Crush Liberalism

More on the NYT phony Iraq veteran who was allegedly raped in Iraq

Yesterday, I commented on the story that the NYT ran whereby a female member of our armed services says that she was raped in Iraq AND suffered a roadside bomb attack while there. Turns out that she was never there, and the NYT’s correction was a week late and rather pathetic.

John Gibson takes them to task:

My friend Rick Leventhal, one of our best correspondents here at FOX News Channel, has a great story today about The New York Times, and he asks the question at the end: When are we going to hear an explanation from The Times? So far he hasn’t got one. Here’s the story:

The Times evidently knew it was printing phony information in a recent story, but waiting a week to print a correction. In fact, it appears to have scheduled a correction for a week later and the only possible explanation is that reprinting the incorrect story would cost too much.

What happened was The Times’ Sunday magazine had a story about sexual assault on female military members in Iraq. One named Amorita Randall had a particularly tough story about being raped and suffering a severe brain injury in a roadside bombing.

The magazine was scheduled to be published March 18. But six days earlier on march 12, The Times knew that Ms. Randall — get this — had never been in Iraq. The Times didn’t reprint the magazine. It didn’t run a correction that day. Instead it printed a correction a week later on March 25.

So The Times knew a source for a story was a phony on March 12 and printed a correction 13 days later. And right in between they actually published the story in the Sunday Times Magazine.

Does it cost a lot to reprint an entire four-color glossy paper Sunday magazine? Yes. Does it cost a lot in reputation for the newspaper of record to knowingly publish false information and figure it can be fixed with a schedule correction a week later? Yes and yes.

The Times has a political point of view these days it has no problem pushing in its news and editorial pages. OK, it gives up some points in objectivity when it does that, but the publisher has a right to do so. But when The Times knowingly publishes phony information because it costs too much to reprint and thinks a correction a week later will fix things, that suggests something different than just editorial point of view. It suggests a willingness to lie for money. If you’ll lie for money, doesn’t it follow you would find it much easier to lie for the much higher calling of ideology?

The Times has some explaining to do.

Is it media bias or gross dereliction of duty? Is one any better than the other?

March 27, 2007 - Posted by crushliberalism | media bias