Libel?

I know winning a libel case is impossible in this country, and I would rarely recommend someone bother trying, but this Andrew Sullivan post about Donald Luskin's precious is so filled with errors - errors which, given Sullivan's obsession with this story, he has to know are false - that it crosses the line. Unless, of course, the minty fresh testostogel has fried his brain.

IN DENIAL II: Hmmm. The New York Times runs a big story on the journalistic friends of Conrad Black, media mogul in ethical rapids. They detail how some leading conservatives have been paid handsomely on Black's "advisory boards" while not disclosing their payments. Who does that remind you of? Two years ago, it was revealed that Enron - yes, Enron - had been lavishing huge sums on friendly journalists, including the New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman.

Enron never gave any money to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. They gave money to academic and occasional freelance writer Paul Krugman before he worked at the New York Times. Krugman disclosed his financial connection when he wrote about Enron (Favorably) for Fortune magazine, and he disclosed it yet again - though it was a past relationship - when he began writing about Enron (very negatively) in his capacity as an NYT columnist.

The NYT - despite devoting enormous resources to the Enron story - deliberately ignored the journalism angle. Krugman still hasn't disclosed the tens of thousands of thinly-veiled bribes he got from Enron, while he postures absurdly as a foe of the powerful.

He then subsequently disclosed the precise nature of the relationship - money paid and what it was paid for. Maybe Andy has invented a new definition for "disclosed" which means "give it to Andy Sullivan" or something, but otherwise...

Andy continues to mention this story despite ignoring all the Enron money which was given to people like Peggy Noonan, Bill Kristol, and who knows who else that we haven't heard about. Krugman's crime appears to be receiving money, disclosing it, disclosing it further, all the while writing very negatively about them. How corrupt!


Besides, as Tbogg reminds us, the very idea of Andy writing about anyone's financial conflicts of interests (or journalistic lapses of any kind), is laughable:

Andrew Sullivan's latest controversy began Tuesday, when the New York Times published an article on the recent phenomenon of online "me-zines" -- scrappy, self-produced, sometimes stream-of-consciousness commentaries by celebrity intellectuals. But Sullivan's attempt to achieve what has eluded most online journalism ventures -- make his Web site self-sustaining, maybe even make a profit -- landed him in new trouble with his critics this week, after the story matter-of-factly reported that Sullivan had signed up his first corporate sponsor: the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

PhRMA is the association that looks out for the interests of industry giants like Pfizer and Merck on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. What the Times failed to report is that Sullivan has used his own Web site, as well as his posts at the New York Times Magazine and the New Republic to repeatedly -- and controversially - defend the pharmaceutical industry against criticism over its role in the global AIDS pandemic.

The controversy over Sullivan's site sponsor was short-lived: After reporters from Salon and other news organizations made calls to Sullivan's editors, as well as to journalism experts, about the ethics of a journalist being personally sponsored by an industry he frequently defends, Sullivan announced he would return the $7,500 annual sponsorship. But the larger question raised by the flap isn't likely to go away: How can a one-person "me-zine" develop ethical standards that allow it to accept the kind of advertising and sponsorships that go to corporate media monoliths, without the conflict of interest taint that naturally goes along with a journalist getting the personal backing of a controversial patron?

That Fucking Newspaper

The ideal rule is, of course, "never tweet," but having a Brand is how young journalists, especially people of color and others from nontraditional backgrounds such as "not having a Dad who worked at the New York Times," get these jobs in the first place, and they are expected to promote their work and their newspaper. And then there are social media guidelines, which of course just means some journalists tweet whatever the fuck they want and some can't. You see the most opinionated assholes (not all from the New York Times) waxing dumb about JOURNALISTIC OBJECTIVITY and then 5 minutes later doing a racism and never getting punished for it, because racism is just objectivity.

Of course expressing opinions like "JOURNALISTS SHOULD BE OBJECTIVE" is just good journalism, while expressing opinions like "don't write stories about black people being genetically inferior" is just ACTIVISM and BIAS because that black people are genetically inferior is just SCIENCE according to editors, apparently.

If your newsroom doesn’t like to be described as racist, it’s bad to publish stories that suggest “Black people are genetically inferior.”
When Kendra Pierre-Louis tweeted that newsrooms should not publish or uplift stories that do exactly that, she said the New York Times’ Standards Desk had a response, delivered to her by way of an editor:
“Don’t do it again.”

Pierre-Louis, a Black reporter who previously covered climate for the New York Times, said she was not asked to delete her tweet thread, which went on to critique American journalism’s failure to diversify and its failure to use the “R word.” But she was sanctioned for it, supposedly because it was not her job to cover race.

Ah, yes, that's covering race, which is absolutely not her job.

People get mad that I'm so harsh about the New York Times. I think there are a lot of very good reasons to be very critical of it. One is that, yes, I do hold the New York Times up to a higher standard, if for no other reason than they certainly claim to be of a higher standard. Times brain is a hell of a thing.

Speaking of Fascism

CNN brings Bill Bennett on many mornings, with a camera in his radio studio, to give us a sense of what his listeners are saying. There's no liberal counterpart, and he's often simply described as a radio host and CNN contributor, with no indication that he's as conservative. Here's what he had to say on Friday:

BENNETT: They were talking about that, for sure. We started with the Miami story, of course, of this plot -- supposed plot -- to blow up the World Trade Center. The people were angry about that, bothered by it -- a little afraid. A lot of talk about our kids, the next generation, we have working kids in cities like Chicago and New York, fear for them. So that was quite apparent.

