I just finished my AM two cups of Joe while reading through the LA Times and was going to write something pithy and biting about their coverage of the Rice confirmation hearings, probably still will, but Hugh Hewitt’s link to this BuzzMachine article by Jeff Jarvis just blows me away. I mean, does anyone in the mainstream media (MSM) even care anymore?

Shame on the New York Times

: Sarah Boxer’s story on IraqTheModel in today’s New York Times Arts section is irresponsible, sloppy, lazy, inaccurate, incomplete, exploitive, biased, and — worst of all — dangerous, putting the lives of its subjects at risk. Let’s start with her lead:

When I telephoned a man named Ali Fadhil in Baghdad last week, I wondered who might answer. A C.I.A. operative? An American posing as an Iraqi? Someone paid by the Defense Department to support the war? Or simply an Iraqi with some mixed feelings about the American presence in Iraq? Until he picked up the phone, he was just a ghost on the Internet.

So here is a reporter from The New York Times — let’s repeat that, The New York Times — speculating in print on whether an Iraqi citizen, whose only apparent weirdness and sin in her eyes is (a) publishing and (b) supporting America, is a CIA or Defense Department plant or an American.

Ms. Boxer, don’t you think you could be putting the life of that person at risk with that kind of speculation? In your own story, you quote Ali — one of the three blogging brothers who started IraqTheModel — saying that “here some people would kill you for just writing to an American.” And yet you go so much farther — blithely, glibly speculating about this same man working for the CIA or the DoD — to sex up your lead and get your story atop the front of the Arts section (I’m in the biz, Boxer, I know how the game is played).

How dare you? Have you no sense of responsibility? Have you no shame?

Jarvis goes on to examine Boxer’s NYT article at length, about her lack of fact checking, her use of a left-wing blog for erroneous research, obliquely accusing a Texas based Internet service provider of being a CIA operation, and on and on. A sample from Boxer’s article:

The blog, which is quite upbeat about the American presence in Iraq, had provoked a deluge of intrigue and vitriol. People posting messages on an American Web site called Martini Republic accused the three bloggers of working for the C.I.A., of being American puppets, of not being Iraqis and even of not existing at all.

So, there it is, the horrible crime that these Bloggers committed, according to the NYTimes, is being “upbeat about the American presence in Iraq”. Surely we all know, (the MSM has certainly told us enough times by now), that there are NO Iraqis that appreciate our being in Iraq. B.S. If any of our most “esteemed” rags would do their research they would realize that Iraq has just been liberated from over 20 years of tyranny, where expressing an opposing opinion was an almost certain death sentence, for the expresser and his/her family. Kinda hard to overcome that level of psychological damage in just a few dozen months, especially when there are armed insurgents running amok, killing freedom loving Iraqis in attempts to derail the implementation of a democratic, free Iraqi government.

What’s the deal, Ms. Boxer? Can your conscious live with it if these Iraqi Bloggers are executed? Can the editors of the NYTimes justify putting lives at risk just to run a juicy story with no facts in check? Kinda makes the puny efforts of the LATimes this AM to pump up “Barbara Boxer” and tear down Condoleezza Rice look lame! Updates on this pathetic NYT effort and its fallout when it happens. Oh, and say prayers for the “three blogging brothers” as they try to stay alive after the spread of this incredibly stupid, sloppy story. (db)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 19th, 2005 at 9:16 am and is filed under Focus On Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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