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Times Watch for September 8, 2004

NYT Clips Cheney's War on Terror Quote

     A misleading headline tops a misleading front-page story by David Sanger and David Halbfinger in "Cheney Warns of Terror Risk If Kerry Wins," on comments about terror that the vice president made on the trail in Iowa.

     Sanger and Halbfinger start their Wednesday story: "Stepping up the battle over national security, Vice President Dick Cheney warned on Tuesday that the country would be at risk of a terror attack if it made 'the wrong choice' in November, and President Bush accused Senator John Kerry of adopting the antiwar language of his Democratic primary rival Howard Dean."

     Several paragraphs later they quote Cheney, speaking at a rally in Iowa: "'It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice,' Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 people in Des Moines, 'because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.' He also said if Mr. Kerry was elected the nation risked lapsing to a 'pre-9/11 mind-set' where attacks are viewed as criminal acts, not part of a war against terrorism."

     On its face, that quote sounds harsh. But as blogger Patterico notes, the Times here is replicating the error of the Associated Press quote (where the Cheney story first appeared) by snipping the context out of Cheney's statement.

     Here is a longer excerpt from Cheney's speech: "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again--that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States. And then we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."

     From that segment, it appears to Times Watch that Cheney was not arguing that a Kerry win would by definition lead to a terror attack--but that if a terror attack happened under a Kerry administration, Kerry's response could represent a "fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set" of treating terror attacks as merely criminal acts, not acts of war.

     In that light, Cheney seems to be guilty of nothing more than some rather clumsy phrasing. But instead of exploring Cheney's remarks in full, the Times simply used the clipped quote to justify its inaccurate headline. The Times even used the clipped Cheney headline in its page 2 "Quotations Of The Day" box.

For more from Sanger and Halbfinger, click here.

• Campaign 2004 | Dick Cheney | David Halbfinger | Headlines | Sen. John Kerry | David Sanger | Terrorism

Removing "Allah" from the NYT?

     The Times and the rest of the mainstream media are highly reluctant to identify the killers of schoolchildren in the Russian republic of Chechnya, a region dominated by Sunni Muslims. Some extremists are murderous in their quest to sever the region from Russia. By downplaying the identify of the child-killers, the Times not only carries political correctness to an extreme but also puts up a self-imposed obstacle to good journalism by leaving the first of the five famous journalistic questions (who, what, when, where, and why?) unanswered.

     A front-page Saturday story doesn't use the terms Muslim, Islam, Arab or terrorist to describe the aftermath of the siege in which over 300 people died, about half of them children.

     Seth Mydans on Sunday avoids the issue by refusing to identify the terrorists (Muslim extremists) or their goals (an independent Chechnya). In "Moscow's Gloom Deepens As Fear Becomes Routine," he likens the terrorism to a tornado or other natural disaster: "The brutality of the hostage-taking seemed almost a natural disaster--an outbreak of human savagery in which neither the perpetrators nor their motives were known."

     By Monday, the Times still wasn't sure who was responsible. A story by C.J. Chivers and Steven Lee Myers, "Russian Rebels Had Precise Plan" reads: "The attackers--described by the authorities as including Chechens, Ingush, ethnic Russians and some still-unidentified foreigners--seemed to follow a plan after they seized the school with precision and alacrity, forcing their hostages to help place explosives and build barricades that limited the options of Russian forces outside."

     Later in the story they note (mildly) the Islamic connection: "While the extent of international support may be debated, the attacks bear some trappings of Islamic militancy. Officials here in Beslan said they had found notebooks with Arabic writing, and witnesses reported hearing Arabic exhortations, though the attackers mostly spoke Russian."

     To his credit, Michael Wines fulfills basic journalism tenets by identifying both the who and the why in his Sunday Week in Review piece: "Many experts argued then that the operation's gruesome toll only encouraged the terrorists--Islamic extremists demanding an independent Chechnya--to plot still more horrors."