But the fury this morning was about the "New York Times," and it wasn't fury about people having their bank records looked at. It was hundreds of people calling and saying, Look, we're in a war on terror. This program, the SWIFT program, at the Treasury Department, apparently doing a lot of good. We captured this guy who was responsible for the bombings in Bali because of this program. And it also led to the arrests of some of the people last July 7, and people are wondering about the "New York Times" and other outlets as to when they will stop interfering with these intelligence programs. O'BRIEN: So you think a lot of the rage from your listeners is directed at the "New York Times" for sort of outing this previously secret program?

BENNETT: Yes; the question as posed by one of our listeners was this -- here's the government. Now, we know the government may overclassify. We know the government keeps secrets it shouldn't, but this is a government that we've elected. They are responsible and accountable to us. And they are our first line of defense, through the military and through intelligence operations, in the war on terror. They said the "New York Times" cloaks itself in the First Amendment, but it's a profit-making media behemoth which is out to make headlines and make profits. And the government is entitled to have its views respected over that of the editors of the "New York Times."

So this thing continues to build. We had Pete Hoekstra on, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who is extremely frustrated about this. Something is going to happen before long. I know we've had hearings on this, but people don't appreciate just how angry a lot of the public is, in what they feel is an interference with the program. Here you have the Miami story, where the FBI, Soledad, penetrated this group. This depends upon having intelligence that remains secret, and if it is always being spilled out in the papers, people are worried, we're going to be putting ourselves and our kids in jeopardy.

It's long been a mystery to me why the free press embraces people who want to destroy them. One would think this is a bit more important than the fact that Markos can be a bit strident sometimes, I use bad words, and the elite's general horror at popular participation in the discourse.

The Outsider

I've mentioned this before I think, but there's nothing that's annoyed me more than Carville&Begala's mock horror about the fact that Dean is running as an "outsider" and running "against his own party." Don't they remember the 1992 campaign which they were intimately a part of?

Some reminders:

Copyright 1992 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

March 17, 1992, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
Mr. Clinton has taken a cue, for instance, from Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who dropped out of the Presidential race two weeks ago, and increased the number of times he now refers to himself as the candidate who can bring the most change to Washington. At a Texas debate last week, Mr. Clinton even borrowed Mr. Kerrey's most-used phrase to say he is for "fundamental change."

Mr. Clinton's portrayal of himself as an outsider owes a debt as well to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. of California, who has won the Colorado primary and who could manage a strong finish in Michigan with an outsider's message that rails against the monied and the powerful. Speaking to an audience in Macomb County, Mich., on Thursday, Mr. Clinton picked up that theme.

...

The Washington Post
March 23, 1992, Monday, Final Edition

Policy and spin marry so happily in the Clinton camp that the campaign can retool its themes as quickly as an Indy pit crew changes tires. When the race began, insiders say, the Clinton staff geared up to run as The New against The Old, figuring their chief opponent might be a familiar figure like New York Gov. Mario Cuomo or House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. They were also ready to run as The Outsider against The Insider if the opposition banner was carried by, say, Kerrey or Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin.

Tsongas was unforeseen, and surged to prominence waving many of the themes the Clinton people had prepared for themselves: the candidate from beyond Washington, offering new ideas for hard times. Snap! Clinton's staff reformulated its campaign as one of The People versus The Fat Cats, Main Street vs. Wall Street. Tso long, Tsongas.

...

Copyright 1992 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 5, 1992, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
Tsongas, he's for the upper class," said Bernie Skall, a retired accountant who heard Mr. Clinton yesterday at the Century Village retirement community in Deerfield Beach, Fla. "I think Mr. Clinton's down to earth. He's for the little guy."

The strategy also borrows from other campaigns. Although Mr. Clinton has long tried to cast himself as a Washington outsider, he was embraced early by most of the Washington Democratic establishment.

Now the outsider rhetoric has returned. And this time it owes more than a little of its edge to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. of California, who has found some success with his populist outsider's message.

"I'm not the favorite candidate of the Beltway," Mr. Clinton said as he explained away his loss in the Maryland primary on Tuesday, "because I support real change."

...
Copyright 1992 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.

March 13, 1992, FRIDAY, FIVE STAR Edition


The various charges are helping Clinton paint himself as an outsider. In Carbondale, he talked of the debates unrelated to issues that are ''paralyzing Washington'' and of a need to have less bureaucracy in Washington. Clinton has withstood so much adversity already that some of his supporters think he is becoming invincible. ''His resiliency has impressed people,'' said Kenneth Buzbee, a former senator from Carbondale who is running again for that position. ''Every time a new charge comes up, he bounces with it and buries it.'' Meanwhile, Clinton's advisers are doing their best to convince reporters that Clinton's baggage becomes lighter with every primary victory. People who worry about the general election are ''divorced from reality,'' said consultant Paul Begala, referring to Clinton's successes in Missouri and other states on Tuesday. ''Just because they say he's unelectable doesn't make it so.

...
Copyright 1992 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe

April 6, 1992, Monday, City Edition
Through the long weeks of competition in New Hampshire, both Clinton and Tsongas billed themselves as "outsider" candidates who shared a desire to change the Democratic Party's attitudes toward economic growth. But a sequence of primaries in states responsive to a working-class message converged this month with the disappearance of Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa from the race, leaving Tsongas as the most formidable obstacle to Clinton.

Tsongas has been proud of his claim to be the "probusiness" candidate in the race. But he set himself up for destruction in this month's primaries nearly a year ago when, in Denver on May 1 - the day after he announced his candidacy - he attacked the Democratic Party for encouraging "corporation-bashing, class warfare and populism." Those are the very tools that are now being used against him.

Clinton's aggressive tactics have smacked of class warfare. He now regularly depicts Tsongas as the representative of what James Carville, one of Clinton's strategists, calls "the elite, Volvo wing of the party." Clinton has also become an exponent of populism, saying that his "people-based economics" are composed of more flesh and blood than Tsongas' proposals for tax incentives for corporations to stimulate jobs.

etc...

