On the other hand, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal would never think of taking nasty swipes at liberals.
Well, [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/opinion/10SAT1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials]here* is one with respect to UN policy from 5/10. The archive doesn’t contain any editorials for 5/9 or 5/8 (as you note). Unless you remember some words in the title it will be hard to locate them via the search engine–assuming they exist.
Sorry: here’s that link.
Mandelstam --“To the contrary, the Times has a vested interest in keeping up journalistic standards: that’s the “product” that they offer.”
You must be kidding – Top story, NYT, 4 May 03, Sunday, Front Page, Top Left, First paragraph – “Arlington, Va., May 3 – Munther al-Fadhal believes that there is no place for religion in a new constitution for Iraq. He favors the establishment of relations between Iraq and Israel. He even thinks Iraq should outlaw the death penalty.”
Now. Are we using the first paragraph in the lead story in the Sunday edition to establish the facts of the ‘news’ story, or to set the scene for what will now be a corroboration of the opinion to be expressed? The headline is, “U.S. Backed Iraqi Exiles Return To Reinvent Nation.”
And the facts of this ‘news’ story are what? At the most generous, this is hardly the reporting of an event, and contains a ‘who, what, when, where, why, and how’ in much the same way that a bad novel does. One may agree or disagree with the ideas expressed in this Front Page NYT ‘news’ article, but the fact remains that what is being expressed is not the news of an event, but the proliferation of an idea – in other words, an opinion. There is not a single word in this article that counts as the reporting of actual objective news. The rest of the Front Page suffers from much the same lack, with only one exception.
The ‘product’ they offer is difficult to discern, if the creative setting of the scene underlying the editorial is the news.
Gairloch
Here’s a link to the Krugman op-ed piece that was referred to above.
Here’s the relevant passage. Note that Krugman explicity addressed December’s concerns about whether the ‘Bush AWOL’ incident was investigated, and December conveniently omitted that information. Not to point fingers or anything.
All that having been said, Mandelstam’s point is the most relevant one: the column is an Op-Ed piece, not reporting, and so does not support December’s argument (if I understand it, it seems quite vague).
Gairloch – whoosh, you went right over my head.
The headline you cited sounds like it was trying to moosh a garbled summary together that would fit on Page One. So, it’s gonna a be terse and open to interpretation, but go read the story to see what was meant.
OK, so do you have a problem with the actual story, or the headline, or something else?
And, you do realize that Page One headlines are worded to sell newspapers? e.g. to tantalize with enough information to get someone looking at the paper on a news stand to by the issue and Turn To Page 2. So, page one headlines will probably be Bold, Provacative and probably evocative of anything you want to read into them. Right?
Gairloch, I find plenty to disagree with on this or that particular of many of the Times’s stories so, again, my purpose is not to exalt the Times as a perfect bastion of objectivity. (I’m not old enough to have read the Times 40 years ago, but I also don’t doubt that the Times was better when the public was more demanding in its expectations of journalistic standards.
All of that said, no I’m not kidding. And I disagree with your account of the article you cite above.
Not a single word in this article that counts as reporting of actual objective news? I don’t see that.
From the same article we learn that Dr. Fadhal, an Iraqi whose been living in Sweden for years
"…is beginning a trip home to Iraq to try to put his ideas in place. As the designated senior adviser to the Iraqi Justice Ministry, he will be one of the leaders of a 150-strong team of exiles plucked by the Pentagon from posts in America and Europe to help shape the new Iraq.
A look at the team, assembled in a mere two months by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, shows how boldly the United States is trying to import secular, democratic notions to an Iraq whose political future remains the subject of profound division and flux. It also underscores some of the considerable risks involved."
A few paragraphs down we learn…
" But some Iraqi exile leaders say the creation of the team was too narrow and overly influenced by the views of Mr. Wolfowitz and fellow conservatives, who have espoused a vision of bold change in Iraq.
“This is insulting,” said Imam Husham al-Husainy, an Iraqi Shiite leader who runs the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center in Detroit, which is aligned with the Supreme Council on Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a group that is based in Iran and has kept at arm’s length from the American government-building effort."
