April 21, 2003
THE PROPAGANDIST OF RECORD:
'Republic of Fear' (Cynthia Cotts, Village Voice, 4/16/2003, via Andrew Sullivan)[B]etween July and October 2002 ... Raines killed several stories by Golden and fellow reporter David Kocieniewski. For months, the two had been pursuing allegations of influence peddling by former New Jersey senator Robert Torricelli, who was running for re-election. The New York Observer reported last week that Raines felt the pieces he spiked had been "reckless."Times insiders tell another story: They say editors asked Raines to spell out his complaints about the spiked pieces, but he declined, citing only his aversion to "piling on" or to giving prosecutors too much credence. After all, the Justice Department had declined to press charges, and the Senate only gave the senator a severe reprimand....
Adding insult to injury, someone else got the scoop. On September 26, after some of the Times pieces were spiked, WNBC ran a special Torricelli report by Jonathan Dienst, featuring a jailhouse interview with Chang and an inventory of evidence. According to someone close to the Torricelli case, key sources tired of waiting for the Times to use their info, so they turned it over to WNBC. Four days after the WNBC report aired, Torricelli pulled out of the race, expressly to avoid further harm to the party.
It appears the New York Times editors spike stories that would hurt Democratic politicians, just as CNN spikes stories that reflect unfavorably on foreign tyrants. This introduces a systematic bias in their news reporting. Whatever their personal preferences may be, these media outlets are objectively pro-Democratic and pro-tyrant. Posted by Paul Jaminet at April 21, 2003 4:45 PM
Everybody's pro-something. Just doing a story means
you didn't do that other story.
And all we're asking is that papers be up front about that fact.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 21, 2003 5:53 PMHarry - There are still media executives who dress up their biases in the emperor's-clothes of objectivity - e.g. David Westin of ABC News.
But even if bias is acknowledged, it's useful to characterize it. A random story generator would probably have biases too, but it would be a different kind of bias than the Times has.
Yup, PJ has it exactly right. What are the odds that the NYT had pro-Bush(or pro-Republican) stories along with anti-Bush (anti-Repub) stories, and simply by chance got mostly the anti stories published? Care to do the chi-square analysis on that? Me neither, but the point is clear.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at April 21, 2003 7:20 PMThe emotional/intellectual investment the left has made in bad ideas is effecting its judgement. The NYT is a great paper when it reports the news, ideologically they have been out to lunch for 30 years.
Harry- Obviously, one story displaces another and decisions are made. The NYT consistently chooses ideologically. What's wrong with that? Nothing. Pretending it's not true is delusional on their part.