The New York Times is slipping into the slime, IMO.
Granted this isn't about broadcast media but, it points out the depths in which some SPINnews organizations have allowed themselves to wallow...
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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
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Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2002
Krauthammer, Washington Times Blast NY Times
"It's only a slight stretch to state definitively that The New York Times is a corrupt institution, wrote Russ Smith (Mugger) in the New York Press.
Smith was commenting on Charles Krauthammer's blast at the Times ("Kidnapped by the Times") for its blatantly dishonest story fallaciously citing former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as having broken with the Bush administration's attack-Iraq policy.
Wrote Krauthammer: "Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled his correspondent in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines's New York Times. Hearst was for the Spanish-American War. Raines (for those who have been incommunicado for the last year) opposes war with Iraq."
Noting that Raines' campaign against the Bush Iraq policies is an ongoing one, Krauthammer wrote that a "story ("Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy") that should be on Page A22, the absence of one Iraqi opposition leader (out of a dozen-odd) at a meeting in Washington, is Page A1, above the fold. Message: Disarray in the war camp. A previous above-the-fold front-page story revealed - stop the presses! - that the war might be financially costly."
The story lumped Kissinger with several other Republicans said to be at odds with Bush on Iraq, despite the former secretary of state's statement in the article the Times used to prove that Kissinger is in the opposite camp from Bush: "The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system and the demonstrated hostility of Hussein combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action."
There is, Krauthammer wrote, "hardly a more succinct statement of the administration's case for war."
Such statements failed to prevent the Times from "making Kissinger one of its two major Republican poster boys breaking with the president (the other being former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft). Indeed, the very next day's paper, again the lead front-page story, reiterated the fiction, citing Kissinger (with Scowcroft) as part of 'a group of leading Republicans who were warning [Bush] against going to war with Iraq.' "
Against going to war when Kissinger actually lays out the case not only for "going to war, but for going to war soon," Krauthammer wrote.
"Waiting will only magnify possibilities for blackmail," Kissinger warned.
"It is one thing to give your front page to a crusade against war with Iraq," Krauthammer wrote. "That's partisan journalism, and that's what Raines's Times does for a living. It's another thing to include Henry Kissinger in your crusade. That's just stupid. After all, it's checkable."
Krauthammer and Smith weren't alone in their outrage at the Times' sleazy partisan journalism. The Washington Times weighed in with this blast: "Last Friday, the New York Times ran a willfully misleading front-page story which mischaracterized Henry Kissinger's critical endorsement of President Bush's Iraq strategy.
"Combined with the intellectual slovenliness and pack instincts of much of the Washington press corps, the Times article could undermine support for the President's Iraq war aims - which, of course, was the purpose of the article," the Times wrote.
Noting that the New York Times is the pre-eminent newspaper in America (and probably the world), the Washington Times said that it has "a singular responsibility to get its stories right."
"News outlets around the world rely on the accuracy of its reporting and assume they are not being intentionally misled," the Washington paper wrote. "It is one thing to add opinion to a news story. But to intentionally mislead and confuse its readers on the newspaper's top, right, above-the-fold front-page story (presumably a report on the most important event of the day) is a dangerous and disgraceful occurrence.
"The New York Times takes pride in being considered America's newspaper of record. This willful misrepresentation on a story of historic importance will leave a deep and perhaps indelible stain on that reputation."
Russ Smith is almost right except for saying it's "only a slight stretch" to accuse the New York Times of being "a corrupt institution."
It's no stretch at all.
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