• Home
• Articles
• Support
• About
• Links
Times Watch for 05/13/03
Credibility Chasm on 43rd Street
Not even the liberal media trust the Times anymore. More in sadness than in anger, liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen comments on just how badly the Jayson Blair fiasco has damaged the Times credibility—and gives personal insight on the oracular status the Times has long held in media circles.
“Years ago,’ Cohen says, “I wrote a column using information from the New York Times. The story contained a mistake—a whopper, actually—which I repeated in my column. When the person involved called to complain, I checked with lawyers for The Post, fearing a libel suit. Nothing to worry about, I was told. Such was the reputation of the Times for veracity that both law and custom permitted me to use it without further checking.”
Contrast that with how non-journalists view the media, even the untouchable Times. As USA Today’s Peter Johnson notes in his “Media Mix” column: “Harvard media analyst Alex Jones, a former Times reporter, is troubled that many of the people Blair identified and quoted in his articles didn't contact the paper—even after knowing that he fabricated quotes because they had never talked to him. ‘They didn't say, 'Holy cow, this somebody who is clearly unscrupulous.' Instead, their response was to shrug their shoulders and say, 'Hey, what did you expect?' This is a great indictment of the American media,’ Jones says.”
In his Post column, Cohen also suggests management’s quest for staff diversity superseded editorial concerns over Blair’s reporting: “Several times Blair was reprimanded for his blatant inaccuracies. He was deemed so serious a threat to the paper's well-earned reputation for accuracy that in April 2002 the Times' metropolitan editor, Jonathan Landman, wrote an e-mail message to newsroom administrators saying, ‘We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.’ Yet not only was Blair not stopped, he was promoted to the national staff and ultimately given more responsibilities. Why? The answer appears to be precisely what the Times denies: favoritism based on race. Blair is black, and the Times, like other media organizations, is intent on achieving diversity.”
No Friends to the Left for the
Times?
The Times is suddenly fresh out of friends: Even left-wing outlets are jumping on the Times—from the right. Cynthia Cotts, media columnist for the left-wing Village Voice, devotes her column to the Jayson Blair plagiarism brouhaha, and while glossing over the diversity debate, makes a point conservatives can appreciate: “Insiders say the Blair case is symptomatic of a deeper issue: The Times newsroom does not operate as a meritocracy. Instead, sources say, [executive editor Howell]Raines and [managing editor Gerald] Boyd pick their favorites for whatever reasons and become so invested in showcasing these reporters that they turn a blind eye to their flaws, which are said to range variously from inexperience and laziness to intellectual dishonesty and a high volume of factual errors.”
Even Trotskyites are making conservative-sounding criticisms of the Times. After defending Jayson Blair, World Socialist Web Site writers Bill Vann and David North point out the Times has done far worse in the past: “This was the newspaper, after all, that employed Walter Duranty in the 1930s, the correspondent who deliberately covered up the crimes of Stalin and defended the integrity of the Moscow frame-up trials that led to the physical liquidation of the leading figures of the October 1917 revolution and inaugurated a wholesale reign of terror by the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The Times still proudly lists Duranty as one of its Pulitzer Prize winners.”
Firestone’s Tiresome Anti-Tax Tirade
David Firestone’s story “$350 Billion, 100 Senators and, Oops, One Mistake,” relates a procedural tactic Senate Democrats are using to stall debate on a Bush-inspired tax cut proposal. In the process, Firestone presents a highly debatable liberal assumption (that a tax cut will lead to larger deficits) as proven fact: “The Democrats refused to allow the bill number to be changed, to demonstrate their refusal to make it easy for the Republicans to increase the deficit with their tax cut.”
Firestone employed the same tactic in a March story co-written with Carl Hulse: “Though Democrats pleaded for a halt after the war began, the Republican leaders of the House and Senate chose not to stop their march toward tax cuts and record deficits.”
For the rest of Firestone’s story on Bush’s “increasing deficits,” click here:
An unbylined report in Monday’s Times, “UN Population Agency Recoups Some Lost Aid” lovingly profiles two liberals raising money for the UN Population Fund. The Bush administration is no longer funding UNFPA because of concerns the money would be used to help facilitate forced abortions in China. But the Times portrays this liberal activism as unobjectionable grass-roots philanthropy.
“It is a sad fact of life that, no matter how sincere one's philanthropic intentions may be, not everyone can be Ted Turner. That includes Lois W. Abraham. Last July, when Ms. Abraham learned that the Bush administration was pulling back on $34 million in financial support to the United Nations Population Fund, she wanted to do something about it.” Along with a retired French teacher, Jane Roberts, she put together an email campaign urging people to send in a dollar to make up for the lost aid.
“The Population Fund, also known as the UNFPA….provides support for reproductive health services and programs to prevent HIV, AIDS and pregnancy, primarily in underdeveloped countries,” the Times reports.
Then the paper notes, almost in passing, what some find offensive about the Fund: “The Bush administration decided to withhold the United States' entire annual contribution to the fund, $34 million, last year, contending that the fund aids Chinese government agencies that it said practiced population control. The State Department issued a statement saying that the United States was restricted from helping to finance any organization that ‘supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.’”
The Times claims: “The fund, which has an annual budget of $270 million, denies such support, citing a State Department fact-finding mission last May that found no evidence it supported such programs.”
That’s a misleading take, at best. The State Department may not have found evidence that UNFPA knowingly supported such programs, but it didn’t have to: “The team noted a system of extremely high fines and penalties imposed on families that exceed the number of children per family approved by the government. In this connection, even if UNFPA did not ‘knowingly’ support or participate in such a program, that does not mean that the Kemp-Kasten restriction would not be triggered, since that restriction does not rest on a finding of legal intent to fund the coercive program. The restriction is triggered if the recipient "supports or participates in the management or a program of coercive abortion" (or involuntary sterilization).”
Having passing over such concerns, the Times finds a happy ending: “Meanwhile, the dollars are still coming. Last week, the United Nations Foundation contributed $250,000 to the fund. The foundation is a nonprofit organization that provides financial support for humanitarian projects. It was established, incidentally, by Ted Turner.” All’s well that ends well, if not for Chinese mothers and babies, then at least for liberal activists and their publicity partners at the Times.
For the rest of the Times take on the Population Fund, click here.
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org