Hillary’s “Major Source of Problems” – Reserved for Page A-23
 

     An August 2000 fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign was organized by Peter Paul, “a well-connected figure with a criminal history that dates back to the 1970s...to win Mr. Clinton’s support on a business venture he was undertaking,” wrote Hernandez. In January, the finance director of Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign, David Rosen, was indicted on charges of falsely reporting the cost of the Paul fundraiser.

     But the main focus of the Hernandez report was encapsulated in the headline: “Anti-Clinton Group Joins with Former Clinton Donor.” Paul has enlisted the support of the United States Justice Foundation, “a conservative legal advocacy group, to start the Hillary Clinton Accountability Project” to “focus public attention” on the Paul fundraiser. Hernandez also cites Paul’s “conservative allies in California,” and Paul’s original champion, “Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group.” There were no labels for the Clinton camp.

     Hernandez warned: “Once dismissed as yet another anti-Clinton gadfly, Mr. Paul has suddenly become a major source of problems for the Clintons and their political associates.” But this ongoing story hasn’t been presented as a major problem by the New York Times, which usually buries the stories in the Metro section, as you can see with the previous six stories this year:

     January 8: David Rosen indicted. Page B4.

     February 9: A big explanatory story by Hernandez and Ian Urbina that could have gone on the front page. Page B5.

     March 2: Federal prosecutors battle Clinton camp attempts to dismiss the Rosen indictment. Page B4.

     March 8: Peter Paul to plead guilty in an unrelated stock fraud case so he can be a witness in the Rosen trial. Page B4.

     March 15: Peter Paul and “conservative legal group” Judicial Watch part ways. Page B3.

     April 23: Ted Kennedy’s brother in law, Raymond Reggie, is revealed as a confidential informant in the Rosen case. Page B2.

     It might be hard to imagine, considering the lackadaisical coverage of most Clinton scandals (save that intern one) in the 1990s, but the national media, with its eyes on the New York Times, might have done more on this story if the Times wasn’t keeping it on a B-section back burner.

For the full Hernandez piece, click here.

The Incomplete Teen Abortion Story
 

     The Times motto may be “all the news that’s fit to print,” but that doesn’t seem to be on the business card of reporter Abby Goodnough in her Tuesday story headlined “State Judge Allows Teenager in Florida to Get an Abortion.” Nowhere in this story did the actual age of the teenager – the tender age of 13, not 19 – appear in the story. Goodnough only reported “The girl, identified as L. G., is about 14 weeks pregnant and had planned to undergo the procedure last Tuesday, the day that the state stepped in and said she was too young to make such a decision.”

     Goodnough highlights the reactions of Howard Simon of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (no liberal label appended) and Tallahassee lawyer Karen Gievers, who wants the state to find the girl a foster home instead of fighting her abortion. But Goodnough carried no quote from any pro-life spokesman or politician, including Florida Right to Life, that have been featured in other media reports, even though she noted Florida voters have approved a ballot measure to allow the state legislature to consider parental notification laws in abortion cases.

For the full Goodnough report, click here.

“Salvation” By Woodpecker
 

     On the front of Tuesday’s Science Times, deputy science editor James Gorman confessed to growing “a bit overexcited” as he flew to Arkansas to see the ivory-billed woodpecker for himself. “This was no subspecies of salamander threatened by a housing development....Audubon called it the ‘great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe’ and others called it the Lord God bird because when people saw it, they said ‘Lord God!’ But it was gone, one of the natural treasures that a growing country stepped on and broke.” Gorman went on to relate how several people wept at the sight or even the word of the sight of the woodpecker, and credited the work of environmentalists: “It is habitual preservation achieved by hard, tedious work, like lobbying, legislating, and fundraising.” (The Science Times section even included a timely print ad from Farrar Straus Giroux advertising its book “The Race to Save the Lord God Bird.”)

     The sacred sound of the woodpecker nickname tended to inspire Times writers. On Friday, Gorman exulted: “Their announcement on Thursday brought rejoicing among birdwatchers, for whom the ivory bill has long been a holy grail - a creature that has been called the Lord God bird, apparently because that is what people exclaimed when they saw it.”

     Saturday’s Times carried an unsigned editorial titled “The Lord God Bird” hailed how the mere rumor of the ivory-billed woodpecker spurred logging moratoriums. “The struggle to preseve the natural environment is one of crushed hopes and excruciating wistfulness. But not always. The ivory-billed woodpecker is a living monument to the stubbornness of all creatures that refuse to be erased, despite all our blundering and destructive habits.”

     In Tuesday’s op-ed section, Jonathan Rosen of the Jewish website nextbook.org wrote a piece titled “The Woodpecker in All of Us,” with the Times text box: “Finding salvation in the rediscovery of the Lord God bird.” That must refer to Rosen rejoicing that the bird’s discovery “we have suddenly been acquitted of murder, even if we still face a charge of reckless endangerment for having logged the old-growth threes right out from under the bird.” Rosen relates the human struggle to the 18th century ornithologist Alexander Wilson, who shot an ivory-billed bird and then locked it in his hotel room so he could paint it before it died. Rosen recounted how Wilson felt the captured bird’s cries resembling “the violent crying of a young child,” and how Wilson asked the innkeeper for a room “for myself and my baby.” Rosen concluded: “His joke has painful meaning. Wilson shot a bird he longed to liberate and pretended a wild animal he was in the process of killing was his own child.”

     It’s too bad the Times doesn’t often chronicle the weeping or mourning over the killing of unborn humans with this kind of tenderness.

For Gorman’s Tuesday Science Times article, click here.

For the unsigned Saturday editorial, click here.

For Tuesday’s op-ed by Jonathan Rosen, click here.

-- Tim Graham, substituting for Clay Waters