The RNC Lies

And the New York Times dutifully fails to notice. It really is unbelievable. From Bob Somerby:

EASILY SPUN: How easily are New York Times writers spun? Here is Jim Rutenberg, hopelessly bull-roared in a Sunday “Week in Review” report:

RUTENBERG: It was a sharp video attack, jarring in a political season that has been unusually short on negative advertising. A woman, sitting at a keyboard, seeks information about Senator John Kerry on the Internet. She unearths all sorts of scandalizing tidbits.
“More special interest money than any other senator. How much?” she says.

The answer flashes on the screen: $640,000. “Ooh, for what?” she says, typing out “Paybacks?” and then reading aloud from the screen, she says, “Millions from executives at HMO’s, telecoms, drug companies.” She add, “Ka-Ching!”

She can only come to one damning conclusion: Mr. Kerry, she says, is “Unprincipled.”

The one-minute spot, introduced a week ago, did not appear on television, but on President Bush's campaign Web site. And so a new bare-knuckled political use of the World Wide Web showed its head: the Internet attack ad.

Rutenberg repeats the content of this ad, and brightly notes that it’s an “attack.” But he is too inept to let readers know that this ad’s attack is utterly false. Does Kerry take “more special interest money than any other senator?” No, and the (hapless) Washington Post piece which led to this ad never made such an assertion. According to Peter Beinart, Kerry ranks ninety-second among U.S. senators when it comes to special interest money. Meanwhile, at his Annenberg “FactCheck” site, Brooks Jackson shot down this ad’s bogus claim too. (He shot it down ten days ago!) Is Kerry first among senators in special interest dough, raising $640,000 in the last fifteen years? Please. “So far, for example, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist reported $1,022,063 in PAC donations for his 2004 campaign alone,” Jackson notes. The Bush ad’s claim is utterly bogus. Rutenberg, typing hard, failed to say so.
But then, the New York Times deals in the factesque. The RNC send out a fake claim, so Rutenberg sat right down and typed it! Meanwhile, one last note, from the Annals of Clowning: When Rutenberg went on to discuss last week’s rumor from Drudge, he applauded the press for “not tak[ing] the bait.” But he’d been yanked from the water himself, ten grafs earlier! This year it matters, Gail Collins has said. But at the Times, hopeless habits die hard.

Rutenberg's article is amusingly titled, "In Politics, the Web Is a Parallel World With Its Own Rules." The New York Times has its own rules too - thou shalt not fact check the RNC.

...I spoke to soon. The New York Times and NPR apparently have the same rules.

Know The State Of Their Marriage

I suppose it's fair to start at the top.
First, from the New York Times:

NEW YORK TIMES (4/11/99): Emma Gilbey, an author and journalist, was married yesterday to Bill Keller, the managing editor of The New York Times. The Rev. Robert J. Kennedy performed the ceremony at the Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan.

Ms. Gilbey, 38, is keeping her name. She is the author of "The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela" (Jonathan Cape, 1993). The bride graduated from King's College of London University.

She is the daughter of Anthony J. Gilbey of Wangford, England, and the late Lenore Gilbey. The bride's father is the chairman of Gilbey Collections, a London company that commissions limited edition commemorative items. Her mother was a journalist.

Mr. Keller, 50, graduated from Pomona College. He is the son of Adelaide and George M. Keller of San Mateo, Calif. The bridegroom's father retired as the chairman and chief executive of the Chevron Corporation in San Francisco.

But the London Times adds:

Gilbey is said to have dumped Kerry for David Gilmour, the Pink Floyd guitarist. In the 1990s she wrote a well-received biography of Winnie Mandela and met Bill Keller, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who was then foreign editor of The New York Times.

Their affair caused a frisson in New York as Keller walked out on his respected journalist wife when Gilbey became pregnant. They married in 1999. After the scandal caused by the fabrications of Jayson Blair, a reporter, Keller took over as editor of the newspaper last year.

Oh my.

Priorities

From the SF Chron:

Just four months ago, lest we forget, the New York Times issued its own mea culpa, acknowledging the repeated use of dubious information in its coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War and the Bush administration's repeated assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. In the case of one story, the Times flat-out said it was duped, although it used the more decorous phrase "taken in."

The two media apologies have a lot in common. In both cases, the issues involved have major implications for the presidential campaign. In both cases, a well-known national news organization admitted sloppy reporting and acknowledged that critical information could not be verified. In both cases, reporters were overly credulous in dealing with sources who had a political interest at stake -- in the CBS case the former Guardsman who is a vehement Bush opponent, in the New York Times case the Bush administration officials defending the president's decision to attack Iraq.

The critical difference between the two stories is that the Times' mistake was actually the far more serious of the two. The suspect stories touched on a more substantive topic -- the reasons for sending American soldiers to fight and die rather than the service record of a single lieutenant three decades ago -- and the journalistic failures were more prolonged and repeated, involving multiple stories over a period of months rather than a single story on a single day.

Yet against all logic, the CBS mea culpa is getting much more ink and air time than the New York Times case. The Times itself is one example. The paper ran its own apology on Page 10, but, perhaps drunk on schadenfreude, played the CBS confession above the fold on the front page. Other papers showed similar judgment. The Los Angeles Times put the New York paper's goof on Page 10, the CBS one on the front page. Sad to say, The Chronicle did much the same thing: The Times story was reported on Page 2 in an unsigned note "to the readers;" the CBS gaffe merited two stories on Page 1.

Kaus-approved Ann Coulter says:


My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."




