CNN Covers NYT's ‘Jerk’ Jab at Bush, Fox Ignores It

NewsBusters.org ^ | 8/16/2007 | Matthew Balan

[Pyro7480]

"American Morning" co-host Kiran Chetry, an alumna of Fox News Channel’s "Fox & Friends Weekend," gave her former colleagues at Fox a run for the money in highlighting a case of media bias. While "Fox & Friends" on Thursday morning was covering the earthquake in Peru, and featured several segments on the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis, Chetry interviewed "Wired" magazine senior editor Nick Thompson towards the end of the 7 am EDT hour on a new website that traces who is editing different entries on Wikipedia. Chetry brought up an instance in December 2005 where the words "jerk, jerk, jerk, jerk" appeared on President Bush’s Wikipedia entry, and the new website traced the entry to the IP address of a computer at the New York Times.

The key excerpt from Chetry’s interview of Thompson:

KIRAN CHETRY: Here's George W. Bush, this is our commander in chief. Has a Wikipedia page here. And there were some changes made to it. It -- suddenly the words jerk, jerk, jerk, jerk -- here you go -- ended up. You can tell just by looking, when you look at history, that it was revised on December 28, 2005. But who was behind this one?

NICK THOMPSON: We don't know exactly the individual, but it was somebody using a “New York Times” computer.

CHETRY: And what did “The New York Times” say about it?

THOMPSON: They said, well, we don't know exactly who it is. It could have been anybody in the building. Anybody using any of our computers. We can't find the individual.

CHETRY: All right. Now, we did call “The New York Times” and they said, as you said, there's no way to tell what employee was responsible.

THOMPSON: Right.

Chetry and Thompson also discussed changes Diebold, a company that makes voting machines, made to their own Wikipedia entry.

Wired Magazine’s own article on the Wikipedia-tracking website actually didn’t mention change made by "The New York Times," but instead focused on "obvious targets" like Diebold, Wal-Mart, the CIA, and Halliburton, companies and organizations that are consistently marked for criticism by left-wing groups. So, CNN’s coverage of the story was actually more balanced than that of Wired.

—Matthew Balan is a news analyst at Media Research Center.

[MeanWestTexan]

Steve Doocy

[UCFRoadWarrior]

Kiran is a cutie, no doubt. And much more a journalist than Fox’s Pickle Woman (Gretchen Carlson)

[Psycho_Bunny]

They said, well, we don't know exactly who it is. It could have been anybody in the building. Anybody using any of our computers. We can't find the individual.

Complete and total bullshit.  An absolute lie.  A fabrication.  The perfect opposite of the truth.

[CenTex]

I have also ceased watching most of the Fox Tabloid News presentations. The Fox and Friends thing has totally gone to the dogs since E.D. Hill left the program. It has become an over-talking contest not worth the time to sort out the words.

Kiran probably left Fox when Miss America was chosen to be the lead on F&F.

Yep, I watch Kiran in the morning.

Bret is still the best however.

[RinaseaofDs]

“Who is that?”
“Uh... Kiran Chetry.”

No WAY is that Kiran Chetry. CAN’T be.

[auzerais]

Your cartoon expresses my daily frustrations. I just wish I knew how to extract the original url so I can email it to my buddies. Any hope of getting the cartoon’s url?

[Old Seadog]

Cretchen Carlson

kiren Chetry

We report, you decide.

[Hawthorn]

Kiran’s OK. In fact, she used to work at a firing range. Too bad FNC couldn’t keep her.

[Hawthorn]

Kiran’s OK. In fact, she used to work at a firing range. Too bad FNC couldn’t keep her.

[SFC Chromey]

You are so right! Every computer has a traceable IP address, and if I did something like that from MY work computer, you bet your bottom dollar, the IT dept would be able to dime me out in about 5 seconds!

[Psycho_Bunny]

Yes. I'm the IT Director for my employer and I know for a fact I could tell my VP exactly whose station and logon was used, within 10 minutes of being asked to find out.

Are we supposed to believe that the NYT doesn't have a logged firewall and bandwith shaper/traffic tracker in a centrally administored local domain?

Puleeze.