|
| |
One Dog, One Bite
The Demise of the NY Times
Perhaps the most shocking thing about the New York Times, once the “paper
of record”, admitting it sat for a year on a story of a president committing
impeachable felony acts is that so few of us are shocked any more.
The Times had taken several body blows to its credibility in recent years.
Recently, Judith Miller disgraced herself and subverted the paper to advance the
right wing interests of the hawks in the Putsch junta. Right wingers like to
cite plagiarist Jayson Blair, who subverted the paper for his own interests.
Newspapers make mistakes. Papers are sometimes victimized by reporters who turn
out to have shoddy standards or who are flat-out dishonest. I even once wrote a
piece praising Diana Griego Erwin, a columnist for the Sacramento Bee who, the
paper discovered several years later, had been frequently fabricating quotes and
entire interviews. All enterprises get inept or corrupt employees. The good
newspapers take pains to try to detect such and weed them out before they do
much damage, and let their readers know what happened.
Lying to their readers, either by commission or by omission, is a crime that can
never be forgiven. In sitting on the story about Putsch wiretapping people
domestically without a warrant for a full year (and through an election cycle),
the New York Times deliberately lied to its readers, and to the American people.
This isn’t the first time. Back in 2001-2, the New York Times sat for five
months on the NORC survey, which was the fullest possible accounting of what
happened in the presidential election in Florida in 2000. Their lame excuse was
they didn’t want to upset the country in the wake of 9/11, which wasn’t borne
out by their headline when they finally did run the story: “Study of Disputed
Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.”
Whew! What a relief! But, if that was the case, why didn’t they run the story?
It’s simple. NORC found that by every legitimate method of counting the ballots
in Florida, Gore probably did win, and had the Supreme Court not illegally
intervened, Gore likely would have been president. The Times story itself makes
that clear, a page down.
The New York Times lied to the public then. They did so knowingly and
deliberately.
They lied to the public now, knowingly and deliberately. They sat on a story
that appeared during the campaign that would have called Putsch’s tactics and
methods and his intents in the “war on terror” into sharp focus. It, like the
Florida recount, changed the course of an election. Only this time, the New York
Times wasn’t in the role of a cat trying to cover up a mistake on the linoleum,
and engaging in a misguided effort to help the country. That was bad enough.
This time, in direct connivance with the administration, they, by their own
admission, deliberately censored a story in their possession that would have
changed the course of the election. They did so, by their own admission, at the
direct secret request of the administration. They, by their own admission,
covered up an impeachable crime – a felony by the President. (1075 50 U.S.C. §
1809, and no, the 1978 law which permits the President to authorize a
warrantless search in individual situations doesn’t take him off the hook, since
he was getting 45 day extensions under questionable legality from his
attorneys-general).
What will happen with Putsch will probably occupy a few essays in the future.
For now, let’s just talk about the New York Times.
A dog only gets one bite. The New York Times has just committed its second bite.
It’s time for the New York Times to go.
The Times has utterly disgraced itself, and can no longer be considered a
reputable journalistic outlet. It’s on the same level as the Washington Times or
Fox News, except for the sad fact that unlike those two entities, it has some
real journalists working for it, people who deserve far better than what the
shabby, dishonest, second-rate ownership of the Times has done to them. If I had
to name the top ten columnists in the world, five would be from the Times, and
it’s perplexing that the Times has fine people like Dowd and Krugman, and can
still betray their readership like this.
The only thing that can save the Times is for the present owners to put the
paper up for sale, in the hope that a reputable group will come in, clean out
the weak and ineffectual management of the paper, and give it the room to
restore its journalistic integrity. But don’t hold your breath: any buyer would
probably turn out to be Murdoch or Moon or someone just as dishonest,
ideological, and sleazy, and the Times would become indistinguishable from all
their third-rate endeavors.
I put a message out to my newsfeed readers early yesterday. It read, “In light
of the revelation that for over a year, the New York Times knew that Putsch was
authorizing domestic spying by the NSA in contravention of existing law, and
said nothing at the administration’s request, I have decided to stop treating
any stories from that particular source as being reliable. As with such "news
sources" as Fox or the Washington Times, I will run something that I feel is of
particular interest to my readers, but with a caveat to consider the source. The
New York Times has proven that it simply cannot be trusted. I will continue to
periodically run essays by Krugman, Dowd, Harris and Rich, fine columnists who
deserve better than the journalistic sham for which they work.”
I expected a fair bit of response to that, and that’s exactly what I got. What
surprised me was that the response was unanimously favorable. Most of the
responses, while welcome, weren’t particularly quotable. “Good for you” or “The
Times does look like an old used up whore doesn't she?” (that from a Bartcop
reader, obviously) were the main sentiments expressed. One right winger snarled
that he was glad I saw the light and recognized the Times’ liberal bias, which
just goes to show how some of these cultists will chant the same mantra, no
matter how ludicrous or inappropriately.