MWO says:



VIOLENCE INCITEMENT WATCH

Slate/Mickey Kaus-Recommended Ann Coulter Expresses Regret That NYT Journalists Have Not Been Murdered By Terrorists

In an interview with the New York Observer's George Gurley, Ann Coulter says she regrets that a terrorist did not attack the New York Times building.

Was it an offhanded, off-the-record remark? No, Coulter encourages Gurley to turn on his tape recorder so that he can be sure to record (and presumably report) her regret that New York Times journalists have not been killed.

We wonder again why Slate.com's Mickey Kaus would concern himself with MWO's rhetoric, when someone he has recommended, and whose site he has permanently linked on his weblog at Slate.com, has expressed disappointment that his fellow journalists working for the New York Times have not been murdered in a terrorist attack.

Coulter's comments should sicken anyone, and we hope Slate.com and Mickey Kaus will reconsider their promotion of those who advocate such violence.

Not Beating The Charges

Journalists - people who work for the New York Times, people who used to work for the New York Times (white ones, anyway), people who desperately want to work for the New York Times, especially - will defend that place to the death against the rabid lambs of the internet, and then the New York Times does this. 

A couple of times I saw Nuzzi/Lizza referred to as a journalism "power couple." I don't think journalism should have "power couples" and I think if journalists were serious about defending the, well, seriousness of their practices and institutions they would vocally object to such things themselves.

If her journalism and her "ethical" practices related to journalism are what gets elevated by the people who make such choices, then you should consider that their critics have a point.

There might even be a defense of a kind of "fallen star" memoir if she had, in fact, fallen, instead of just being handed an editor gig at one of the few publications that still pays salaries (Vanity Fair).

Communicating True Things To Readers And Maybe Trying To Explain Things A Bit

It isn't new, but political reporters thinking (or claiming to think) that their job is to perform some elaborate ritual to keep sources happy and maintain some illusion of "balance" instead of trying to do what the title says is even more absurd now. People think journalism is important (yes) and think the New York Times does good work (of course it does some good work) and think supporting journalism means paying for the New York Times (no, really, no, it's like supporting higher education by donating to Harvard). And if you like the product pay for it. That's fine. But don't pay for it because you think you are fulfilling some sort of civic duty by paying for it. The New York Times has been hurting America my whole life. Every "but her emails" joke is about the New York Times and I don't know why everybody forgot this the day after the election.

Why should I pay for Peter Baker to call Ben Domenech to get quotes for a piece which basically blames normal people and "both sides" for the fact that elites, including elite journalists and columnists, and mostly Republican and conservative elites, are devoted to deceiving normal people, or at best obscuring the truth? Do your damn job and tell us who is full of shit. That isn't always completely clear, but often it is!

Unless that isn't your job... in which case, what would I be paying for again?

That Fucking Newspaper

Shot:

Let me ask about another subject that I suspect you might say has been distorted nationally: the Tenderloin, which the mayor declared an emergency zone. But whether anything actually new is happening there is almost beside the point. The point is that an open-air drug market is a bad thing for a city. What can you be doing to improve the situation?

The Tenderloin has been an ongoing public-health crisis and state of emergency for at least a decade. This is not a new problem. In fact, one of your colleagues [bretbug] at The New York Times wrote an Op-Ed in which he was highly critical of me. He linked to a video of the Tenderloin and the Civic Center BART station that adjoins it as an example of progressive prosecutors failing. But the video was from 2018. I hadn’t even run for office yet. I’m not saying that to be catty about your colleagues or the fact-checking at The New York Times. I’m making a broader point, which is that the right-wing media — I’m not saying this about The New York Times — has for years loved to point to the Tenderloin as an example of the failures of progressive policies. The reality is that every city in the United States has at least one neighborhood where, historically, through red-lining or policing or zoning, poverty has been consolidated. If you go to New York City, you can’t pretend that the South Bronx doesn’t exist, that deep east Brooklyn doesn’t exist. Those are parts of New York City, just like the Tenderloin is part of San Francisco.

Chaser:

Disgraceful, @NYTimes. Just completely disgraceful. If Bret Stephens' intent was not to attribute the conditions in the video to Boudin, there would be no reason to mention Boudin at all. pic.twitter.com/nM7FWg7ey7

— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) March 2, 2022

The New York Times Defense Force

One of the more amusing yet horrifying things is how the New York Times Defense Force springs into action on twitter every time there's some legitimate criticism of something published in that hell 'zine. The defense force consists of other New York Times people and most other elite journalists. It's always easy to nutpick Twitter, as with blogs or the internet generally, and find mean and unfair (not the same!) criticisms among the serious and thoughtful ones, but rarely is the substance of the criticism addressed.

It's always that angry unhinged partisans who do NOT UNDERSTAND JOURNALISM are picking on a poor defenseless reporter at the most important newspaper in the world, being highly personal and insulting, and also too this journalist is a much better journalist than you will ever be, and BOTH SIDES are picking on her (if the person in question is a woman there are accusations that criticism is all misogynistic) so SHE MUST BE DOING SOMETHING right. Never is there any acknowledgment that, hey, you know, maybe the critics have a point.

And "we're the New York Times fuck you" is actually a valid response, but that's the kind of a response which requires a stoic condescending smile, not all of this goddamn whining. These are the most ridiculous people in the world and they rule our discourse Now I know who collected all of these supposed participation trophies their whole lives. Class privilege is a hell of a thing.

No one needs a newsless misleading puff piece about your friend Hope Hicks, Maggie. Literally no one in the country cares except your future book publishers. We get it. It's a beat sweetener. PR in exchange for information for your book. The tragic story of poor Hope Hicks who has to face a Congressional subpoena which is interrupting all the time she spends rolling around in her money while collecting her Murdoch salary. Truly Shakespearean.

Why they only respond this way to criticism from The Left is an exercise left for you, dear readers.

