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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (3549)	7/21/2003 10:44:55 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793548

A blogger's view of the "Times" way of slanting a story. They do this all the time, of course. The New York Times' Bizzare World I know I am jumping on the bash the New York Times bandwagon rather late but this story is just too good to pass up. Take a look at this article and tell me it doesn't capture the bizzaro world of the NYT. First the headline: In Ohio, Iraq Questions Shake Even Some of Bush's Faithful Ok, now with this headline you're thinking that Republicans in Ohio are starting to doubt President Bush right? Well, let's see what kind of damning quote the Times can dig up. Here is one shaken faithful: "I'd like to know whether there was any deliberate attempt to deceive," said Mr. Stock, 70, a retired public school administrator. "My feeling is there was not. But there was an eagerness in the administration to pursue the battle and to believe information that wasn't quite good." Whoa! That sounds like trouble brewing to me. After all he would like to know what happened. Oh sure he doesn't think there was any intentional deception but what about that reference to "information that wasn't quite good" - pull on that string and it might lead anywhere! Let's look at another faithful Bush backer and see how his faith has been shaken: Mr. Kleeberger, 44, said he remains convinced that the invasion was a good thing, whether or not the president was wrong about Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Eventually, he said, he believes prohibited weapons will be found in Iraq. "It would take many more mistakes for me to question the credibility and decision-making of the government," he said. "We'd like to think intelligence is 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. But it's a human system and there's human error." Doesn't sound very shaken does he? In fact the article comes straight out and admits that the headline was just a trick to get you to read the article: In conversations here with nearly three dozen voters, the vast majority said they generally like President Bush and believe he is doing a good job. Many people said they remained convinced that Iraq posed a threat, even though no chemical or biological weapons have been found. And there was a broad consensus that the result of the war ? the ousting of a brutal dictator ? was good for Iraq as well as the United States . . . Despite Democratic efforts to use the intelligence issue to undermine Mr. Bush's credibility, most people interviewed here, including Democratic voters, said they did not think Mr. Bush had knowingly used bad intelligence. Most said they believed the president had been motivated by a sincere desire to counter what he considered a real threat. I find it amazing that the Times can work so hard to create a sense of "trouble brewing" when practically everyone they interview supports Bush and the Iraq invasion. The headline simply doesn't match the story - so why create the story in the first place? If you are attempting to drum up doubts about the President this is a pretty lame way to do it kevinholtsberry.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (3549)	7/25/2003 7:12:52 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793548

Reason's look at BBC. Beyond David and Goliath The strange status of the British Broadcasting Corporation Jesse Walker David Kelly is dead, but there's no consensus on whom to blame. The British scientist had been the BBC's anonymous source for its report that the government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraqi weapons, making Saddam Hussein out to be more of a threat than he was. When the government outed him as the source, he denied it and then died, apparently by his own hand. The BBC's foes claim that it misreported Kelly's comments, misrepresented him as a "senior intelligence official," and thus bears some responsibility for his death. The network's defenders argue that it made no substantial misstatements, that it was doing its job in exposing public misdeeds, and that if anyone deserves the blame it's whichever officials decided to point the finger at Kelly. Needless to say, where you come down on this issue has a lot to do with how you feel about the war with Iraq. But there's something else going on here as well, a series of past conflicts that lend form to these dueling narratives. The BBC has been around for 80 years, ever since the British government decided that a publicly subsidized monopoly would be better than the "chaos" they saw in pre-FCC America. (A radio transmission, they argued, was essentially a telegram, and the state already ran the telegraph system; therefore, it should run the radio as well. Q.E.D.) The network has a long history of tangling with the government that finances it, fending off efforts both to chip away its monopoly and to censor its coverage of sensitive stories. For an example of the former, go to the 1960s and the BBC's battle to suppress an unexpected surge of competition: the popular pirate radio stations that broadcast from international waters. (This culminated with a 1967 law enjoining British citizens, especially advertisers, from aiding or abetting the pirates.) For an example of the latter, go to 1985 and the home secretary's efforts to block a documentary deemed too sympathetic to Sinn Fein. (The show was first yanked from the air entirely, then broadcast in reedited form.) The BBC is simultaneously independent and dependent, protectionist and enterprising, a gatekeeper eager to protect its privileges and a crusader for free expression. So when Kelly died, each side already had a long-established narrative conveniently waiting. You could attack the Beeb as a crusty old monopoly abusing its power, and you could defend it as a sprightly underdog speaking truth to power. The funny thing is that it isn't really a monopoly anymore: It's subsidized and it's privileged, but it's just one voice in a global media din; anyone who depends on it for news does so by choice. What's more, it isn't really a force for free speech either: For every time it tangled with the authorities, there's a moment when it cautiously censored itself. The BBC is neither David nor Goliath?it's more like a Methuselah with a trust fund. reason.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (3549)	7/25/2003 8:13:32 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793548

Great News! Brooks is excellent. Someone at the "Times" saw the light. Sullivan's comment:BROOKS TO THE NYT: A great move for the New York Times, although David will have to defend himself from becoming the tame establishment conservative. Still, it really does show someone there gets what has gone wrong. With David Shipley at the Op-Ed reins, we have a chance of a truly diverse editorial page for the first time in a very long while. The New York Times Appoints a Columnist By THE NEW YORK TIMES [D] avid Brooks, a frequent contributor to The New York Times and a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, has been named an Op-Ed page columnist for The Times. His column will appear twice a week beginning in early September. Mr. Brooks's appointment was announced by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, and Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Mr. Brooks, 41, has also been a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly, and a regular commentator on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." Mr. Brooks's articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Forbes, The Washington Post , SmartMoney, The New Republic, Commentary and other publications. He is the author of "Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There," published in 2000 by Simon & Schuster, which next spring will publish his book about suburban life in America. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1983, Mr. Brooks worked as a police reporter for the City News Bureau. He went on to become a writer and editor of the editorial page at The Wall Street Journal. He also edited an anthology, "Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing," which was published by Vintage Books. nytimes.com