Posted on 05/12/2003 1:17:51 PM PDT by kattracks
Carl Bernstein told Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America" that, while the scandal involving former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was a black mark on the Times' reputation, the paper once again proved itself to be a great newspaper by publicly confessing its part in allowing Blair to get away with writing false stories.
If this was the first time the paper got what it’s publisher called a "huge Black Eye," that might be a legitimate observation, but, as history shows, both of the New York Times' proverbial eyes have been black for a long, long time; enough to disqualify it from ever being seen as great.
The failure of the Times to get rid of a reporter who it knew was utterly unreliable has been duly noted by most of the journalists covering the story.
The Times overlooked his endless string of inaccuracies, suspicious activities and even promoted him after Jonathan Landman, the metropolitan editor, warned newsroom administrators in by April 2002, that: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now."
What they have not noted is the long history of journalistic deceit tolerated or even encouraged by the Times.
- Times correspondent Walter Duranty swore that there was no government-induced famine in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, when in fact he knew that Moscow was deliberately starving peasants, even allowing children to die in the streets after their parents were hauled off to prison camps and executed for the hideous crime of owning property.
It was later revealed the Soviets had bribed Duranty after learning of his "sexual proclivities." That shocking fact became public years later after he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
As author Mona Charen recently noted the Times has not had the common decency to give back the prize or even to offer an apology to the public.
Duranty’s lies covered up the true nature of the murderous Soviet government, giving it a reputation as a benign and reformist regime at a time when it was beginning to butcher the Russian people by the millions.
- Sydney Schanberg, whose reporting from Cambodia heaped scorn on the notion that there was a bloodbath in that unfortunate nation, and said "nothing could be worse for the Cambodian people than the American presence."
Once the Americans left, wrote Charen, "we had one of the worst bloodbaths in the history of the world." One third of Cambodia’s people were eliminated.
- Times correspondent Herbert Matthews wrote from Cuba that Fidel Castro supported democracy, calling him an agrarian reformer while obscuring or ignoring evidence that the Cuban dictator was in fact a Soviet-backed communist.
As National Review once joked. Castro got his job through the New York Times, spoofing a Times ad campaign slogan boosting its Help Wanted columns.
- According to Newsweek the Times the paper printed two consecutive front-page stories last August incorrectly including Henry Kissinger among the 'prominent Republicans' opposing war with Iraq.
Wrote Newsweek "Kissinger had expressed realpolitik reservations but stopped far short of arguing against an attack."
After an ensuing flap, the paper assigned a media reporter a story on how the American press was increasingly seen as driving the debate on Iraq.
"According to a number of sources at the Times,’ Newsweek revealed, "the reporter, David Carr, went back to his editors and told them the media, per se, weren’t driving anything: the only publication injecting itself into the policy debate was the Times itself. The story never ran. An editor’s note, explaining the Times’ mistakes, was printed instead.
The Washington Times chimed in: "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 has become an unabashed spokesman for the gay agenda, not surprising since Richard Berke, now a Times editor in Los Angeles, once told a meeting of the of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association that the Times would remain very sympathetic to the gay agenda because "three-fourths of those who regularly attend the daily meetings that determine what will be on the front page of the Times the next morning are 'not-so-closeted' homosexuals."
- The Times fired Michael Finkel after he admitted concocting aspects of the title character in a Nov. 18 piece headlined "Is Youssouf Male a Slave?" But he insisted the article accurately depicted the thousands of young West Africans who toil on cocoa plantations, the Associated Press reported today.
"Youssouf Male is a real person, and I interviewed him, and most of the scenes in that article are based on his experience. But many are based on the experiences of others very much like him," Finkel told AP.
"In order to tell a very complex story in a way that is compelling to read, I made the wrong decision to put together several accounts that were told to me by these young workers, and I combined them into one representative voice."
In an editor's note, the Times said notes from Finkel's three weeks of reporting "reveal that contrary to the description of Youssouf Male's year of work at the plantation, he spent less than a month there before running away. ... Many facts were extrapolated from what he learned was typical of boys on such journeys, and did not apply specifically to any single individual."
Editors began to investigate after Finkel said that a photo he had taken of a boy, published without a caption, was not a picture of Male.
- The Times has repeatedly published stories obviously designed to create friction between the President and Secretary of State Colin Powell. The stories inevitably quote only anonymous sources to support the Times assertions that bad blood exists between the two men. It’s a classic case of "Let’s you and him fight."
- The Times continues to carry man-in-the-street interviews where those favorable to the Times’ liberal stands on issues such as gun control are given the most space, while it reports only the weakest arguments of those who oppose the Times’ leftist positions.
Carl Bernstein is dead wrong. The New York Times is not a great newspaper. It cannot even manage its editorial staff, much less cover the news fairly and without extreme liberal prejudice.
It is a propaganda sheet for ultra-left wing causes and the liberal wing of the Democrat Party. It should be treated as such.
In the Blair case, they got what they deserved.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
If Blair had stuck to making things up, rather than going on to plagiarism, there would be no story.
Worth repeating.
Rent the movie "The Killing Fields" and watch how Hollywood helped the liberals cover their backsides on this sad and bloody tale as weel.
The reporter has angst, lots and lost of angst - you see. Why, he sweats and cries in his Chablis as he watches a looped videotape of a nasty B-52 bomber, knowing that the poor Cambodians are being slaughtered amd murdered. See, he knew all along the Americans were worse--right? John Malkovitch plays the one character who gets it right--the photographer who slams the liberal where he lives at a party "honoring" him for being a liberal reporter.
Cuban Rebel Is Visited in Hideout
Castro Is Still Alive and Still Fighting in Mountains
Does anyone know if the work of Walter Duranty is on line?
BS! The Times, at this point, had no other choice. If the Times had any integrity whatsoever, Blair would have been long gone.
Rush asked what's to prevent lazy, anti-administration reporters from inventing all these "statements" and "leaks" according to their own personal political agendas?
Who can trust anything the NYT publishes on politics and foreign affairs anymore? Well, I never believed the leftist propaganda it wrote before, I still don't and I never will.
Leni
Senator DODD. You have been quoted, Mr. Gardner, as referring to, "Castro worship" in the State Department in 1957. What did you mean by this?
Mr. GARDNER. Well, did you read the article that, Matthews wrote, after he went up in the hills and saw him?
Senator DODD. Yes.
Mr. GARDNER. He wrote a Richard Harding Davis type of article, and he made Castro appear to he a Robin Hood, a savior for the country.
Senator DODD. Yes. But Mr. Herbert Matthews wasn't in the State Department.
Mr. GARDNER. No, but he was actually-he briefed Earl Smith-
Senator DODD. Your successor as Ambassador to Cuba was briefed by Herbert Matthews?
Mr. GARDNER. Yes, that is right.
(Dodd changes the subject with a "we'll get back to that in a moment")
It gets worse. Full transcript of the "Hearings before the subcommittee to investigate the administration of the Internal Security Act and other internal security laws of the Committee on the Judiciary" is here
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