Judy Judy Judy

Jay Rosen has some interesting things to say. It's clear that the institutional issues at the Times are incompatible with the sort of high minded journalism they preach. He writes:

Indeed, Miller's confounding case has so handcuffed the editorial capacity of the Times that it couldn't manage the simple act of reporting the news that she had been freed at about 4 pm Thursday. (See Editor & Publisher for that one.)

The Philadelphia Inquirer got a tip earlier in the day, confirmed it with officials at the jail that afternoon, and published the news about Miller's freedom at 6:40 pm. The Inquirer guys said they were surprised the Times wasn't reporting its own news. “We were checking their Web site," they said. "We thought they would put it up and they didn't." The Times did post its story around 8:45 pm that night (according to CJR Daily), but what does it mean when the simple act of breaking your own news becomes impossible for the Washington bureau?

Editor & Publisher: "When asked Friday why the Times did not report the story for several hours after Miller's release, New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Philip Taubman declined comment." No comment? Judy Miller's Times is an institution that ties itself in knots. It can't speak clearly, it contradicts itself. Instead of giving out information, it withholds. It can never tell the full story.

...

Or take this example: Murray Wass of the American Prospect reported new information back on August 6th: "Scooter Libby and Judy Miller met on July 8, 2003, two days after Joe Wilson published his column. And Patrick Fitzgerald is very interested." Wass asked the Times to comment:

In response to questions for this article, Catherine J. Mathis, a spokesperson for the Times, said, "We don't have any comment regarding Ms. Miller's whereabouts on July 8, 2003."

After Miller's release the Times got around to saying what it must have always known: "Ms. Miller met with Mr. Libby on July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone later that week, [sources] said." Notice how it affects what the New York Times, a great institution, can tell the public, and yet Judy's decision was hers: personal when she made it (her conditions weren't met), personal when she changed it (her conditions were met.) That's what I mean by Miller's Times.

Newspapers are a business and I wouldn't never expect 100% transparency on all internal operations. But, this isn't about internal business dealings, this is about news and journalism. There are different parts of the beast, but a big mistake was ever letting Bill Keller get involved in this in any way. That corrupted the integrity of the news page. Let Pinch defend her, let the editorial page (ridiculously) rant in her defense, but with Keller putting himself out there to defend her the news page of the Times completely lost its claim to legitimate independence.

A Poisonous Hypocrisy Flashback

This isn't directly related to the gay Bishop issue but it did bring it to mind. On (former) Cardinal Spellman of New York:

The archconservative Spellman was the epitome of the self-loathing, closeted, evil queen, working with his good friend, the closeted gay McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn, to undermine liberalism in America during the 1950s’ communist and homosexual witch hunts. The church has squelched Spellman’s gay life quite successfully, most notably by pressuring The New York Times to don the drag of the censor back in the 1980s. The Times today may be out front exposing every little nasty detail in the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal-a testament to both the more open discussion of such issues today and the church’s waning power in New York-but not even 20 years ago the Times was covering up Spellman’s sexual secrets many years after his death, clearly fearful of the church’s revenge if the paper didn’t fall in line. (During Spellman’s reign and long afterward, all of New York’s newspapers in fact cowered before the Catholic Church. On Spellman’s orders New York’s department stores-owned largely by Catholics-pulled ads from the then-liberal New York Post in the 1950s after publisher Dorothy Schiff wrote commentary critical of his right-wing positions; Schiff was forced to back down on her positions.)

...

...While Spellman has been long dead, his legacy of hypocrisy lives on: there are closeted homosexuals-often condemning "sexual immorality" publicly while having gay sex privately-throughout the uppermost echelons of the church today. The gay movement in the past 15 years has taken on the Hollywood closet and the Washington political closet, both with dramatic success-and both those institutions have p.r. operations far more sophisticated than the Vatican’s antiquated machine, which can’t even seem to get the aging cardinals to attend a press conference. The media these days also has a much greater appetite for exposing sexual hypocrisy, and is no longer cowed by the Catholic Church. Going down this treacherous road of increased gay-bashing and scapegoating, the Vatican perhaps doesn’t realize what it may be unleashing upon itself. If I were a closeted bishop or cardinal in America, I would be very afraid.

One Poll, Many Stories

Here's the lead of CBS's coverage of its CBS/NYT poll:

Poll: Bush's Approval Sinking

Jan. 17, 2004

Overall, most Americans say things in the country are worse now than they were five years ago. Fifty-seven percent say things are worse, while 21% say they're better.

(CBS) After rising in public support following the capture of Saddam Hussein, the President gives his State of the Union message next week with a decidedly less positive audience. His approval rating of 50% matches his lowest approval ratings ever, and the largest number ever – 45% - disapprove.

Here's how even the genocide-advocating cult leader owned Moonie UPI reported it:

Times/CBS poll show Bush ratings down
NEW YORK, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Democratic voters held a 2 point edge over those who would vote for President Bush if the U.S. election were held now, a CBS/New York Times poll said.

The poll published Saturday found that 45 percent of voters said they would vote for a still unspecified Democratic candidate and 43 percent would vote for President Bush.

Late last month, the president held a 49 percent to 40 percent edge. The standing now is similar to what it was in November 2003, before the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Here's how even the liberal New York Times reported it:

Poll Bolsters Bush on Terrorism but Finds Doubts on Economy
By ROBIN TONER and JANET ELDER
President Bush begins his campaign year with Americans voicing strong support for his handling of the war against terrorism, but many doubting his economic and domestic policies, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Fewer than one in five people said their tax burden had been eased by Mr. Bush, who has made tax cuts the centerpiece of his economic program. His latest domestic initiatives, unveiled in the run-up to the State of the Union message on Tuesday, got only a lukewarm response, with 58 percent saying that building a permanent space station on the Moon was not worth the risks and costs.

