Thursday,
May 19 2005
THE MENTALITY BEHIND THE MSM: In light of the Newsweek
debacle, I thought it apropos to revisit another example of the
MSM's willingness to inject stories into the media bloodstream
with the intent of trying to damage this president and his administration.
I'm referring specifically to The New York Times and
the story of Al Qaqaa.
First, a
little backstory. Three weeks ago I sat on a panel with Clifford
May discussing new media. May cited his experience with the
Al Qaqaa story as an example of the growing power and speed with
which new media can analyze, critique, and rebut charges emanating
from the MSM.
You probably
remember how it all went down. Eight days before the election
The New York Times, reporting in collaboration with CBS
News' 60 Minutes program, dropped
a bombshell report alleging that some 380 tons of high explosives
had vanished from Al Qaqaa after U.S. forces failed to properly
secure the weapons facility.
But May,
along with astute bloggers like Wretchard
and others, quickly raised a
number of legitimate questions about the story. At issue were
conflicting reports about when and how the explosives at Al Qaqaa
were removed as well as concerns about the main source of the
story: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, a man accurately described
in this
Washington Post editorial as "an adversary of
the Bush administration on Iraq since well before the war."
May, who
served for a number of years as a foreign correspondent for The
New York Times, says the Al Qaqaa story did not meet the
paper's traditional standards but made it onto the front page
anyway. Shortly after the story broke, May sent a letter to Bill
Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, asking
for answers to a specific set of questions about the Al Qaqaa
story. To this day those questions remain unanswered.
Flash ahead
to April 26, 2005: Keller delivered a speech at the Johns Hopkins
University Institute for Policy Studies where he said, among other
things, that The New York Times should aggressively defend
its work against conservative cries of media bias. Ironically,
Keller brought up Al Qaqaa in the context of this discussion -
but then
let the cat out of the bag when questioned about it:
Mr.
Keller said he had been alarmed when discerning readers cited
the explosives story as evidence of bias. But why didn't the
paper wait until after the election, someone in the Baltimore
audience asked him? Because, he said, people needed the information
then, while they were deciding how to vote.
It speaks
volumes about the mentality of the MSM that the executive editor
of the country's largest and most influential paper is shocked
and "alarmed" to learn that readers (especially the
"discerning" ones!) would view the publication of a
story clearly unfavorable to President Bush, released one week
before the election and based on allegations primarily from a
source with questionable motives, as a politically-motivated hit
job.
It's the
same mentality that allows Keller and The New York Times
to find no problem devoting considerable resources to President
Bush's national guard records but to ignore the story of the Swift
Boat Veterans for more than two weeks before going to print -
not with an article reporting the allegations against John Kerry
but with a front page piece alleging a "web of connections"
between Karl Rove and the Swiftees.
Unfortunately,
it's the same mentality that allows Newsweek to get lazy with
its sourcing and fall under the assumption that the worst rumors
and allegations circulating about U.S. forces are true.
And if Bill
Keller really is serious about aggressively defending The
New York Times' work against critics who complain of bias,
he can start by answering Cliff May's questions about Al Qaqaa.
- T. Bevan 12:15pm Link
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