     The Times localizes the issue in Wednesday's paper, with reporters Seth Mydans and C.J. Chivers emphasizing that it's a local "conflict" (a strange word choice, given that the "conflict" involved armed terrorists shooting schoolchildren in the back): "Underscoring the local nature of the conflict, a spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, said in a telephone interview that despite earlier assertions by security officials, no Arabs had yet been found among the dead terrorists. He did not rule out that some of them, as yet unidentified, might be from foreign countries. The F.S.B., the successor to the K.G.B., had earlier reported that the bodies of nine Arabs had been found. Mr. Peskov said 30 bodies had been confirmed to be those of terrorists--shown on television dumped by the schoolhouse in black garbage bags. Because of the difficulty of identifying the bodies, he said, there could be one more."

     Most potentially troubling and misleading was a segment from Seth Mydans' story Tuesday, which quotes a captured terrorist shown on Russian state TV: "Among the most arresting television images here on Monday, along with the parade of coffins and the keening of crowds of mourners, was the face of a terrified man, gripped tightly by two masked soldiers, who was identified as the only hostage-taker to be captured alive. 'By God, I did not shoot!' he mumbled when asked if he had fired on fleeing hostages. 'By God, I have not killed!' Asked by the soldiers if he had not had pity on the children he had held for 51 hours without food or water, he pleaded: 'Yes, I did have pity! I have children, too.'''

     As Dawn Eden noticed, every wire service and other media outlet quotes the hostage-taker as saying "By Allah, I did not shoot."

     Agence France Presse reported that the surviving terrorist spoke "in Russian with a strong Chechen accent," meaning his words had to be translated from Russian to English. Still, the Times stands alone with its version of the translation: "By God, I did not shoot."

     Back in January, the Times was involved in a decidedly less significant case of quote-changing and issued a correction. Public Editor Daniel Okrent approved: "The Times seems to be pretty good about rectifying misquotations; in early December, when Mississippi State football coach Sylvester Croom's spoken 'ain't' was prettified into standard English, a correction appeared swiftly."

     If the Times really substituted "God" for "Allah" so as to conceal the fact that Muslims were involved in the Chechen terror attacks, then it would certainly call for a correction--it's at least as significant as substituting "is" for "ain't".

• Chechnya | Sylvester Croom | Muslims | Daniel Okrent | Quotations | Russia | Terrorism

Lauding Left-Wing Convention Disruptors

     Diane Cardwell in Saturday's Metro section seems to admire a radical left-wing group's successful disruption of convention speeches by Bush and Cheney in "Antiwar Group's Tactics: Stealth and Pink Lingerie."

     Cardwell romanticizes the radical protesters of the anti-war group Codepink, who disrupted convention speeches of Cheney and Bush: "They have lobbied in the halls of Congress wearing pig costumes and wandered the streets of Manhattan dressed in evening wear and rags. But the three founders of the women's antiwar group Codepink are seasoned advocates who may have pulled off the protest coup of the convention: While thousands of demonstrators chanted on the streets, drawing only glancing attention from the Republicans, their members were inside Madison Square Garden night after night, unfurling banners and baring their slogans, forcing even the president to take notice."

     In apparent empathy, Cardwell emphasizes the "humor" of the radical tactics, not the law-breaking and possible security breaches: "Time and again, they have managed to do just that, with a mixture of wiles, determination and humor. In the fledgling group's first action, in September 2002, Ms. Benjamin and another woman interrupted the testimony of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, before the Armed Services Committee, unfurled a banner reading 'U.N. inspections, not U.S. war,' and began asking their own questions, said Ms. Benjamin, who also runs Global Exchange, a human rights advocacy group, with her husband in San Francisco."

