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Tony_Balony
Joined: 12 Apr 2007
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 Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:19 am Post subject: New York Slimes |
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Bad Times
By Thomas Sowell
February 26, 2008
The front page of the New York Times has increasingly become the home of editorials disguised as "news" stories. Too often it has become the home of hoaxes.
Going back some years, it was the Tawana Brawley hoax that she had been gang-raped by a bunch of white men. Just a couple of years ago, it was the Duke University "rape" hoax that they fell for.
In between there were the various hoaxes of New York Times reporter Jason Blair, who was kept on and promoted until too many people found out what he had been doing and the paper had to let him go.
Last month the New York Times created its own hoax with a long front page article about how war veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were killing people back in the United States because of the stress they had gone through in combat.
That hoax was shot down two days later by the New York Post, which showed that the murder rate among returning war veterans was only one-fifth the murder rate among civilians in the same age brackets.
Undaunted, the New York Times has come up with its latest front-page sensation, the claim that some anonymous people either suspected an affair between Senator John McCain and a female lobbyist or tried to forestall an affair.
But apparently no one actually claimed that they knew there was an affair.
This did not even rise to the level of "he said, she said." Instead it was anonymous sources reporting their suspicions.
People who share the New York Times' political views are treated as "innocent until proven guilty." People with different views are condemned for "the appearance of impropriety," even if there is no hard evidence that they did anything wrong.
In this latest "news" story about Senator McCain, the standard seems to be that anonymous sources suspected him of "the appearance of impropriety."
Nothing is easier than to have suspicions. In my younger years, I was suspected of having an affair with more than one attractive woman when -- alas -- there was nothing happening.
At the time, however, I felt flattered by the insinuations.
In 1976, when President Ford nominated me to the Federal Trade Commission, someone anonymously told an FBI investigator that I was a Communist.
Not even the people opposed to my nomination believed it and it was not reported in the New York Times.
This was back in the days when the Times still had a reputation for integrity, before the Jason Blair hoaxes, the gang-rape hoaxes and the general prostitution of the front page to politics masquerading as news.
Over the years, the New York Times has increasingly discredited itself.
Not only have critics repeatedly exposed their tendentious use of their "news" stories, even the Times' own "public editor" or ombudsman has now said that they should not have run the McCain insinuation story...
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http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/tsowell/2008/ts_02262.shtml |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:38 am Post subject: |
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The story was very bad, thinly sourced and not deserving of being printed in the Newspaper of Record. That having been said, the idea that bad journalism is unique to the New York Times, or that this represented anything close to its apotheosis, is downright silly. Sowell has disappointed me lately. He wrote one of the great works of modern political thought (A Conflict of Visions), but has become a casualty of the post-9/11 era, training his laser vision on journalistic hiccups and hoisting the red flag of "BIAS!" at the least opportunity. He has lost the wide, historical view that he once had, and joined the undignified scrum in the trenches: the sort of "analyst" who complains about anti-war demonstrations "aiding the enemy" and is willing to pimp himself out to the lowest common denominator of tabloid politics, Fox News.
The man's a conservative, and so I often disagree with him, but that's fine. He used to be a thoughtful conservative. Now he's just another yahoo. |
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Tony_Balony
Joined: 12 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:50 am Post subject: |
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The New York Times has fallen. Its no longer the paper of record. The USA doesn't have a paper of record any longer. Fox runs shallow news ie shark attack stories but at least those stories are credible. So often I see headlines like "Extremists Threaten Multiculturalism in Russia" in The Times which insists we have all agreed that multiculturalism our path, which we haven't, that multiculturalism is normal and good, which it isn't and everyone who opposes it is bad, which they aren't instead of a contemporary debatable political concept, which it is.
I prefer this heavily loaded headline to their heavily loaded headline "Multiculturalists Threaten Humanity" where I label all said advocates as extremists and threatening.
Sowell just scratched the surface. The bias is plain to see in so many of their stories but the articles and headlines are so cleverly woven with bias the sheer tediousness of debating or countering the claims is daunting. Please remember, clever is not the same as smart or intelligent. Clever is more often associated with annoyance, antagonism and real trend toward dishonesty. |
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