Moreover, the support Mr. Bush gained after the capture of Saddam Hussein last month has largely dissipated. His overall approval rating now stands at 50 percent, comparable to President Bill Clinton's 47 percent in January 1996. Mr. Bush remains a polarizing figure in a sharply divided country, with 9 in 10 Republicans approving of his performance, and only 1 in 4 of the Democrats.

Despite those vulnerabilities, which the Democratic presidential candidates are busily trying to exploit, Mr. Bush retains a powerful advantage on national security. Sixty-eight percent, including majorities of both Democrats and independents, gave him high marks for the campaign against terrorism, and 68 percent said the Bush administration's policies have made the United States safer from terrorist attacks. Sixty-four percent said they considered him a strong leader.

All the Tabloid News Fit to Print

Digby:

No folks, that excerpt isn't from Hello magazine or even Vanity Fair. That's the New York fucking Times and it's on page one. If people aren't thinking about the Clintons in terms of infidelity and betrayal now, New York's newest tabloid rag is going to make damned sure they are reminded of it.

I do not know if Hillary is running for president and I'm not making a case for her candidacy. I do, however, think she has the right to try to earn the nomination without this gossip-at-the-hair salon coverage by the NY Times. And believe me, it won't just be her. Look at the spooky picture of Mark Warner on the cover of New York Times Magazine. He looked like something out of a David Lynch movie. I have no doubt that we are going to be reading many derisive accounts of Al Gore the bearded, earth toned circus freak. It's quite clear that if the Democrats are are coming into power, the Times is going to pick up right where it left off when it was last obsessed with Clinton's crotch and Hillary's cold, cold heart. Or perhaps, more to the point, this piece is just a first notice that they plan to.

Democrats be advised: the press is a bunch of braindead robots who are uninterested in changing their puerile Democratic storyline even in the face of the most disasterous administration in American history.It's shocking. You can love Hillary or hate her, I don't care. But goddamit the intimate state of her marriage to Bill Clinton is nobody's business and it NEVER HAS BEEN. If the gossip rags want to play this game, there's nothing anyone can do. But it is just shameful that the New York Times would go back to their cheap, tabloid coverage of politics when the world is on fire. I'm honestly stunned that this is happening again.

Kramer vs. Keller

Kramer to Keller (and others):

LARRY KRAMER

Mr. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Sulzberger,

I am writing to protest the Times' ridiculous dismissal of Jay Blotcher, who was an upstate stringer for you, because he had once been a member of ACT UP. According to reporting on this incident in the Gay City News of February 26th, Susan Edgerley, the Times' metropolitan editor said, "I am setting the bar high to protect against any appearance of conflict of
nterest that might result through the hiring of stringers and leg-people. My motivation is expediency as well as ethics." What kind of gobbledegook is this? Both Ms. Estridge and Jay's editor, Lew Serviss, stated under questioning by Jay and Duncan Osborne who wrote the Gay City News piece:, [Jay's] name was recognized as someone in ACT UP." What kind of McCarthy-type of blacklisting is this?

Blotcher is a well-known writer for gay publications. He is a fine and honorable man, much loved by those who know him, without a mean or spiteful or vindictive or vengeful bone in his body. Jay was praised by his Times editors and given increasingly more assignments. The stories he did write had nothing to do with AIDS or gay. Please explain to me where the conflict of interest lies? He has no current political or activist affiliations. So where is the conflict of interest? Or unethical behavior?

Indeed, what kind of conflict of interest is being a member of ACT UP so many years ago? ACT UP was an activist organization that excited the participation of many many people, both gay and straight, at a time when gay men were literally dying like flies. There are still a number of
members of your staff who fall into this catetgory of early ACT UP participants. Perhaps Ms. Edgerley would like me to provide her with the names of these Times staffers so she can fire them too for conflict of interest, providing they are still alive, which one of the best-known Times ACT UPpers, Jeffrey Schmalz, is not. You do not dismiss Larry Altman from writing for you because of conflict of interest; he writes about the CDC all the time and he once worked for them. Bernard Weinraub writes about Hollywood and his wife heads Columbia Pictures. Talk about conflict of interest. Indeed I have written for your newspaper and your magazine a number of times and no one appeared to find my contributions unethical.
Indeed, just what kind of "ethics" is Ms. Edgerley referring to? I would sincerely like to know. And so should you. Yes, it all smacks very much of McCarthy-type blacklisting to me.

It is a goodly number of years since gay people considered, quite rightly, the New York Times our enemy, for your unconscionable refusal to write about us in any but the most hateful of ways, and for so long, and for your wretched, shameful early lack of coverage of AIDS. And, yes, among other actions, we marched on your father's Fifth Avenue apartment. Since then the world has changed and the Times, thank goodness, has changed, much of this due to your own fine self. To punish now, at this late date, a member of an organization that is now almost moribund strikes me as unconscionable behavior on the part of the Times, all over again.

Perhaps you could investigate and enlighten me on just what is going on here. We are not talking about a full-time or staff writer here. We are talking about an upstate stringer! If the budget of the Times could no longer support his meager income from you, then surely someone should just have fired him and said, "we can't afford you anymore." But to go through this "conflict of interest" and "ethics" stuff is a rather insensitive and possibly, if not defamatory, if not homophobic, if not discriminatory, then perhaps a little bit of each all rolled together into a rather stupid and inexplicable act on the part of someone on your paper.

If past, or indeed current, political affiliations are cause for dismissal, then perhaps you should revise your Times Code of Ethics accordingly or summarily dismiss the scores of NYT staffers who no doubt fit this bill.

