Comments on: The Election of Unintended Consequences

By: Dead_Ender

Dead_Ender — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:56:10 +0000

Republicans had just better hope that this initial NY Times story on John McCain is not merely bait and that the paper will not counter-attack with facts at the appropriate time.

If the above concern is meaningless (which I hope it is), then the NY Times is more unhinged, more reckless, than even I could imagine they’d be.

By: Joebedk

Joebedk — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:35:14 +0000

In his article on RealClearMarkets about the rationale for a Google takeover of the Times, John Ellis includes the following remarkable statement of one point in favor of such a buyout.

“..Google is embarking on an ambitious mobile platform. It is buying wireless spectrum and will soon introduce Google Mobile. In so doing, it is entering into an arena where the established players have hired (almost) every lobbyist and (almost) every law firm with expertise in telecommunications in Washington, DC and in virtually every state capital. Owning the New York Times would level that playing field in one fell swoop. Owning major media outlets is a strategy that has worked very well for General Electric, Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and others in their dealing with the federal government and with state governments. There’s every reason to believe it would be helpful to Google.” The increasing perception of the the major media actors pursue private corporate interests undermines their right to continue to publish on politcal matters under McCain/Feingold. It’s gonna happen!

By: Joebedk

Joebedk — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:29:19 +0000

For some the Times might still be the paper of record. And there are no doubt some credible reporters and editors there. But for most the motto of the Times might as well be: “Only lies will see print”.

By: ghh

ghh — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:24:40 +0000

Seeing two such staunch allies as McCain and the NYT go after each other, I’m reminded of Hitler-Stalin 1940. Instead of rooting for either of them to win now, can’t I just hope they destroy each other?

By: kcom

kcom — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:23:24 +0000

“(I’m speaking as a former wire-service reporter and newspaper copy editor who recognized this insularity after leaving journalism and looking back.)”

Henry, you mean that you only recognized it after looking back, right? That while you were in it, you were blind to it, but it became obvious when observed from a distance?

I think that might explain why so many reporters seem so clueless about how left-biased much (but not all) of the major media is. In story selection, if nothing else. Every word in any particular story could well be true but the selection and slant of stories can make the news totally one-sided nonetheless.

By: Jon S.

Jon S. — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:41:15 +0000

I don’t know where I first heard this, but for years now my friends and I refer to the NY Times, the Wash. Post, the LA Times, and the traditional TV networks as the “media wing of the Democratic Party.”

By: Denny, Alaska

Denny, Alaska — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:43:17 +0000

2008 will stand as a year of firsts in our political history, for a number of reasons. 2008 will also stand as the year the New York Times as a purveyor of anything but biased and slanted jounalism. Along with the BBC, the NYT has long been taking on water; the week of Feb 18, 2008, will be noted as the point when the latter slipped below the waves forever.

By: ian

ian — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:01:56 +0000

To be succinct, the NY Times candidate of choice, Hillary Clinton, has a few skeletons in the closet. Yet four of the NY Times reporters dedicate countless hours to a front page hit piece against McCain based on rumor and innuendo. Of course a similar piece against Clinton (or Obama for that matter) is no where to be seen. It is one thing to practice shoddy journalism. It is another to do it in such a transparently partisan way. Should we now start calling the Times “The Democrat’s Paper of Record”.

By: Herbert Rubin, M.D.

Herbert Rubin, M.D. — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:49:29 +0000

I must admit that I have had reservations about John McCain since his days of the “Keating Five” investigation, and was prepared to believe there was some impropriety, who knew what, in the current non-story about false allegations made in 2000.

I then heard from Mr Bennett, his current attorney, who was on the investigating staff of the Senate Ethics Committee looking into these allegations in 2000. After 1 1/2 year investigation,
the committee concluded that there was no wrongdoing, and that Sen. McCain was an honorable man who had not violated any rule or the public trust.

