New NYT public editor blasts paper's parroting White House, military on "Al Qaeda" in Iraq

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor&Publisher: 'NYT' Public Editor Hits Paper's Surge in Blaming 'al-Qaeda' in Iraq
By E&P Staff
Published: July 08, 2007

NEW YORK In a remarkable column today, Clark Hoyt, the newly arrived public editor at The New York Times, charges that the Times in recent weeks has too often gone along with the new drive by the White House and the military to blame insurgent attacks on al-Qaeda. The column arrives on the same day the paper calls for a U.S. pullout in Iraq.

E&P last week had noted the same tendency in the Times in the reporting of Michael R. Gordon and others. A top Times editor admits to Hoyt that the paper's reporting in this regard has become "sloppy."...

Today, Hoyt charges that the Times "in recent weeks...has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

"And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.

"There is plenty of evidence that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is but one of the challenges facing the United States military and that overemphasizing it distorts the true picture of what is happening there. While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the accuracy of his statements."

He then quotes Middle East experts he talk with who dispute the heavy focus on al-Qaeda. Then Hoyt reveals:
"Recent Times stories from Iraq have referred, with little or no attribution — and no supporting evidence — to 'militants linked with Al Qaeda,' 'Sunni extremists with links to Al Qaeda' and 'insurgents from Al Qaeda.' The Times has stated flatly, again without attribution or supporting evidence, that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra last year, an event that the president has said started the sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shiites."...

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003608639

[Jacobin]

1. Finally, the NYT is cleaning house

After getting rid of the neo-con plants, like Judy "Little Miss Run Amok" Miller, et al

[kurth]

2. Michael R. Gordon, certified warmonger:

Appearing on TV, he fully supported the escalation, saying "I think it's worth one last effort for sure to try to get this right, because my personal view is we've never really tried to win."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_R._Gordon

[EFerrari]

4. Why not "propagandist"? He's been key to the whole Bush program.

[Spazito]

3. Taking this and the editorial calling for the withdrawal of troops

in Iraq together, there is NO question in my mind the NYT knows there has been a major turn around in the thinking of the American public and they are acting accordingly.

Not good news for the bush admin and the repubs, not good news at all.

Thanks for posting this.

Recommended.

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. Hey... where's he been? We figured this out weeks ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=109x29778

"We" being folks in the DU Media forum.

[librechik]

6. Thank You Clark Hoyt!

the factcheckers are back in media! Please keep on doing what you're doing. We have missed you.

[Terri S]

7. nice... public opinion has gone SO far south

NYT is finally acting like a 'Fourth Estate'. I'm glad to see it, but I will never forgive or excuse their partnership in the selling of this war.

[EFerrari]

12. How do we know he's responding to public opinion and not

corporate opinion, i.e., Wall Street, and fanning public opinion in the direction they want us to go?

[malaise]

8. Looks like everyone is reading

An Assault on Reason.

[dmosh42]

9. There is more importance to this than we know....

This is a man who has figured out the formula to keeping the disinformation going on this war. From the start the administration has been able to keep the media in position by feeding them these words of the 'terrorist' and 'Al quaida' being responsible for why we needed to be there.(Iraq) The General command in Baghdad and surrounding areas now feed us a steady diet of 'Al Quaida' attacks. As a former vet non-com, I know that to get to the top of the service, Generals, Admirals, etc., it takes a lot of politics, sometimes out doing their military capability. And keeping a war going, is another guarantee of faster promotions. After all, they're not doing the dying. So if they can control the media info, we don't get a true picture, and everyone wants to appear patriotic, so we swallow it. We need more publishers like that!

[pinto]

10. Excellent piece.

[Forkboy]

11. WOW....do my eyes decieve me?

The truth? In the press? About ITSELF?

:wow:

[jpgray]

13. I'm shocked too. In a good way. I wonder if Somerby will mention this