Regular readers of this column know the esteem in which the Monitor holds the website TimesWatch.org. The site provides consistently trenchant analysis of the distortion and bias that have come to define the news coverage provided by The New York Times. TimesWatch’s year-end look back at the alleged paper of record’s ‘lowlights’ for 2003 merits as wide a readership as possible, and the Monitor is pleased to feature it this week.
Top 10 Lowlights Of The New York Times, 2003 By Clay Waters Executive Director, Times Watch
1) Hootie and the Blowhards: The Times’ Assault on the Masters: During the run-up to golf’s most prestigious tournament, the Masters, hosted in April by Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, the Times tried to pump up controversy over the club’s all-male membership. In article upon article, the Times lambasted club chairman Hootie Johnson while praising his opposite number, feminist and lead protestor Martha Burk.
The Times put the Augusta story on its front page three times (this during the run-up to the Iraq war) and went so far as to suggest Tiger Woods boycott the tournament in protest. In all, the Times ran over 80 stories on Augusta over a period of several months. Yet the actual Masters’ protest came up dry, attracting a piddling crowd of 40, a turnout suggesting the whole controversy was nothing but a Times-created phenomenon.
2) The Jayson Blair Affair: “Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception” blared the front page of the May 11 New York Times, introducing a 14,000-word mea maxima culpa of the paper’s chain of failures in the well-known case of fabricator Jayson Blair. Unearthed remarks by then-Executive Editor Howell Raines didn’t exactly inspire confidence in his leadership: “This campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse,” Raines told the National Association of Black Journalists in 2001 about the hiring of the young black reporter Blair.
3) Paul Krugman’s Great Unraveling: Economics columnist turned Bush-bashing hack Paul Krugman gets a lifetime (or at least 2003) achieve ment award for partisanship above and beyond the call of duty, in a year when he morphed from a mild-mannered left-of-center economist into a hero for Bush-haters. Among Krugman’s many lowlights:
* Accusing Republicans, sans evidence, of labeling antiwar critics ‘unpatriotic.’
* Accusing Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton of ‘profiteering’ in Iraq (a charge refuted in a Times front page story that very day).
* Labeling tax cut advocates ‘relentless, even fanatical.’
* Accusing Bush of ‘deceiving us into war.’
* Reciting left-wing conspiracy theories suggesting ‘the toppling of the Saddam statue, the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch – seem to have been improved by editing.’
* Comparing a pro-war rally to a Nazi rally.
4) Maureen Dowd’s Dishonest Deletion: Columnist Maureen Dowd purposely mangled a quote from President Bush to make him look naive about the dangers posed by Al Qaeda. In her May 14 “Osama’s Offspring,” Dowd writes: “Busy chasing off Saddam, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent. “Al Qaeda is on the run,” President Bush said last week. “That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated… They’re not a problem anymore.””
Dowd used ellipses … to hide the truth. Here’s what Bush actually said in Arkansas May 5: “Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore. And we’ll stay on the hunt. To make sure America is a secure country, the Al Qaeda terrorists have got to understand it doesn’t matter how long it’s going to take, they will be brought to justice.”
Notice the third sentence of Bush’s speech: It’s clear Bush was only talking about the top Al Qaeda operatives that “are either jailed or dead” as being “not a problem anymore” – not the group itself. Dowd dishonestly deleted that sentence and the first three words of the next in order to make Bush “say” Al Qaeda was no longer a threat.
5) Chris Hedges: Pompous Pacifism, Condescending Contempt: Times anti-war reporter Chris Hedges thought a graduation ceremony at “progressive” Rockford College would be a safe place to indulge his pompous pacifism, telling the assembled graduates on May 17: “I want to speak to you today about war and empire…. We are embarking on an occupation that if history is any guide will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security.” The graduates thought differently: Hedges had his microphone unplugged and was booed off the stage. Days later Hedges whined about his hostile reception on far-left Pacifica Radio: “The tragedy is that – and I’ve seen it in conflict after conflict or society after society that plunges into war – with that kind of rabid nationalism comes racism and intolerance and a dehumanization of the other.”