     Then there's the usual Times' mainstreaming of the anti-war protesters: "With more than 100 informally linked chapters, Ms. Benjamin said, the group now includes elderly women as well as teenagers, professionals as well as students. What unites them is their female focus on peace and justice issues, she said, but part of what has made them effective is their campy sense of humor. Member have dressed in pink slips to symbolically fire officials with whom they disagree, yelled 'shut up' outside of Fox News in Midtown [Editor's Note: What happened to leftwing love of free speech?] and created their own buttons and discount program for peaceful police officers in answer to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's peaceful-protester promotion. Ms. Evans stood up at the convention during the president's speech and showed anti-Bush and antiwar slogans on a pink slip she wore, then was removed. On Wednesday, Ms. Murphy managed to cause a disruption while Vice President Dick Cheney spoke."

For more of Cardwell on Codepink, click here.

• Anti-War Protesters | George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Diane Cardwell | Codepink | Republican Convention

"War Hero" Kerry vs. "Sissy" George Bush

     Frank Rich is back from vacation and in full foam in his Sunday column, "How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man," which begins: "Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man."
(As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto notes, it's rather odd for a former theater critic to be throwing around words like "sissy.")

     Rich rants: "Mr. Kerry was said to appear 'French.' (That's code for 'faggy.') His alleged encounters with Botox and a Christophe hairdresser were dutifully clocked on Drudge. For Memorial Day weekend, the redoubtable New York Post published hypothetical barbecue memos for the two contenders, with Mr. Bush favoring sausage and beer (albeit nonalcoholic) and Mr. Kerry opting for frogs legs, chardonnay and crème brûlée. Ann Coulter, that great arbiter of the marriage bond, posted a column titled 'Just a Gigolo' in which the presumptive Democratic candidate was portrayed as 'a poodle to rich women.' Eventually John Edwards would become 'the Breck girl,' and Dick Cheney would yank an adjective out of context to suggest that Mr. Kerry wanted to fight a 'sensitive' war on terror. (For a translation of "sensitive" in this context, see 'French' above.)"

For the rest of Rich on "girlie-man" Bush, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Republican Convention | Frank Rich

Republicans "Condemning Gay Parents"

     David Kirkpatrick reports the Log Cabin Republicans won't be endorsing George W. Bush in Wednesday's "Gay Activists In the G.O.P. Withhold Endorsement." Noting that the group has been pressured on both sides of the debate, Kirkpatrick claims: "As delegates at the Republican National Convention were preparing to adopt a platform condemning gay parents, for example, a handful of gay rights activists were protesting outside a Log Cabin party on Aug. 29 in Bryant Park in New York."

     "Condemning gay parents"?

     The relevant passage on gay parenting seems to be contained on page 83 of the 2004 Republican Party Platform: "We believe, and the social science confirms, that the well-being of children is best accomplished in the environment of the home, nurtured by their mother and father anchored by the bonds of marriage."

     Stating that having a mother and father is the best arrangement for childrearing seems closer to commonsense than to "condemning gay parents."

For the rest of Kirkpatrick on the Log Cabin Republicans, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Gay Issues | David Kirkpatrick | Log Cabin Republicans

"Unsubstantiated" Watch

     Monday marks another appearance of the term "unsubstantiated" to apply to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

     From Katharine Seelye's story on voters in New Lexington, Ohio: "Christy Altier, 42, who owns the County Seat Diner and is a cousin by marriage to the Altiers of the other diner, said she had backed Mr. Kerry at first 'because he was concerned about small businesses and people who didn't have everything handed to them.' She cited the local factory layoffs and said, 'Bush is not taking care of us like he should be.' But she was worried that Mr. Kerry had somehow falsified his military record, perhaps influenced by the unsubstantiated accusations made in anti-Kerry commercials."

     Total uses in the Times of the word "unsubstantiated" to refer to anti-Kerry Vietnam service charges by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: 17

     Total uses in the Times of the word "unsubstantiated" to refer to anti-Bush Vietnam service charges by liberal groups and Democrats: Zero.

For the rest of Seelye from Ohio, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Katharine Seelye | Swift Boat Veterans

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org