A Damning Admission
The New York Times violated its own policies to run the indefensible Moveon.org ad trashing General Petraeus.
Don't expect any of the Democratic presidential candidates -- who refuse even to debate on the supposedly biased Fox News Channel -- to denounce what used to be considered "the newspaper of record"'s decision effectively to subsidize a radical left political group.
Don't expect any of the Democratic presidential candidates -- who refuse even to debate on the supposedly biased Fox News Channel -- to denounce what used to be considered "the newspaper of record"'s decision effectively to subsidize a radical left political group.
posted by LadybugUSA at 8:54 PM
3 Comments:
There is nothing whatsoever damning in the admission. The admission is that there was a mistake in the determination of the ad rate. There is no indication of an editorial bias; the story is that there was an internal miscommunication regarding whether the ad was taken on a standby basis. As the NYT admits, they screwed up. They corrected the problem and modified the charge, and MoveOn paid the increased fee. The error was an administrative one, not an editorial one, and there remains not an iota of evidence that any editorial bias was at work. All the accusations and mud-slinging on this site remain utter falsehoods unsupported by any evidence.
Do not forget that Mr. Guiliani took out an ad to respond to the MoveOn ad, and he was given the standby rate. Thus, the end result is that MoveOn paid roughly twice as much as Mr. Giuliani paid. I'm not saying that this reflects bias on the part of the NYT, but certainly the accusation of bias in the other direction is blown out of the water by this fact.
I believe every senator who voted to denounce the Moveon ad about general Petraus is a coward or a fool who doesn't understand his or her job.
Congress is to uphold and defend the constitution, which means defending the first amendment.
Sometimes it's difficult to listen to what someone has to say, or it's difficult to listen to how they say it. But that is exactly why the first amendment is there.
How can anybody defend this anti-American display by the senate? These people should apologize to Moveon and the American people.
Carol,
You're right, we ought not hold our breaths over this. I disagree with chepe noyon, who wants to pass this off as administrative rather than editorial even after the Times ombudsman admitted that an editorial reading of the situation was fair. Mr. Giulani's standby rate was for a legitimate standby ad, whereas the MoveOn ad was meant to run on the first day of the testimony by General Petraeus (i.e.,in a guaranteed slot rather than a standby slot). You can find further thoughts on why no apology is forthcoming over at the Paragraph Farm. What may surprise is that I think no apology is necessary, either, albeit for different reasons than Chepe Noyon suggests.
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