And yes, I founded ACT UP. A long time ago. When we were all very young. No conflict of interest on this end.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Larry Kramer

Keller to Kramer:

Dear Mr. Kramer,


Arthur sent me your letter about Jay Blotcher for a reply.
As you undoubtedly know, this paper went through some misery last year that has caused us to undertake a conscientious review of our standards and practices. In keeping with that, our new Metro editor began a review of our stringer list to make sure our policies on conflicts of interest were in force. We employ dozens of stringers at Metro -- although "employ" exaggerates the nature of the relationship, since most of them work only occasionally. (Mr. Blotcher, since joining the list in 2001, has filed four stories and contributed legwork on three others.)
In the review of the stringer list, Mr. Blotcher attracted attention not because of his membership in anti-AIDS organizations, but because of his work as a press spokesman and a public relations consultant. He was, for a time, the public face of Act Up. Although he is no longer in that role, his work was recent enough that we worry he is identified in the public mind as an advocate. (He is certainly remembered as such by editors and reporters at The Times.) Please understand, I have no problem with Mr. Blotcher working for Act Up, and intend no suggestion that he is anything but an honorable man. But we try to avoid employing people who are identified with a cause, because it creates the possibility that readers may wonder if their copy is written in pursuit of that cause. That would be true if he had been a spokesman for the N.R.A., the N.R.D.C., or the A.A.R.P.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the problem created by a history of public advocacy is somewhat easier to avoid in the case of a full-time staffer. Reporters on staff get a lot of management attention, and we get pretty much all of their attention. We can steer reporters away from subjects that may be problematic. But we don't have sufficient editing staff to keep such close tabs on stringers, so our best opportunity to vet them is when we decide whether or not to include them on our stringer list. Particularly after the experience of last year, we are trying to err on the side of caution.
You may argue that we are being excessively fastidious. But the notion that this is some kind of homophobic witch hunt is just wrong.


Regards, Bill Keller

Kramer to Keller:

to bill keller:

dear mr keller. thank you for such a swift response to my letter of concern over the firing of jay blotcher, one of your stringers, for supposed conflict of interest. while i hear your concern for due diligence over your employees' mindsets, i must say that i find the exercise of them in this particular case to have been amazingly petty.

it is difficult to recognize or believe that you exercise much attention to your full time staff as you suggest. to cite but one example, here are a few details about your chief medical correspondent Lawrence Altman's past and current relationships with the Centers for Disease Control, among others. It should be pointed out tha the CDC is never criticized in your paper. It should be pointed out that it is irrefutable that the CDC is eminently worthy of extreme criticism. It is a sorry place and the public heath of this country suffers mightily because of it, and has done for decades:

Altman graduated from the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, class of '63, and then served as an EIS investigator for the agency.

In 2001 he recounted in an article for the Times, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the EIS, of his time in 1963 investigating, as an EIS officer, an outbreak of botulism in Tennessee. [4]

Altman also served as editor of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for three years in the 1960s. [5]

After leaving the CDC, he eventually became chief of the U.S. Public Health Service's Division of Epidemiology and Immunization in Washington. [6]

Altman has for several years also served as an advisor to the National Foundation for the CDC, a nonprofit advocacy organization created by Congress in 1992 that began operating in 1995 with a $500,000 grant from the federal government. The foundation receives $500,000 annually from Congress to carry out its mission, while the bulk of its operating budget comes from public and corporate donations. [7]

The 2001 annual report for the foundation reveals Altman made a donation to the organization, though the amount was not disclosed in the report. [8]

Currently, Altman is on the CDC foundation's journalism fellowship advisory board. He receives no compensation from this foundation. His colleagues include representatives from ABC News, CNN and the Los Angeles Times. [9]

Altman presently sits on the board of directors of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation of New York, a philanthropic health care and education charity that owns substantial shares of stock in pharmaceutical and medical technology firms, such as Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Pfizer and Schering Plough. [10]

According to the IRS 990 return for the Macy Foundation, part of Altman's contact information is the Times' address and his direct phone number at the paper. [11]

Altman has been a member of the Macy Foundation board since 1985.

Why does your paper not view any of this as a conflict of interest and yet fire an upstate stringer just because he places a few press releases for some gay organizations? it doesn't sound as if Dr. Altman gets any "management attention" at all.

as far as being identified with a cause, as jay is certainly and honorably identified with gay causes, it seems to me i have seen various sulzberger names on many appeals from a number of jewish organzations.

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Thankfully it only took me two posts to find something incredibly stupid to comment on. From Chez Andy:

THE NEW YORK TIMES ON PRE-EMPTION: The invaluable Jeffrey Goldberg presents what is to my mind an unarguable case for removing Saddam from power in Slate. But his real discovery is a New York Times editorial of June 9, 1981. It concerned the Israelis' pre-emptive strike against Saddam's Osirak nuclear plant. Under the headline, "Israel's Illusion," the Times declared:
Israel's sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression. Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago.
There you have it: the moral equivalence, the short-sightedness, the moral preening, all disguising a fantastic error of judgment. If Saddam had had that nuclear capacity, there would have been no Gulf War, or one with disastrous consequences. The Times, of course, never learns. But this time, the security of the United States is at stake. We cannot let ourselves be led by the deluded and the defeatist any more.
- 7:01:14 PM

Error of judgement it may have been, but one which caused the Reagan administration to withhold arms shipments to Israel and rumor is it inspired his vice president to demand retaliatory strikes against Israel. I agree - Israel was right on this one, but it wasn't just the NYT that was against it.

NOTE TO ANDY: SADDAM WAS OUR BUDDY THEN!

If the NYT was guilty of anything it was what the U.S. press is always guilty of -- going along with U.S. foreign policy no matter what it is.


