Additionally, the United States had joined a military Intervention in the Russian Revolution against the Bolsheviks (we sent almost 11,000 troops). As such relations between the two countries could not reasonably be considered friendly before recognition. [2]
Finally, The United States had gone through the First red scare just 10 years prior to the articles being written. As such it's unlikely that the U.S. Populace had an overwhelmingly positive view of the country. [3]
Whereas the two had a strong trade relation as you pointed out, the countries were very adversarial and as such I believe it is incorrect to imagine that the NYT's strings were pulled to show the USSR in a positive light.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Reporting_the_1...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...
In any case, the model described by Chomsky applies mostly to post-WW2 media, as the newspapers and radio channels really began to grow and concentrate, fueled by the flourishing advertising industry. Whether the NYT in 1930 fit the model is not very relevant.
Why do Chomsky and his fellow believers point to such massive hard-to-prove examples like the Vietnam War to argue systemic and planned bias between media, business, and government? Why not more everyday examples, such as news outlets' ubiquitous coverage of violent crime. As someone who's worked to procure crime data from local jurisdictions to publish for the newspaper, I can tell you that bureaucrats and businessfolks most definitely do not like publicizing this information, or emphasizing crime events, because it's bad for business, particularly real estate.
News organizations most likely have killed stories/beats for not wanting to anger real estate developers, especially developers who happen to rub elbows with the publishers and top editors. Yet if this is a systematic issue, why is the media at a local level so incompetent when it comes to managing the happiness of the local business community when it comes to crime and corruption stories? Many reporters at top-tier institutions like NYT started at local/regional outlets. Do they all have a come-to-Jesus talk with the publisher as part of joining the elite, nationally powerful outlets?
"American-made imports reached a high point in 1930, when approximately 25 percent of Soviet imported goods came from the United States. (..) By 1931, there were 134 signed technical aid agreements, the vast majority of them with American companies, servicing virtually every branch of the economy (...) General Electric had been eager to reenter the Russian market as early as 1922 to prevent German competitors from preempting it. Their granting of credits for up to five years, credits which were not guaranteed by the United States government, caused a sensation in the United States and signaled greater willingness by capitalist firms to take risks in the Soviet market (...) In 1913, there had been only some 600 tractors in all of Russia, mostly of German make; by 1930, there were 60,000, three quarters of them manufactured in the United States."
https://sci-hub.cc/https://www.jstor.org/stable/178483
And of course, 1933 was when Roosevelt officially recognized the USSR.