Some of the responses are worth sharing. I didn’t take time to consult with the
authors, so in order to protect their privacy, I’ll just use single initials.
They’ll know who they are, and hopefully none will mind:
M:
“I don't think you have any choice. The NY Times has done a lot more than
just sit on this one recent spy story. They looked the other way on the Iraq
war, continued to publish glowing stories from the likes of Judy Miller
while claiming they'd checked her stories, when in fact they hadn't (and she
was FAR from the only one). They sat on the Abu Ghraib story, and didn't
publish shit about the Downing Street Memo until they were forced to.
“Also remember they commissioned a study examining the 2000 Florida Election
results and then sat on the story for five months because it showed that
Bush probably lost Florida.
“Earlier, they ruined the career of the Journalist who broke the story that
the CIA was selling cocaine in inner cities to finance their attempt to
overthrow the Sandanistas in Nicaragua. That Journalist recently committed
suicide over this.
“Along the way, they've refrained from correcting hundreds of blatant
factual errors their Conservative columnists have made in columns over the
last decade, while not even signing up new Liberal columnists for balance.
“We expect this from FoxNews – or even CBS – but NOT the New York Times.
They need to raise their journalistic standards to those of the average
progressive blog before they have credibility in my eyes again, and I'm
sorry about that.”
J:
“This may be an indication. Why would the Bush White House allow such an
admission? You're correct in being retaliatory to the Times. Perhaps the
conversation has ebbed; the conversation being how to be patriotic as
American journalists.
“I wish I could say I see a political swing soon happening. I don't. But
what I do see is the awakening of journalist and journalism. It's possible
that Bush and gang see the same thing and have decided to be out in front of
the previously controlled and easily spun story. Unfortunately the right is
in line; they will continue to vote as controls dictate. But facts are less
likely to be twisted. The Rights mission will now be to accredit their
follies. We will shortly, acutely, learn why the Constitution is either an
evil document or how the Evil have undermined the goals of it's framers. We
will understand how structures of society have for generations worked under
loose ‘guidelines’ and how this ‘flexibility’ has allowed the U.S. to be
great. We may realize how allowing the government to do the good thing
without citizen involvement works in the best interest of the people. We're
about to learn why it's so good that the public be kept from issues of
importance to the public.
“Or perhaps we are about to learn about who we used to be.
“It seems that the Times may have understood the depth of their involvement.
It may account for their admission that described how he had authorized the
NSA to monitor the calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and their own
involvement in the deceit.
“With spin accounted for, I give it ten to fifteen years before a true
political shift occurs.
“My guess is that once the lesson is learned, the U.S will live in a state
of freedom for another 15 years.”
D:
“Good for you! Over the last few years the NYT has produced a number of
writers who appear embedded (in bed with?) the GOP. The Times has failed to
apologize and fire the bastards. Now it appears that they sat on a huge
revelation that predated the 2004 elections and could have changed the
outcome of the election. Didn't they also review the results of the 2000 and
spin several scenarios on who won as well? Didn't Coulter refer to
terrorists bombing the NYT? If she did she must regret it now; they are her
allies.”
I:
“It's been a long time since I have been able to consider them ‘The Paper of
Record.’ Almost as long as I've wondered why the right rags on about the
Times being ‘liberal’.
‘They still haven't made it up to me for inventing the Whitewater ‘scandal.’
‘Reporter’ Jeff Gerth and his editor(s) deserved a savage beating, at least,
for that. Quoted in the Daily Holer, Gene Lyons said about him, ‘...Gerth
and some writers at the Washington Post had essentially ‘invented’ the
Whitewater story, and he accused Gerth of an assortment of specific
misdeeds–in particular, of ‘suppressing or ignoring hard evidence’ that
would have shown what was wrong with Gerth’s Whitewater case.’”
“And Gerth again was tragically wrong on the Wen Ho Lee story. A Yahoo story
of the civil case said, ‘... At one point, Jackson [the judge in the case]
calls Gerth's statement in depositions that he could not recall some of his
confidential sources ‘not credible.’‘... Gerth and reporters from three
other papers were held in contempt at that trial.
“But the Times, to my knowledge, has never apologized or done anything to
undo the damage it's done. Sure, they run some half-assed ‘how we could have
done better’ pieces, but they *never* do better.
“Having been in journalism myself, I know that's a reflection on not just
the reporting, but also the editors.
“One has to ask oneself how they get so much wrong when they supposedly also
have ‘fact-checkers.’ Maybe they're on loan from Limbaugh,”
Obviously, Putsch isn’t the only one in deep trouble over this story. The
New York Times will fall with him.
I hope.
|