This paragraph from page 2 strikes me as something that every American ought to know:
" By the middle of this coming week, at least two dozen exiles will be installed in key temporary posts advising Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who has been the country’s day-to-day administrator, and L. Paul Bremer, the retired State Department official who is expected to be appointed Iraq’s senior American overseer. Some American officials openly hope that some of the Iraqis will stay on even longer to serve under the transitional government that Iraqi political leaders themselves are trying to assemble, under American and British supervision, with a target date now set for late this month or early June."
Also interesting…
" In Baghdad, Dr. Fadhal said, the team will live and work in compounds guarded by American soldiers. But technically, they are working for SAIC, a defense contractor, and their heavily guarded offices outside Washington have been equipped with telephone numbers and e-mail addresses that betray no hint of a Pentagon link."
Towards the end…
" A Shiite Muslim whose family is from the holy city of Najaf, Dr. Fadhal now describes himself as a secularist who believes that Islam should play no role in Iraq’s constitution. That would set a future Iraq apart even from pro-Western Arab countries like Egypt, where the Constitution describes Islam as the principal source of the country’s laws.
In that regard, Dr. Fadhal’s views are more secular than those of most Iraqi opposition groups, and go beyond even the most recent stance taken by the Bush administration. …"
So exactly which of these excerpts would you have preferred not to know?
And if you insist that this is really an editorial in disguise, what do you think it is editorializing for?
Mind you, I don’t say that I myself don’t see some grounds for questioning this or that aspect of this article–as with many Times articles. What I do say is that your dismissive critique of it–and I’m not quite clear any longer whether your argument is that it’s commercial tripe, political propaganda or both–is way too crude.
I am still wondering what the debate is about.
I couldn’t read the Slate article but let us assume that Blair was hired as part of an Affirmative Action program. Because he proved to be a disaster the likes of which, I am confident, the NYT has not seen before, that makes the program worthless?
Again, your OP has only this one example. I can’t come to any conclusion that the quality of journalism is being systematically lowered because of the influx of sub-standard journalists from minorities. (We have enough factors causing that already) The Blair story comes across as a freak case. The NYT folks in the article say this was as unique a case of unethical journalism they have ever seen.
In statistical terms, you have to prove two things:
(1) Blair’s infractions are linked to the fact that he was erroneously recruited as part of a failing diversity program. To prove the causal link, we need lot more facts than we have.
(2) Even if you can show (1), you have to prove this case exemplifies the claim in your OP.
One thing all of us can agree on is that NYT’s credibility has been hurt and they ought to substantially improve the system by which they monitor their journalists’ reports.
(Regarding the alleged Howard Raines quote… C’mon, people say many things which when scrutinized may not be what they exactly intended. His use of “more importantly” could simply have been an extempore continuation of a sentence where he wanted to mention the increasing diversity of NYT staff.)
Yes Krugman provided an excuse for himself, but his excuse was bullshit. His own paper had already disposed of the accusation. Think about Krugman’s excuse for his serious accusation: “The Boston Globe found no evidence that Mr. Bush fulfilled any of his duties during that missing year.” So what? Would Krugman assert that all military people whose paperwork from three decades ago is missing were AWOL?
There are more likely reasons why Bush’s paperwork might not be available today. The paperwork might not have been done properly in the first place. It might have gotten lost or misplaced over the years. Other paperwork permitting Bush’s absense might be missing.
Furthermore, Bush was never accused of being AWOL real time, let alone convicted.
Mandelstam, here’s a question for you. In evaluating the Times, you asked that I look at news articles and editorials, but not opinion columns. Why shouldn’t columns by regular op-ed writers be included in an evaluation? Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Bob Herbert routinely take shots at conservatives. Why aren’t their columns a reflection of the Times? Doesn’t the drop in quality from Arthur Krock and James Resten tell us something about the paper?
That’s true, particularly since he was speaking to a minority audience. However, the staff of the Times appears to have actually behaved that way.
