Journalistic malpractice:
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Thursday, August 25, 2005 hoystory.blogspot.com
New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller has been doing hard work following President Bush from place to place on his monthlong "vacation." I haven't spent a whole lot of time analyzing the Times' news coverage.
But as I scanned the wires briefly before heading home last night, I was surprised to see this paragraph in the Times' story on President Bush:
Mr. Bush met Ms. Sheehan in a similar setting in June 2004, but she has said he acted as if he was at a party, did not know her son's name and was disrespectful to her, calling her "Mom" throughout the session.
It would be one thing to be completely ignorant of the fact that Cindy Sheehan told an entirely different story when the event occurred, but this is old news. If Bumiller still doesn't know about Sheehan's changing stories, then she hasn't been doing her job -- a reporter has to know what's going on on their beat. If, as is almost certain, Bumiller does know about the differing accounts and continues to only peddle the new one, then bias is probably the nicest thing she is guilty of.
I was shocked when I read Bumiller's story. I honestly wasn't prepared to see such blatant, biased, one-sided reporting.
You might think that maybe this just slipped past an editor or two unwittingly on the way into the paper. I might believe that two, if I hadn't found out that this was the fourth time in the past few days that Bumiller's done this. |
