In 2016 I wrote a post lamenting the miserably bad coverage of the paranormal that has long occurred in the pages of the New York Times. At some time in the twentieth century, the New York Times seemed to turn into a kind of Pravda for materialists. Pravda was an ideologically-driven paper that was one of the two main party organs of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, from 1912 (before the formation of the Soviet Union) until 1991 (when the Soviet Union broke up). During that period of nearly eighty years, a Communist in Moscow would pick up his daily edition of Pravda, and be almost invariably reassured that the world was working just exactly the way a Moscow Communist would expect it to work. The paper very rarely reported facts or reports clashing with the belief system or expectations of Communists; and in the rare cases when such things were reported, they were mentioned in such a biased way that the Communist faith of the reader would never be shaken.
For many decades the New York Times has reported in a similar way in its treatment of the paranormal. It has seemed to follow the policy of never publishing stories that caused a dogmatic materialist to question his assumptions about the way the world works. Evidence of this can be found by using a search phrase of "parapsychology site:www.nytimes.com" with the Google search engine. The first ten results are all from before 1986. The next ten results are all from before the year 2000.
When we finally get (in the 30th search result) the first link to something in the New York Times other than an obituary written in the past twenty years and dealing with parapsychology, it is a poison-pen piece inaccurately defaming parapsychology research and unreasonably calling its researchers and subjects "shallow." The book review discusses an excellent 500-page book detailing at great length a host of evidence for the paranormal, very much of it very good scientific evidence produced under controlled lab conditions by prestigious authorities.
The reviewer (a person with no substantial writings on the topic of the paranormal or parapsychology) is allowed to dismiss the book's very weighty evidence on the grounds that "none of the experiments described in 'Phenomena' struck me as scientific," which is a very impressionistic, unscientific statement. After making unsubstantiated insinuations that the testers were credulous dupes, the reviewer most inaccurately states that there were no "efforts to replicate results," which is very false (very many of the results described in the book were well replicated). It sounds very much like the reviewer didn't even read the book being reviewed, or how could he have made so large an error? The writer gives as his main evidence against paranormal phenomena the fact that he spent lots of some rich person's money searching for paranormal results without finding anything that convinced him, on the grounds that they could be duplicated by magicians (a factor that is irrelevant when you are testing subjects that you have made sure are not using any of the fancy mechanical and electronic equipment of magicians). Of course, given a sufficiently skeptical observer with enough hatred for those who make claims of the paranormal (someone like the reviewer), a negative result will always be claimed no matter what was observed. It's just the kind of book review we would expect to get in a paper that has for decades served as a kind of Pravda for materialists.
The New York Times has in recent years published some noteworthy articles on UFO sightings, but such articles should not cause us to regard this as much of any change of attitude at the paper. You can be a die-hard materialist unreasonably denying the mountain of evidence for psi phenomena, and still believe that Earth is being visited by spaceships from other solar systems. The "kneel before the high priests of academia" attitude of the New York Times is often shown in its science articles, where unfounded dogmas, groundless speculations, poorly designed experiments and poorly-established boasts of professors tend to be treated with reverent credulity. There are very good reasons for thinking that some of the most important claims made in the Science section of the New York Times are untrue (reasons which may be found by reading other posts of mine).
If we consider its coverage of the saving of Lily Groesbeck, we can find an illustrative typical example of the "don't tell materialists anything that might upset them" policy that seems to be in effect at the New York Times. About 10:30 PM on March 6, 2015, a car carrying Lynn Groesbeck and her 18-month-old daughter Lily flipped over and crashed into the bottom of a small river. Apparently the mother was killed by the impact, but her daughter survived. Strapped into her toddler car seat, the toddler hung upside down in the overturned car. About 14 hours later an angler noticed the car, and called the police.
It was not always that way. Long ago, rather than seeming to follow a motto of "all the news that won't shake the cherished beliefs of a certain class of people," the New York Times actually lived up to its motto of "all the news that's fit to print." When a psychic demonstrated ESP in a court room in 1915, the New York Times was not afraid to report what happened.