Note that Blair was given a second chance to be a reporter even after: “His mistakes became so routine, his behavior so unprofessional, that by April 2002, Jonathan Landman, the metropolitan editor, dashed off a two-sentence e-mail message to newsroom administrators that read: ‘We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.’” Why wasn’t Blair taken off the reporting staff before it got that far? Why wasn’t Blair fired, but merely “given a stern warning”? Why was he allowed to return to reporting? It’s said elsewhere that he was very charming, so his charm may have been one reason. OTOH it looks like diversity, rather than quality, really was the point to the Times’s efforts to rehabilitate Blair as a reporter.
It’s noteworthy that the Times included this incident in their article. It could be interpreted as a justification for acting against him at all. That’s the kind of attitude that McGowan said prevailed in many newsrooms – too much pressure to reach numerical goals.
Because a) columnists are paid to be entertaining, not balanced, and b) they can generally say whatever the hell they want without being edited, a priviledge no reporter has.
You really don’t know these things?
december, Let’s not dodge the issues already on the table so fast. You claimed you read an editorial that was unfair to conservatives. Where is it? Or is it just a coincidence that this particular damning editorial happens to have gone missing from the archives?
Right now I’ve posted a link that provides you with access to at least tend NYT editorials: let’s see the unfairness up close and personal. Otherwise (as usual) you’re wasting our time and the board’s space.
Second, if you want to impugn the character of a paper known for its reporting on the basis of its op-ed columns then you should be more specific. Which columnist do you think is taking “unfair shots” and on what specific grounds? In other words, put up or shut up. I’m not going to defend Times columnists en masse because a) that’s a sub-Great Debates enterprise that I won’t dignify and b) I don’t even like all of the columnists for the Times. That said, what the columnists you name do is on a regular basis is to criticize some conservative policies and the politicians responsible for them. That’s not necessarily a “shot” and still less “unfair” until you or someone else provides an argument showing us why we should think so. Your approach to debate is increasingly that of a random spray of indefensible slanders. Let’s see you stick fast to any one of your allegations. Construct a defensible argument and–based on your knowledge of the subject–stick to it. Case in point: Krugman’s allusion to the Boston Globe’s reporting. You call it “bullshit.” On what grounds? Find the article from the Boston Globe and tell us why it’s bullshit; otherwise go off to MPSIMS where unsubstantiated allegations belong.
Third, as to the alleged decline of the Times. Decline on what grounds? What’s the specific assertion you’re making? Less coverage on international affairs? Lower-quality of investigative journalism? Do you actually read this newspaper? Or is everything you say about it derived from Times Watch, where the self-promoting and increasingly charlatanish Andrew Sullivan is held up as a model, and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is presumably seen as some kind of bulwark of objectvitiy :rolleyes:
Fourth, as to your OP. No, sorry, you’ll get no slack from me on this OP. Your main object seems to be to impugn the impact of affirmative action on the basis of one reporter that the Times is clearly more upset about than you are. You’ve already decided that they’re only in their business of peddling a partisan agenda; they’re the ones who are up in arms about the damage to their reputation. We’ve had other and better debates on affirmative action usually started by posters who actually know what they’re talking about. What is your actual point?
A word of advice:
Instead of trolling this board day in and day out, why don’t you get out of the house and go to your local bookstore. Choose a subject that is of genuine interest to you and ask a knowledgeable employee to recommend on a non-fiction book on this subject that has been singled out by book reviewers and specialists in that area for its excellence. Read the book. Then maybe read a few reviews of the book and see what you think. Read one or two of the books mentioned in the bibliography of the book you’ve read. In other words, rouse your torpid intellectual faculties from the reflexive partisan non-think in which they’ve become submerged. You have a become a self-parody: the victim of reading crappy weblogs that, in the days before the Internet, would never have made it into print unless some unshaved nutter was handing the nonsense out on a street corner. Cultivate some useful knowledge and some resources for independent critical thinking. Then maybe you’ll be able to initiate an OP on this board without ending up in the Pit for the 23rd time. Perhaps you’ll even be able to attracting some agreement from people who share some of your political perspectives; or with the respect of some who don’t. As it is , your trollish pattern of cluttering these boards with selfish opportunities to garner attention (and satiate your masochistic impulses) do an injustice to yourself while deteriorating the quality of the debates here.
