Something to do with "independent thought", perhaps.
Or with obvious partisanship on the part of the soi-disant "paper of record". They are pounding the anti-war arguments day after day, to the point of distortion and beyond, with scarcely a mention of any pro-war arguments.
I've certainly heard conservative grousing about the Times' coverage in the past, but never anything like the present chorus of outrage. Howard Kurtz describes both the attack on the Times, which is no longer limited to conservatives, and what set it off:
Although some conservatives have long portrayed the Times as anti-Bush, critics from National Review to U.S. News & World Report columnist Michael Barone have joined the chorus of criticism on Iraq coverage.
Columnist George Will, on ABC's "This Week": "The New York Times has decided to be what newspapers were 220 years ago, which is a journal of a faction, and has been, I think, exaggerating the Republican differences."
Krauthammer, in his Washington Post column: "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. . . . 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."
The Weekly Standard: "There's nothing subtle about the opposition of the New York Times to President Bush's plan to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq. This bias colors not just editorials but practically every news story on the subject."
The Journal editorial page objected not just to the way the Times story treated Kissinger but also to the way it pounced on a Journal op-ed piece by Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to Bush's father when he was president. Although Scowcroft clearly opposes an administration attack on Hussein, the Journal says the Times was "trumpeting our story to advance a tendentious theme."
"We're not running a campaign against the Times coverage of Iraq," Gigot says. "But when they take something we do and spin it into some big deal that seems untrue, you're obliged to say something in response." (The Times also cited statements of concern about Iraq policy by House Majority Leader Dick Armey [R-Tex.], Sen. Chuck Hagel [R-Neb.] and former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger.)
Liberal columnist Joshua Micah Marshall, who writes the Web site TalkingPointsMemo.com, says that "conservatives have always seen the New York Times as a bete noire." But he says the "echo chamber" on the right is "just wrong" about Kissinger's stance, because "if you look at what he said, it was not in favor of the administration's position."
Critics cite a spate of other stories in arguing that the Times is beating the antiwar drums:
On July 30, a front-page Times story said a war against Iraq "could profoundly affect the American economy."
On Aug. 1, the Times headline on a Senate hearing declared: "Experts Warn of High Risk for American Invasion of Iraq."
On Aug. 3, a series of man-on-the-street interviews was headlined: "Backing Bush All the Way, Up to but Not Into Iraq."
On Friday, the same day as the "Top Republicans Break With Bush on Iraq Strategy" piece, the Times editorial page also cited GOP dissenters in arguing that a war on Iraq "carries great potential to produce unintended and injurious consequences if handled rashly by Mr. Bush." The news pages that day did not mention Condoleezza Rice's attack on Hussein as "evil," although the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post carried front-page stories on the national security adviser's remarks.
On Saturday, the Times reported: "President Notes Dissent on Iraq, Vowing to Listen."
washingtonpost.com
You can also add today's
Bush Promises Patience on Iraq
By ADAM NAGOURNEY with THOM SHANKER
to that list. In all that list, not one article that seriously discusses if Saddam really is a menace. Indeed, when the Senate held hearings on that topic, the Times omitted to cover the Iraqi dissidents who said that Saddam would definitely have nukes by 2005. They covered Cordesman warning that you couldn't underestimate Saddam instead.
Making sure that this side of the argument gets proper coverage is very laudable. But whatever happened to the old-fashioned idea of covering both sides of an argument? |