Here is the report published in the New York Times in 1915, as quoted in the interesting 1951 book Second Sight in Daily Life, written by an author (W.H. W. Sabine) providing many first-hand examples of ESP and precognition:
"W. Bert Reese, whose 'mind reading' demonstrations have mystified many scientists, including Thomas A. Edison and Dr. William Hanna Thompson, author of Brain and Personality, was discharged yesterday by Judge Rosalsky in General Sessions on his appeal from a conviction by Magistrate Barlow of disorderly conduct, under a section dealing with fortune telling. Reese convinced Judge Rosalsky, Assistant District Attorneys Bostwick and Flint, and two reporters by demonstrations in court that he was not a disorderly person, but a man with apparently unusual powers."
"Reese was arrested at 230 West 99th Street on February 26 on complaint by Detective Adele Priess, who said she had paid him $5 to have her fortune told. Reese denied that he had told her fortune or accepted any money. He was found guilty and held in $1,000 bonds to keep the peace for one year."
"When his case came before Judge Rosalsky yesterday on appeal, Reese asked permission to demonstrate his abilities to the court. He told Judge Rosalsky to write something on each of three pieces of paper, and to fold them so that he might not be able to read what had been written. Judge Rosalsky put the papers in different pockets after he had mixed them up so that he could not distinguish them himself. Then Judge Rosalsky produced one of the folded papers and pressed it against Reese's forehead."
" 'You ask me how much money you have in a certain bank,' he said. 'Fifteen dollars is the answer.' Judge Rosalsky admitted that the answer was correct and produced the second piece of paper. 'This piece contains the name of one of your old school teachers Miss O'Connor,' Reese said. The third question, which he read correctly but did not answer, was: 'What was the rule in Shelley's case?' "
"Reese performed similar demonstrations for the benefit of Mr. Bostwick, Mr. Flint, and the reporters. His last feat was to give the maiden name of the mother of one of the reporters. All the questions were written on General Sessions stationery, which Judge Rosalsky supplied."
" 'I do not consider you a disorderly person,' Judge Rosalsky said, when the demonstrations were finished. 'You are honorably discharged."
The book by Sabine says this about Reese (the man who prevailed in the court case):
"Reese was repeatedly tested by scientific men under their own conditions, and satisfied them of his supernormal powers. Schrenck-Notzing [a physician] described him as the most extraordinary man of the day, and his demonstration to judge, lawyers and reporters amply bears that out."
The New York Times allows us to search its archives, but wants you to pay for any articles you read from such archives. Using its archive search facility without paying anything, I can find the headline below, which corroborates that the book quote from the New York Times is an accurate one:
One of the skills in question was an inexplicable ability to describe contents hidden in sealed envelopes or closed boxes. In the nineteenth century such an ability was demonstrated countless times in public exhibitions, and also documented at length by distinguished writers, as discussed here and here. Evidence for such an ability is also to be found abundantly in the twentieth century (see here for example or the post here describing a very similar ability). There is a mountain of good evidence for the reality of telepathy, much of it gathered at universities under good experimental protocols (see here for example).
The fascinating 632-page book "Psychical and supernormal phenomena, their observation and experimentation" by Dr. Paul Joire is teeming with evidence for paranormal phenomena, and most abundantly documents evidence for telepathy and clairvoyance. On page 337 we read one of countless cases in the literature of parapsychology in which reliable witnesses describe someone's ability to inexplicably tell what is inside closed boxes or the inner contents of sealed envelopes inside sealed envelopes. A clairvoyant was given a page with two verses, enclosed like this: "there were two envelopes and two sheets of paper to pass through before coming to the sheet containing the inscription to be read." One of the envelopes was opaque, and various seals were applied to make sure that the clairvoyant had not opened either of the envelopes. The clairvoyant accurately quoted the verses contained within, which should have been unknown to her by normal sight or hearing:
"Votre parti certainement
Se tue par rassainissement"
The success of this experiment was sworn to by eight distinguished witnesses, including a mayor, a lawyer and a journalist.
Online the New York Times nowadays is mostly behind a paywall. You can read its headlines at www.nytimes.com, but after reading a few articles a month you will get a prompt that stops you from reading further and asks you to pay for a subscription that costs 52 dollars a year. This at least has the advantage that fewer people are exposed to the paper's biased and often misleading articles and book reviews related to topics of minds, brains, nature, science and spirit. But I hear the paper has pretty good coverage about health, arts, sports, politics, world affairs and local affairs.