Because a) columnists are paid to be entertaining, not balanced, and b) they can generally say whatever the hell they want without being edited, a priviledge no reporter has.
You really don’t know these things?
december, Let’s not dodge the issues already on the table so fast. You claimed you read an editorial that was unfair to conservatives. Where is it? Or is it just a coincidence that this particular damning editorial happens to have gone missing from the archives?
Right now I’ve posted a link that provides you with access to at least tend NYT editorials: let’s see the unfairness up close and personal. Otherwise (as usual) you’re wasting our time and the board’s space.
Second, if you want to impugn the character of a paper known for its reporting on the basis of its op-ed columns then you should be more specific. Which columnist do you think is taking “unfair shots” and on what specific grounds? In other words, put up or shut up. I’m not going to defend Times columnists en masse because a) that’s a sub-Great Debates enterprise that I won’t dignify and b) I don’t even like all of the columnists for the Times. That said, what the columnists you name do is on a regular basis is to criticize some conservative policies and the politicians responsible for them. That’s not necessarily a “shot” and still less “unfair” until you or someone else provides an argument showing us why we should think so. Your approach to debate is increasingly that of a random spray of indefensible slanders. Let’s see you stick fast to any one of your allegations. Construct a defensible argument and–based on your knowledge of the subject–stick to it. Case in point: Krugman’s allusion to the Boston Globe’s reporting. You call it “bullshit.” On what grounds? Find the article from the Boston Globe and tell us why it’s bullshit; otherwise go off to MPSIMS where unsubstantiated allegations belong.
Third, as to the alleged decline of the Times. Decline on what grounds? What’s the specific assertion you’re making? Less coverage on international affairs? Lower-quality of investigative journalism? Do you actually read this newspaper? Or is everything you say about it derived from Times Watch, where the self-promoting and increasingly charlatanish Andrew Sullivan is held up as a model, and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is presumably seen as some kind of bulwark of objectvitiy :rolleyes:
Fourth, as to your OP. No, sorry, you’ll get no slack from me on this OP. Your main object seems to be to impugn the impact of affirmative action on the basis of one reporter that the Times is clearly more upset about than you are. You’ve already decided that they’re only in their business of peddling a partisan agenda; they’re the ones who are up in arms about the damage to their reputation. We’ve had other and better debates on affirmative action usually started by posters who actually know what they’re talking about. What is your actual point?
A word of advice:
Instead of trolling this board day in and day out, why don’t you get out of the house and go to your local bookstore. Choose a subject that is of genuine interest to you and ask a knowledgeable employee to recommend on a non-fiction book on this subject that has been singled out by book reviewers and specialists in that area for its excellence. Read the book. Then maybe read a few reviews of the book and see what you think. Read one or two of the books mentioned in the bibliography of the book you’ve read. In other words, rouse your torpid intellectual faculties from the reflexive partisan non-think in which they’ve become submerged. You have a become a self-parody: the victim of reading crappy weblogs that, in the days before the Internet, would never have made it into print unless some unshaved nutter was handing the nonsense out on a street corner. Cultivate some useful knowledge and some resources for independent critical thinking. Then maybe you’ll be able to initiate an OP on this board without ending up in the Pit for the 23rd time. Perhaps you’ll even be able to attracting some agreement from people who share some of your political perspectives; or with the respect of some who don’t. As it is , your trollish pattern of cluttering these boards with selfish opportunities to garner attention (and satiate your masochistic impulses) do an injustice to yourself while deteriorating the quality of the debates here.
Hear, hear, Mandelstam.
I took the trouble to find the dead tree version. I was talking about the lead editorial of May 9. entitled “Free Fall in Iraq.” The point of the editorial is to exaggerate the current administrative problems in Iraq. That’s now the liberal smear du jour, having replaced the “quagmire” in Iraq, which replaced the thousands of people killed due to sanctions.
The specific, gratuitous slam that I remembered was this sentence:
(emphasis added) It’s not even clear whether the current Iraq SNAFUs are worse than usual for a post-war situation. And, there’s no evidence at all for the editorial’s nasty implication that the Bush Administration may not even want to administer Iraq properly.
