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Times Watch for 05/02/03
Stop the Presses: Gay Group Dislikes Santorum Comments
Sheryl Gay Stolberg continues her anti-Santorum charge today with a story about the senator’s antagonistic meeting with what the Times blandly calls “parents of gay children.”
“Four parents of gay children had a fiery private exchange tonight with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The meeting did not go well, and Mr. Santorum, who has infuriated gays by likening homosexuality to incest and bigamy, left in a hurry, tripping over a chair, the parents said.” Later she writes: “Also present for the meeting were Mrs. Waldo's husband, Richard, a lifelong Republican who he [said] voted two times for Mr. Santorum, and two constituents of the senator, Fran and Allen Kirschner of Philadelphia.”
Constituent meetings, even hostile ones, with congressman don’t often get covered in the Times National section. How’d this one make the Times radar screen? Here’s a clue—these parents are also members of a gay advocacy group: “The parents who met tonight are members of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, an advocacy group that has not spoken publicly before on Mr. Santorum, but is in Washington to lobby lawmakers on issues like hate crimes and safe schools for gay youths.” (Actually, PFLAG did criticize Santorum back on April 23.)
Stolberg’s attention to detail (Santorum “tripping over a chair, the parents said”) is admirable, but is it really prudent to take on faith a story from an activist group with an incentive to paint Santorum as flustered and defensive? Not to mention Stolberg’s unquestioning acceptance of yet another “lifelong Republican,” a breed that pops up with suspicious regularity among liberal groups.
Today’s Times runs a sober editor’s note on its Corrections page, revealing that a reporter accused of plagiarism has resigned:
“Jayson Blair, a reporter for The New York Times, resigned yesterday after the newspaper began an internal review of an article he wrote about the family of an American soldier then missing in action in Iraq and since confirmed dead. The article, published on Saturday and datelined Los Fresnos, Tex., incorporated passages from one published earlier by The San Antonio Express-News. The Times has been unable to determine what original reporting Mr. Blair did to produce it.”
Today’s Times includes a news story on the Blair controversy, while media reporter Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports “the paper has run 50 corrections on Blair’s stories.”
As Slate’s “Today’s Paper’ columnist Sam Schechner notes: “[Their] quick-'n'-dirty Lexis-Nexis search turned up 689 pieces with Blair's byline.” (Blair joined the paper in 1999.)
That’s an average of one printed correction for every 14 stories that Blair wrote. Apparently, the editorial desk long overlooked the warning signs that not all Blair’s work was “fit to print.”
Times Calls Bush "Fiscal Nero"--But Fiddles With Facts
The Times editorial “Misguided Cuts in Washington” begins: “The political dichotomy is breathtaking: as state and local politicians struggle with deepening deficits and rising taxes, President Bush plays the fiscal Nero, the virtuoso fiddler for ever more tax cuts.”
Got that? It’s bad when state governments raise taxes, and it’s also bad when the federal government lowers them.
Then there’s this dishonest account of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s testimony to Congress: “If the Washington wing of the G.O.P. is deaf to the cries of pain from the nation's statehouses, surely it must hear the measured warning from Alan Greenspan, the nation's economic guru, that new tax cuts are definitely not needed now. They will probably harm the economy, not help it, he cautions, compounding the Republicans' feckless deficit spending while pushing up the national debt along with interest rates.”
That’s at best a misrepresentation of Greenspan’s tax-cut position. Greenspan in fact supports the president's tax cuts, as long as they are matched by spending reductions. How do I know this? Well, I read it in yesterday’s Times: “Greenspan said he strongly supported the president's tax policy, particularly the proposal to eliminate taxes on most stock dividends, ‘provided it is matched by cuts in spending.’”
Should we now expect the Times to editorialize in favor of cutting federal spending, in deference to “guru” Greenspan’s expertise? (A few juicy targets come to mind such as the Departments of Education and Agriculture.) Of course not. The Times has long stood for big government and high taxes. That’s fine. But it shouldn’t pretend Greenspan agrees.
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org