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Times Watch for May 16, 2003
A Times letter to the editor from William McGowan identifies the writer as the author of "Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism." McGowan’s 2001 book made many direct criticisms of how “diversity” was corrupting Times reporting. Perhaps predictably, the Times refused to review the book (although it was happy to grace left-wing writer Eric Alterman with two glowing reviews of his book “What Liberal Media?”).
In fact, the only previous Times mention of McGowan’s book came on August 5, 2002, at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists--not exactly friendly territory for McGowan’s ideas. Reporter Felicity Barringer wrote: “Meanwhile, the association's core beliefs are under attack -- and misrepresented, the group's leadership would argue -- by the author William McGowan, whose recent book, ‘Coloring the News,’ argues that newsrooms, in their quest for diversity, have donned a new and dangerous set of blinkers that keep them from close examination of issues like race and feminism.”
In his letter today, McGowan
argues that “if the Times really wants to extract institutional lessons from
this fiasco, it needs to re-examine its fixation on diversity. It must
acknowledge that at some points its enacting of this well-intentioned agenda
made it vulnerable to journalistic corruption.” Executive editor Howell Raines
pretty much admitted this at Wednesday’s unprecedented town-hall style staff
meeting.
Perhaps the Times can continue making amends by at last assigning a review of
the paperback version of “Coloring the News,” out just last month and
containing a new
chapter on 9-11. In the wake of Jayson Blair, the book’s discussion of the
corrupting effects of diversity quests seem more relevant than ever.
To read “Coloring the News” author William McGowan’s letter to the Times, click here.
Bush
Policy “Did the Terrorists a Favor”
Perhaps shell-shocked by criticism that he
willfully mislead readers about Bush’s tax cut plan, Times columnist Paul
Krugman is instead criticizing Bush’s terrorism strategy, with about equal
effectiveness.
Here’s a taste of Krugman’s latest: “The Iraq war, in particular, did nothing to make America safer—in fact, it did the terrorists a favor.” Later he added, “Saddam wasn’t a threat to America—he had no important links to terrorism, and the main U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction has packed up and gone home.” Krugman begs the question: How “important” does a link to terrorism have to be before it’s addressed?
A couple of Saddam’s apparently “less important” links to terrorism: The BBC reports “Saddam Hussein has paid out thousands of dollars to families of Palestinians killed in fighting with Israel.”
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said in September: “We clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time. We know too that several of the (al Qaeda) detainees, in particular some high-ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al Qaeda in chemical weapons development."
For the rest of Paul Krugman’s column, click here.
Today’s CyberAlert from the Media Research Center notes: “Democrats in Texas employed extra-legal, obstructionist means to thwart the will of the majority when nearly all of the Democratic state representatives fled to Oklahoma in order to both deny the legislature a quorum for a scheduled redistricting vote for U.S. House seat boundaries until after a deadline expired Thursday night.”
Who does the Times blame for this state of affairs? Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, of course. Without noting the gothic strangeness of the Democrats’ own irresponsible tactics—51 House Democrats caucused at a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma to avoid the reach of state troopers—Hulse instead lets the Democrats accuse DeLay of “Nixonian tactics.”
In his story “Tom DeLay Stars in Texas Donnybrook,” Carl Hulse alleges “DeLay’s reopening the Congressional districting process is a good example of the bare-knuckles politics he likes to practice. Congressional redistricting typically occurs only every 10 years, after the census. Undertaking it in between times, in what amounts to midstream, is aggressive and rare; Democrats say that except for a more modest effort this year by Colorado Republicans—an effort that is itself headed for the courts—they can find no other time in the last 50 years when a state engaged in midstream redistricting without a court order to do so.”
Yet National Journal reported April 12 on failed “midstream redistricting” efforts by the Democratic-controlled New Mexico legislature. (The Democrats were trying to make Republican Rep. Heather Wilson more vulnerable by putting more Democrats in her district.) The Times didn’t find that Democratic attempt at midstream redistricting “aggressive.” They didn’t even find it worth reporting.
For the rest of Carl Hulse’s story on Rep. Tom DeLay and Texas redistricting, click here.
For more on New Mexico Democrats’ plans to engage in “midstream redistricting,” click here.
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org