You are almost correct in your assertion that The Times actually favored the war but urged as much UN and other international support as possible. In fact, they had two key editorials, which I remember quite well. The first one almost seemed to say that the Times favored war with Iraq. However, the second one clarified that the Times only supported a war on Iraq if it was a UN endeavor. They opposed the war as it was actually conducted – i.e., wiothout UN auspices.
Jackmannii, I didn’t mean to imply that the sloppiness and errors carry over into editorials and op-ed pieces. A throwaway comment of mine led this thread into a long hijack.
Getting back to the OP: One idea is that the Times appoint an Ombudsman, as the Washington Post has done. That would provide a central person to notify in case of alleged fraud. The ombudsman could also independently evaluate subtler problems, like alleged spin or bias. National Public Radio also has an ombudsman.
The Times’s explains why they don’t have an ombudsman:
december: '"OK, it’s “some”. I was wrong to say “many”.
Well how about coming up with evidence for any?
The truth is, I don’t you think you will find any except possibly for Kristoff. As it stands you make an allegation about what “many on the New York Times” have said, and basically you can’t cite a single one. Is that appropriate for Great Debates or Great Waste of Time?
As for the Times’s own editorial position–yes they were in favor of war but against acting unilaterally. But the reason was certainly not because they thought the war wouldn’t be won without the UN! Rather, the importance of involvement with the UN was, as I said, all to do with long-term political and foreign policy effects, including the ultimate outcome of regime change in Iraq. So your assertion that the Times was wrong on the war and Bush right is utterly inaccurate–almost as spectacularly inaccurate as your statement about what “many” columnists wrote.
All I can say at this point is that it’s too bad you’re not as good as covering up your up inaccuracies as was Blair Honestly, I feel as though you need to followed around by your own personal fact-checker.
Could you possibly comport yourself with the dignity befitting someone who knows, our ought to know, the difference between a) fact (of which you have almost none with respect to the New York Times) b) opinion (of which your own tend to be pre-digested by the pundit of the moment, and that of others you regard as open season for your own faulty and partisan paraphrases) and c) unfounded assertion (which is your speciality at the present moment)?
I am indeed aware that my entire participation in this thread has been tantamount to a hijack. But it’s a testimony to how irresponsible a poster you have become that you are more ready to spout false assertions without end than you are to adjust your claims or do the reasearch required for more accurate debate.
A word on the rest of the thread: although I have nothing against the idea of an ombuds function for the Times, I don’t see how it would have helped this particular problem. Ombuds aren’t usually in a position to check factual accuracy unless they are alerted to a problem; and this kind of problem should be dealth with by editors not by an ombuds. (Oh and glad you’re now aware that NPR has an obuds ).
It’s a bit difficult, since the pre-war op-ed pages are no longer available to me. Anyhow, this is a hijack, so I will let the point drop. I’m glad to see that you agree that possibly Kristoff did express such a position. Maybe we’re closer than it seems.
Right, if by “unilaterally” you mean “without the UN,” rather than “without other allies”. However, the UN didn’t approve the war. (Given what we now know about France’s relationship with Iraq, perhaps they never would have.) So, the Times favored war only under hypothetical circumstances that didn’t exist – a “woulda, coulda, shoulda” excuse.
You must know that I never said that was the reason. Regardless of their reason, the war has been a successful endeavor, in the opinons of most. A number of war opponents have now admitted that they would have supported the war, had they known it would turn out so well.
Mandelstam, please get off your high horse. You wrote in bold, “The Times actually favored the war but urged as much UN and other international support as possible.” That was incorrect, if by “the war” you mean “the war that was actually conducted.” The Times favored some other version of the war, which didn’t happen. They opposed the actual war.