Postscript: The book Science and Psychical Phenomena by G. N.M. Tyrrell has a description of an even more careful preparation of a sealed envelope to test clairvoyant reading of its contents. On pages 75-76 we read this:
"The mode of preparation of the sealed packet, carried out by Mr. Besterman in his office at the rooms of the Society for Psychical Research in London, was as follows. He took a sheet of paper measuring 93 mm. by 107 mm., and ruled with lines, from a loose-leafed note-book, and drew on it a rough sketch of an ink-bottle, writing in capital letters the words SWAN INK, one on each side of the bottle. Under the word SWAN, which was on the left of the bottle, he drew a blue line, and under the word ink on the other side he drew a red line. Then he folded the paper twice at right angfes, one of the folds running right through the word swan. 'This,' says Mr. Besterman, ‘was placed in a reddish-orange Ensign light-tight envelope (that is not transparent to white light), measuring 94 mm. by 119 mm. This envelope was in turn enclosed in a black Ensign light-tight envelope, measuring 106 mm. by 130 mm. This black envelope was finally enclosed in a large Manilla envelope doubled in two, and thus measuring 114 mm by 152 mm. Each of these envelopes was closed in a special way and bore private and invisible marks. The outer doubled envelope was, in addition, sealed with surgical tape arranged in a special way and signed by me.' "
On page 77 we read of how the contents of the elaborately sealed packet were almost perfectly identified by the test subject located far away:
"It is a curious fact that M. Ossowiecki’s ‘readings’ did not take the form which suggested that he was actually reading the contents of the packet. Instead, he went backwards in time and described the scene in Mr. Besterman’s office when the packet was being prepared, giving, in fact, certain details about Mr. Besterman’s surroundings and the time of the day when the packet was sealed, and so forth, which could not possibly have been obtained from anything in the packet itself. He then took a pencil and drew an approximation to a bottle with a line on either side of it, adding ‘something written and something red.' Next, he drew an unmistakable bottle with the letters SWA on the left and the letters IN on the right. Finally, he made a complete drawing of a bottle in the middle of the paper, and the word SWAN on the left and INK on the right, both in capital letters. Some distance below the word SWAN (not immediately underneath it as in the original), he drew a line with his pencil, which he said was red. Actually, in the original, SWAN was underlined in blue and the word INK on the other side of the bottle was underlined in red. But for this mistake, the reproduction was perfect, the shape of the bottle being exact."
The news story below appeared in the Washington Post on September 26, 1958:
"Swindling Charge Dismissed
Mind Reader Tested in Berlin Court Wins Acquittal by his Performance
By Richard O’Regan
BERLIN, Sept. 25, (AP)—Six spectators in a courtroom in sub- urban Berlin raised their hands. Yes, they told the judge they were willing to have their minds read by the man on trial.
They wrote six questions and handed them to the bench. The judge turned to Gerhard Belgardt, 39, otherwise known as Hanussen II, Germany’s No. 1 Mind reader.
None of the spectators nor the mind reader had been told that they might take part in a mind reading test.
Belgardt was accused of swindling clients in private seances by professing to give news of missing relatives.
The judge: “What is on the first piece of paper?’
Belgardt: “The lady is asking about her sister. She is an inch taller, considerably younger and works in a public building.’
The questioner: “That’s right. My sister works as a medical assistant.’
The judge: “What is on the next paper?’
Belgardt: “The man has asked about his son. He will come along well in school.’
The man: ‘Correct.’
The judge: 'The next questioner is a city detective. What has he written?’
Belgardt: ‘He asks about his mother or his grandmother. I have no contact. Either the question is phony or she is dead. The man has suffered long—a concentration camp. Is that correct?’
The detective: ‘Correct. I asked about my grandmother. She is dead. I was in a concentration camp.’
Three further questions were asked and Belgardt got the answers relatively right.
The judge dismissed the case declaring ‘the accused has a certain validity to his claims as a mind reader’.
Hanussen II, embracing his wife: ‘I had foreseen that I would be freed.' "
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