By HOWELL RAINES Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 16 - The Reagan Administration is expected to announce tomorrow that it will release to Israel the four F-16 fighterbombers whose delivery was held up after the Israeli air strike on the Iraqi reactor.

White House sources said the announcement would be made at the State Department. The four F-16's, whose delivery was scheduled for last month, were withheld pending a determination whether Israel had used Americansupplied planes in the raid in violation of United
States statutes limiting such weapons to defensive purposes.

American officials also made it clear that delaying the planes was a way of reprimanding Israel and calming Arabs who demanded that the United States condemn Israel for the attack on Iraq.

Assurances on Other F-16's

After it delayed the June deliveries, however, the Administration announced that it would go ahead with delivery of six other F-16's to be released to Israel tomorrow. White House spokesmen said at the time that the matter of the four planes would be resolved by the time
the six were due to be delivered.

Since the policy was announced July 1, it has been regarded as a foregone conclusion that the United States would eventually deliver all the planes. But the Administration faced the problem of working out a diplomatic explanation for its action that did not appear either to
endorse Israel's attack or to call into question the United States' role as an ally of Israel.




Is Andy this stupid? Really? My god.

Wen Ho Lee

While much attention was paid to the issue of journalists and the courts in the Plame Affair, the real issue lurking below the surface was the case of Wen Ho Lee. As the source-who-they-won't-name has been known for some time (though there may be others of course), and it's unclear exactly what journalistic principle is being upheld by covering up for sources which lead you astray, it's long been clear that from the perspective of the media outlets this was always about protecting their pocketbooks and reputations. So much for principle.

Boehlert reminds us.

I wonder what Notra Trulock makes of last week's news? A discredited former Energy Department intelligence officer who often came across as a Clinton-hating dittohead, Trulock served as a key government source throughout the Lee witch hunt. (The charges against Lee crumbled in court after Lee had already spent 278 days in solitary confinement.) Trulock was the source some news organizations didn't want to reveal in court and the man who led key reporters around by their noses, spinning fantastic tales about Lee's diabolical deeds; half-baked tales that were often faithfully retold in the pages of the most important newspapers in America. Read: The New York Times. Last week's settlement might have included five news organizations--ABC News, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post--but the Wen Ho Lee saga has always been about the woeful conduct of the Times and its embarrassing reliance on someone like Trulock who wielded such an obvious partisan ax as he chased after Lee, and by extension the Clinton administration, which Trulock argued was somehow protecting Lee's espionage. (Don't ask.)

Of course, the Wen Ho Lee tale and the Times' wildly over-heated reporting (eagerly hyped by the paper's editorial page, run at the times by Howell Raines) did not spring from a vacuum. Instead, it occurred at the pinnacle of the press corps' Get-Clinton years and fit into a distinct and troubling pattern at the newspaper of record. Recall that the Times embarrassed itself in the 1990s with its now-discredited Whitewater coverage; a story often fed to the Times by anonymous partisan Republican sources. The Times embarrassed itself with an innuendo-heavy Loral investigation that suggested the Clinton White House gave away weapons secrets to the Chinese in exchange for campaign contributions; a story often fed by anonymous partisan Republican sources. The Times embarrassed itself with its one-sided Wen Ho Lee coverage; a story often fed by anonymous partisan Republican sources. And more recently, the Times embarrassed itself with its pre-war WMD coverage; a story often fed by anonymous partisan Republican sources.

Stupid Glenn Greenwald

What he doesn't tell you is that all the Victory Caucusers went down to their local recruiting stations and enlisted.

Oh, wait, no, that didn't happen. In fact, because of the spectacular failure of Operation Yellow Elephant, they've changed policy about National Guard deployment:

RAY SUAREZ: The Pentagon has alerted National Guard units in several states their soldiers may be returning to Iraq sooner than expected. The New York Times reported today that as many as 14,000 Guard troops could be involved.

For more, I'm joined by David Cloud of the New York Times, who broke the story today. And, David, who's being told to be ready to go back to Iraq?

DAVID CLOUD, New York Times: Well, there are units in four states -- Arkansas, Oklahoma, Ohio and Indiana -- combat brigades in all four of the states, which are being told they may have to go back to Iraq early next year. Many of them have already been to Iraq one or Afghanistan one or even two times.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, when would they have expected to go back? When, under the normal rotation, would they have gone back otherwise?

DAVID CLOUD: One of the units wasn't scheduled to go back until 2010. The other three were supposed to go back in 2009. So this is a significant shortening of the time that they're going to have at home between deployments.

Timetables for deployments

RAY SUAREZ: Now, what was the most recent policy of the Bush administration regarding how long it would be between overseas deployments for units like the ones that are being told to be ready to go back?

DAVID CLOUD: The policy for several years, since the Iraq invasion, has been that, for Guard and Reserve units, they were supposed to be deployed for 24 months every five years, no more than 24 months every five years. That was scraped in January when the president announced his surge plan, his plan to send more reinforcements to Iraq.

They acknowledged at the time that essentially the deployments had gone on so long in Iraq and Afghanistan that there was no way they could live up to those promises anymore. And they've come up with a new set of rules, which essentially say, "We will send you for one year, a maximum of one year, every five years." But in doing so, they've wiped away the previous service so that any unit is now eligible to go back for another year to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Still, don't sell the Victory Caucusers short. Here's what the 6 users who are currently online say they're willing to do to help achieve victory:


wil: Contributing my own writing
Snooper: Acting as a researcher to find and post content; Contributing my own writing.
Kateri: Acting as a researcher to find and post content; Contributing my own writing.
Fat Matty: Acting as a researcher to find and post content.
CoolBlue: Contributing my own writing

And, finally, there's Charles120, who has already done his service - Vietnam Vet - and says he's willing to help "Where ever I can be of assistance."