Right, so in other words my statement was not “incorrect”–though I have no problem at all with your having wanted to clarify a particular (and important) statement with respect to it. And, no, the specific editorial opinion articulated by the Times isn’t well-expressed by any statement that says, simply, “They opposed the actual war.” They bought into the rationale of the war almost completely (with the exception of the alleged links between Iraq/Al Qaeda); but urged a different way of seeing it launched. France’s position is proof of nothing because had the Bush administration adopted a modified policy–say extending the deadline and working towards a compromise–and had France still objected, the NYT almost certainly would have considered circumstances to be altered. At no point did the NYT say, the United States must and should do whatever France is willing to do under any and all circumstances. (May I remind you, since you are so eager to invoke public opinion, that at the time of these editorials the majority of Americans agreed with the Times’s position, not Bush’s. As the Times also predicted, once the war began many Americans let go of their reservations and supported the war as most people do tend to do when their country is at war.)
Bottom line: your saying Bush was right and the NYT wrong is absurd under the circumstances. The NYT never said that the war wouldn’t be won, never said that there weren’t decent odds that it would be won fast, and certainly never said that a fast win wouldn’t be politically popular. On the contrary, it said the very reverse of all of those things. And your credibility with respect to the NYT is, as far as I’m concerned, non-existent.
So, no, I will not get off my high horse until you stop spouting unfounded assertions and then defending them. Up until the time that you do, you are, IMO, a blemish on this board and an obstacle to the whole idea of reasoned, educated debate.
Blair didn’t graduate from college. (The cited article says near the end, “Thomas Kunkel, dean of the journalism program at the University of Maryland, gently suggested that the former student might return to earn that college degree.”)
Blair was close to the two top people on the Times, according to Newsweek.
Note also the quote from Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
This position seems to contradict the Times’s stated reason for not having an ombudsman:
Andrew Sullivan, who has done a fair amount of writing for the Times, sees this as a top management f*ckup.
If any executives are to be held responsible, these two would have to be at the top of the list. Sulzberger’s request not to “demonize executives”, didn’t mention any names, but these two may be the executives he had in mind.
So, you are pointing to evidence that this was not an example of horrors! Affirmative Action, but a simple case of old fashioned Good Ol’ Boy networking and favoritism in which the players are, coincidentally, (in this case), black.
There’s something to what you say, [tomndebb, particularly with respect to Boyd. It’s not exactly “Good Ol’ Boy”, since Blair was in his 20’s and he didn’t know the Times management before he was hired. OTOH, he does seem to have charmed them.
Still, it’s hard to separate his appeal from his race. According to the quote located by NPR, Raines boasted about Blair as an example of diversity at the Times. Part of his charm seems to be that he was an example of black success.
Anyhow, it sure seems remarmable for the Times to hire a college graduate as a reporter, not to fire he when he’s caught filing fraudulent stories, and then to promote him soon afterwards. If Blair can generate that sort of treatment through charm alone, then he’s wasting himself as a mere New York Times reporter. He should set his sights on being elected President.
why do we all continue to respond to december when he continues to poke us in our eyes with the blunt stick of partisan nonsense?
do we hope to change or enlighten him?
do we feel better when we vent against such ignorance?
is december, along with being a goose-stepping O’Reilly-ite, actually so good at posing pointed questions that we can’t resist answering (even though we should know better by now)?
Maybe it’s because this is an important and interesting issue.
America’s leading newspaper has been brought low by a scandal that they call the worst in their 152-year history. Was it entirely Blair’s fault? Did a desperate search for diversity lead the Times to lower its standards? Was it bad management? Favoritism? Bad luck?
What will be the impact on the Times? Will other reporters commiting fraud be discovered? How will moral on the Times be affected? Will the scandal affect other media?
And, what should be done about it? Is Blair’s resignation enough? Should the Executive Editor or Managing Editor be replaced? Does the Times need an ombudsman? Should there be some other structural change in management?
Speaking of the Managing Editor, according to the Los Angeles Times, he was quite a supporter of Blair.
It IS and interesting and important issue, december. But I was directing my questions toward your posts in general, not just this one. But of course it was a hijack.
Why was no one blaming race and “diversity” when his fictional reporting came to light?
Blair is bad. He not only wronged his employer and his profession, but unfortunately he has screwed his black colleagues. If they didn’t operate under a microscope before this, they most certaintly will now.