Okay, Here
is a link to the editorial that december has claimed offers “gratuitous swipes” at Bush, and represents the “liberal smear du jour.”
I’ll post a few excerpts but not too many as the thing is so short you can read it in about 30 seconds.
"Lines at the gasoline pump in Iraq now last up to three days. Electricity, needed for water and refrigeration units, flickers on and off. Uncollected garbage rots in the hot streets. An outbreak of cholera was reported yesterday in Basra. Cases of diarrhea in young children are also increasing. Hospitals looted of drugs and diagnostic equipment limp along. Few Iraqis are feeling nostalgic for the sadistic terror of Saddam Hussein. But in the bad old days, basic services were more dependable.
It is too soon for definitive judgments. But it is not too early to say that the first few weeks of American occupation under the leadership of Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, have left a great deal to be desired. For most Iraqis, relief over the end of more than 30 years of harsh Baathist dictatorship still seems the dominant emotion. But unless Washington’s newly reinforced team, under Paul Bremer III, quickly turns things around, good will could rapidly turn sour."
Another:
" The administration’s desire to have Iraqis rather than Americans in visible positions of authority is commendable but, at the moment, unattainable. Until Washington and the international community can bring a new and more democratic order into being, American or other outside administrators and professionals will be needed in large numbers to keep Iraq functioning."
The most critical sentence (IMO) about Bush in the entire editorial is in this paragraph:
“Iraq’s oil industry, infrastructure and health system were weakened by multiple wars and a dozen years of sanctions. Then came the additional damage inflicted by this year’s American aerial bombardment and ground invasion. But the current chaos is less a result of fresh war damage, which was relatively limited, than of the Bush administration’s failure to plan for replacing a regime that had long ordered every detail of Iraqi life. The answer is not for American occupation authorities to try to piece back together elements of the cruel and unlamented Baathist state.”
Well, december, I leave it up to my fellow Dopers to decide for themselves whether they think the “point” of this editorial “is to exaggerate the current admnistrative problems in Iraq.” Of course, making that argument would depend on one’s actually knowing what is going on in Iraq–so I’ll expect to see lots of factual information from you if you choose to defend your position.
Personally, I can’t see much room for debate in this editorial; much less grounds for claims of “smears” “exaggerations” and “gratuitous swipes.”
Why december objects to the Times’s pointing out that like it our not we’re the “legally responsible occupying power in Iraq” is beyond me. And there is no “nasty implication” of the Bush’s administration’s “not even wanting” to administer to Iraq properly. That’s just a projection on december’s part.
Ooops: this got cut off from the bottom of my post:
I would say that when you compare the Times’s editorial about Iraq to december’s remarks about the Times, you get a really good idea of what an exaggerated smear doesn’t and does look like.
If the Times’s no-war policy had been followed, Saddam would still be in power – imprisoning, torturing, and murdering thousands, including children. Children would still be going without food and medicine, while Saddam spent the country’s money on ornate palaces and stores of weapons.
Those things were mere pecadillos, says the Times. The true source of horror is – long lines at the gas station! :rolleyes:
And where the fuck did they say any of that in that editorial ?
december: If the Times’s no-war policy had been followed…
:sigh: The Times did not have a “no-war policy.” I won’t even waste my time reiterating its actual opinions on the war–you’ve heard it all before but it hasn’t quite lodged into that propaganda-coated grey matter of yours.
As squeegee has already noted, the Times didn’t say anything of the sort that you’re imply and, indeed, quite the contrary.
For example: "Few Iraqis are feeling nostalgic for the sadistic terror of Saddam Hussein."
and
"For most Iraqis, relief over the end of more than 30 years of harsh Baathist dictatorship still seems the dominant emotion."
(The latter position, I might add, is not only not “unfair” to conservatives and “exaggerated” liberal smear, it’s actually a quite debatable point. After all, to my knowledge neither the Times nor anyone else has the appropriate mechanisms in place for empirically surveying the emotions of the Iraqi people.)
But these signs of the Times’s moderate and centrist position will always be lost on your black and white mentality.
Any thoughts about visiting the bookstore or library yet? 