I then read the report of Lanny Davis blogged on Huntington Post. Lanny was a Yale Law School classmate of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and was one of the chief apologists and defenders during MonicaGate. He was lawyer for the lobbying firm retained to get pressure put on the FCC to allow sale of a radio station in Pittsburgh, a long story. He and the others on the lobbying team tried to get John McCain to intervene with the FCC, he being Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee at the time.

Bottom line, Mr Davis reports John Mc Cain wouldn’t intervene on their behalf in spite of the intense lobbying effort. His Committee staff sent a letter requesting SOME decision be made by the FCC, one way or the other, after a 3 year delay. Lanny Davis’s conclusion: John McCain was completely honorable and did not violate the public trust.

If these leading Democrats are asserting John McCains rectitude, then the NYT is completely FOS. Both were available for interview, if the NYT was serious. which they are now clearly not.

John Mc Cain was not my choice. I preferred Mitt. I now can support John McCain without reservation, send him money, and do campaign work for him.

By: ptsargent

ptsargent — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:02:27 +0000

The NYTimes decent into left wing, agenda-driven,biased news reporting is hardly a recent tack by this disgraceful excuse for a news organization. Does anyone remember the Times’s Pulitzer prize winning ace reporter Walter Duranty, who shilled for the Soviets and his idol Joeseph Stalin during the 1930’s while the very same regime was busily starving the peasants in the Ukraine in order to create their paradise on earth? And how about the traitorous release of the Pentagon papers in the late 60’s? And most recently the unhelpful release of the Treasury department’s top secret terrorist financial tracking program to the public? We’re looking here at serial traitors whose main mission is to undermine the security of all Americans. The editors and owners of the Times long ago should have been prosecuted under espionage and treason laws.

By: Henry

Henry — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:53:43 +0000

Bill Keller’s response to the blow up over the McCain article hints of a certain institutional insularity not only at the Times but also among other media. (I’m speaking as a former wire-service reporter and newspaper copy editor who recognized this insularity after leaving journalism and looking back.) As an example, I was in a bar in a major city, sitting several tables away from a group of journalists from a major newspaper (no, I won’t identify it). They were getting loud and one became profane. This was way-back-when, and the bartender told the profane journalist to watch his language. Several more f-bombs later, the bartender frog-marched this guy out the front door. He departed protesting, “You can’t do this! I work for the XXXXX.” Mr. Keller’s surprise at the reaction to the Times’ obsenity indicates a similar mindset to that of his drunken colleague years ago.

By: Rix

Rix — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:15:19 +0000

I think what most people don’t realize is the precarious state of the NYT company finances. The company is now worth $2.74 Bn in stock value, which also includes the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune, 17% of the Boston Red Sox, a mJOE radio station and bunch of loacl papers . Their major competitor, the Wall St. Journal is now owned by a company with 20 times the financial resources and has stated that they intend to go after the core New York business of the TImes. And the Times Co. is heavily in debt, to the tune of well over a billion dollars.

So the Times company needs to keep its core lefty base, or they are toast within a few years. Expect journalistic ethics to go even further out the window as the company fights for its survival.

By: JorgXMcKie

JorgXMcKie — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:10:49 +0000

Evidently no one at the NYT has ever even heard of, let alone read, Groupthink by Janis. It looks like the Times is irrevocably broken, unless some of those outside investors can dislodge ‘Pinch’s’ death grip on the paper *AND* introduce more than a few dissenting voices not only among the editorial staff but for sure among the reporters.

By: David Thomson

David Thomson — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:51:42 +0000

The disgraceful attempt by the New York Times to harm John McCain reveals the lunacy of the journalistic “elite.” I am convinced that none of the reporters involved in this story is overtly lying. It would be very easy for them to pass a lie detector test. They have truly conned themselves into believing their work represents objective and balanced journalism. These individuals reside in a leftist echo chamber. Just about everybody they deal with on a daily basis shares the identical worldview. Dissenting voices are casually dismissed as the mutterings of the “radical right.” In other words, we should be perhaps even fearful of them. They have become intellectual lunatics who are a danger to both themselves and Western Civilization. We must do everything possible not to subsidize their employers. The First Amendment provides them the right to publish—but we are not obligated to purchase their products.