Inexperienced, incompetent people have always held top positions in business and industry. Sometimes the incompetency of these folks comes to light, sometimes it doesn’t. Why is everyone acting like nothing like the Blair scandal has ever happened before?
You are right. Also, the Times management screwed Blair’s black colleagues by hiring Blair and then giving him so much leeway. There must have been many other black reporters who were more qualified. In fact, the Times may have even screwed Blair by giving him all the leeway.
I think it’s the shear magnitude of fraudulent stories – many on top news items, such as Jessica Lynch and the Washington D.C. sniper.
Now that the story has come to light, the Times doesn’t have a good explanation of why Blair was retained and even promoted after his problems came to light a year ago.
It occurs to me that the Blair story won’t have “legs.” There’s not much in the way of a potential follow-up story. There won’t be a Congressional investigation or class action lawsuit or any other dramatic, continuing news thread. So, this story will be gone. As a result, the Times may not suffer much damage to its reputation. The official Times position, as expressed by the Publisher, is that all the blame goes to Blair. They may well get away with that.
It’s ironic, in a way. The Times’s product is accurate news. That product was corrupted over a period of several years. If some other corporation had been selling a corrupted product for years, and if they blamed it all on a single low-level employee, the Times would typically demand that senior management be held responsible.
I don’t understand this. You’re once again assuming that Blair’s race was instrumental in his being hired. Surely you don’t think that the job would have gone necessarily to another black reporter if Blair hadn’t been hired.
If Blair was as good as his reputation had suggested, then he deserved leeway. He had everyone bamboozled. It’s his incompetency–not the leeway–that was the problem.
I agree. It’s obvious–from all the errors and sloppy reporting he had done through the years–that he was flailing and in WAY over his head.
Just like all the stories of lying reporters. Blair is not the first–or the last–journalist who’s sins will come to light. Too bad he won’t be asked to write a book like Stephen Glass was when his scandal broke. I would love to learn how it must feel living a life full of lies and deception.
SHOW US PROOF THAT THEY DID NOT FIRE BLAIR AFTER HE WAS CAUGHT, AND THEN SHOW US ADDITIONAL PROOF THAT THEY PROMOTED HIM AFTER THEY LEARNT HE WAS DECEIVING THEM!*
MORE IMPORTANTLY, SHOW US HOW THIS SINGLE INCIDENT IS REPRESENTATIVE OF A SYSTEMATIC DECLINE IN THE QUALITY OF JOURNALISM AS A RESULT OF NYT’S POLICY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.
THANKS FOR LISTENING… NOW YOU CAN PUT YOUR FINGERS BACK IN YOUR EAR.
Don’t weasel by quoting somebody’s comment as quoted by some blogger. The proof should simply be the fact that NYT’s editorial staff was aware of the lies and deception in Blair’s reports and kept quiet and in fact ended up promoting him
Please read the cites already provided. It’s in there.
Collounsbury, thanks for the Safire link. Three quibbles.
It’s not actually Schadenfreude I feel, but just plain Freude. I am happy that the Times getting caught in this misfortune, but there is no guilt in my pleasure. I think this is a salutory event, that will lead the Times and other media to take more care and produce more accurate news.
He said: “As for news coverage being influenced by editorial policy, … On occasion, a leftist slant on a story slips through the backfield, but with conservatives boring from within and fulminating from without, the news side soon straightens itself out.” However, he fails to address the problem of story selection. Media sometimes slant their coverage by selecting stories that favor one side and downplaying stories that favor the other side.
His comment, “Now about the supposed cost of diversity: A newspaper is free to come down on the side of giving black journalists a break if its owners and editors so choose.” That’s an evasion. The question isn’t whether the Times is free to promote diversity in certain ways; the question is whether their approach is harming their quality, and, if so, how to improve the quality.
Also, this point may be legally incorrect. If the Times systematically treats non-black employees less favorably than black employees, they might be violating civil rights law.
Honestly, I feel as though you need to followed around by your own personal fact-checker.
).