspondent for Fox News.
Early life and education
Doocy is the eldest child of Steve Doocy and Kathy Gerrity. His father is a co-host of the morning show ' ...
, White House press secretary Jen Psaki
Jennifer Rene Psaki (; born c. 1978) is an American television political analyst who currently works for MSNBC. Previously, she was a political advisor who served under both the Obama and Biden administrations. Immediately prior to working for ...
expressed no knowledge of the matter; the ''Post'' then published a new story headlined "Psaki has no answers when asked about Harris' book being given to child migrants." Four days after the original publication, the ''Post'' replaced the story with a new version clarifying that just one Harris book had been donated by a community member but maintained that it was an "open-arms gesture by the Biden administration", though there was no evidence of the administration's involvement. Laura Italiano, the author of the story, resigned that day, asserting she had been "ordered" to write it.
In October 2022, a rogue employee of the ''Post'' published a series of racist, violent and sexually explicit headlines on its Twitter account. Shortly after these headlines released, a spokesperson for the ''Post'' stated that the "vile and reprehensible" headlines were the result of a hack
Hack may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Games
* ''Hack'' (Unix video game), a 1984 roguelike video game
* ''.hack'' (video game series), a series of video games by the multimedia franchise ''.hack''
Music
* ''Hack'' (album), a 199 ...
and were immediately removed, and that the incident was under investigation. The spokesperson later stated that "the unauthorized conduct was committed by an employee, and the employee has been terminated."
"Oldest" claim
The 1801-established newspaper describes itself as the oldest continuously published daily U.S. newspaper. However, the ''New York Post'' halted publication during strikes in 1958 and in 1978. Therefore, ''The Providence Journal
''The Providence Journal'', colloquially known as the ''ProJo'', is a daily newspaper serving the metropolitan area of Providence, Rhode Island, and is the largest newspaper in Rhode Island. The newspaper was first published in 1829. The newspape ...
'' is understood as the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the U.S. While it began daily publication on July 21, 1829 (28 years after the New York Post), it has not halted daily publication once since its founding, unlike the New York Daily Post.
''The Hartford Courant
The ''Hartford Courant'' is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is considered to be the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. A morning newspaper serving most of the state north of New Haven ...
'', generally understood to be the oldest continuously published newspaper in America, was founded in 1764; however, it was founded as a semi-weekly paper and did not begin publishing daily until 1836, 35 years after the ''New York Post'' began doing so, and cannot be considered a true challenge to the ''New York Post'' claim as "the nation's oldest continuously published daily newspaper", despite it being an older continuously published paper than the ''New York Post''. ''The New Hampshire Gazette
''The New Hampshire Gazette'' is a non-profit, alternative, bi-weekly newspaper published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its editors claim that the paper, which all but disappeared into other publications until the late 1900s, is the oldest news ...
'' trademarked its claim of being ''The Nation's Oldest Newspaper'', as it was founded in 1756; however, it was founded as a weekly paper and since the 1890s has only published on the weekends. To date, ''The New Hampshire Gazette'' has never published daily and therefore cannot be considered a challenger to the ''Providence Journal'' and ''New York Post'' claims to being the nation's oldest continuously published daily newspaper.
Operations
The 1906 Old New York Evening Post Building
The Old ''New York Evening Post'' Building is the former office and printing plant of the ''New York Evening Post'' newspaper located at 20 Vesey Street between Church Street and Broadway in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. ...
is a designated landmark. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1977. It occupied the building until 1926 when a new main office for the ''Post'' was established at 75 West Street in the New York Evening Post Building
The New York Evening Post Building, also known as the New York Post Building or the Post Towers, is a historic commercial building located in Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York (state), New York. The building was designed by architect Ho ...
. The building remained in use by the ''Post'' until 1970, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 2000. In 1967, Schiff bought 210 South Street, the former headquarters of the ''New York Journal American
:''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal''
The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...
'', which closed a year earlier. The building became an instantly recognizable symbol for the ''Post''. In 1995, owner Rupert Murdoch relocated ''Post''s news and business offices to the News Corporation headquarters tower at 1211 Avenue of the Americas
Sixth Avenue – also known as Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers, p.24 – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown". It is commercial ...
(Sixth Avenue) in midtown Manhattan. The ''Post'' shares this building with Fox News Channel
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
and ''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', both of which are also owned by Murdoch. Both the ''Post'' and the New York City edition of the ''Journal'' are printed at a state-of-the-art printing plant in the borough of The Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
.
The Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union The Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union is an independent union for employees of newspapers based in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
In 2009, for the first time in its history, The union affiliated with another, choosing the International B ...
has been delivering the newspaper "since the early 1900s."
Website
In 1996, the ''New York Post'' launched an Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
version of the paper.
Decider
The ''New York Post'' launched the website ''Decider'' in 2014 to provide recommendations for streaming services. The website's first and only editor-in-chief is Mark Graham. Graham said that this service would "strike a nice balance between visual imagery and the written word, and come from a place of pop culture omniscience."
In 2019, Decider signed a deal with app provider ''Reelgood'' to provide Reelgood widget links at the bottom of each review and would channel some advertising revenue to both companies. The value of the deal was not disclosed.
Sales
The daily circulation of the ''Post'' decreased in the final years of the Schiff era from 700,000 around 1967–68, to approximately 517,000 by the time she sold the paper to Murdoch in 1976. Under Murdoch, the ''Post'' launched a morning edition to compete directly with the rival tabloid '' Daily News'' in 1978, prompting the ''Daily News'' to retaliate with a PM edition called ''Daily News Tonight''. But the PM edition suffered the same problems with worsening daytime traffic that the afternoon ''Post'' experienced and the ''Daily News'' ultimately folded ''Tonight'' in 1981. By that time, circulation of the all-day ''Post'' soared to a peak of 962,000, the bulk of the increase attributed to its morning edition (It set a single-day record of 1.1 million on August 11, 1977, with the news of the arrest the night before of David Berkowitz
David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco, June 1, 1953), also known as the Son of Sam and .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who pleaded guilty to eight shootings that began in New York City on July 29, 1976.
Berkowitz ...
, the infamous "Son of Sam" serial killer who terrorized New York for much of that summer). However, the ''Post'' lost so much money that Murdoch decided to shut down the ''Post''s PM edition in 1982, turning the ''Post'' into a morning-only daily.
The ''Post'' and the ''Daily News'' have been locked in a bitter circulation war ever since. A resurgence during the first decade of the 21st century saw ''Post'' circulation rise to 724,748 by April 2007, achieved partly by lowering the price from 50 cents to 25 cents. In October 2006, the ''Post'' surpassed the ''Daily News'' in circulation for the first time, only to see the ''Daily News'' overtake its rival a few months later. In 2010, the ''Post''s daily circulation was 525,004, just 10,000 behind the ''Daily News''. , the ''Post'' was the fourth-largest newspaper in the United States by circulation, while the ''Daily News'' was ranked eighth.
The ''Post'' has remained unprofitable since Murdoch first purchased it from Dorothy Schiff in 1976, and was on the brink of folding when Murdoch bought it back in 1993, with at least one media report in 2012 indicating that ''Post'' loses up to $70 million a year. One commentator has suggested that the ''Post'' cannot become profitable as long as the competing ''Daily News'' survives, and that Murdoch may be trying to force the ''Daily News'' to fold or sell out, leaving the two papers in an intractable war of attrition
The War of Attrition ( ar, حرب الاستنزاف, Ḥarb al-Istinzāf; he, מלחמת ההתשה, Milhemet haHatashah) involved fighting between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and their allies from ...
.
See also
* Media in New York City
New York City has been called the media capital of the world. The media of New York City are internationally influential and include some of the most important newspapers, largest publishing houses, biggest record companies, and most prolific te ...
References
Further reading
* Crittle, Simon. ''The Last Godfather: The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino''. New York: Berkley, 2006. .
* Felix, Antonia, and the editors of ''New York Post''. ''The Post's New York: Celebrating 200 Years of New York City As Seen Through the Pages and Pictures of the New York Post''. New York: HarperResource, 2001. .
* Flood, John, and Jim McGough
"People v. Newspaper and Mail Deliverers' Union of New York and Vicinity"
Organized Crime & Political Corruption. Accessed June 5, 2008.
* Nardoza, Robert
The United States Attorney's Office: Eastern District of New York press release. July 12, 2006. Accessed June 5, 2008.
Penal Law: A Web. Accessed June 5, 2008.
* Robbins, Tom. ttp://www.villagevoice.com/news/0110,robbins,22839,1.html "The Newspaper Racket: Tough Guys and Wiseguys in the Truck Drivers Union" ''The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
'', March 7–13, 2001. Accessed June 5, 2008.
External links
*
{{News Corporation
1801 establishments in New York (state)
Alexander Hamilton
Conservative media in the United States
Daily newspapers published in New York City
News Corporation subsidiaries
New Right (United States)
Publications established in 1801
New York City local newspapers, in print