Posted on 06/26/2004 6:45:31 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
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PORTS columnists have forever used the phrase "hitting to all fields" to introduce pieces that cover a variety of subjects. Unlike the best of them, who work a different story into every sentence, I can manage only three swings. Conveniently, I've aimed one to right field, one to left and one straight up the middle.
Stretching across four columns of the front page, the June 17 headline "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11" caused some readers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, to accuse The Times of "outrageous" (Cheney's word) distortion of the 9/11 commission's staff report. I don't buy "outrageous," but "distortion" works for me - specifically, the common newspaper crime of distortion by abbreviation. The staff report was largely concerned with attacks on United States soil, whereas the headline bore no such qualification. The headline also leaned on two of those words whose brevity makes them dear to all newsrooms: the resolute "no," and the imprecise "tie." Assistant managing editor Craig Whitney, who oversees the front page, argues that "tie" in the headline is "a correct shorthand summary" of the report's conclusion that there appeared to be no "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
That's the problem with shorthand: If it's not written in your own hand, it's very hard to read. Headlines also pose two conundrums. The more complex the story, the more likely you are to get a headline that oversimplifies it. And the more complete the coverage associated with the headline, the less likely readers will find their own way to the gist of it. The main news section on June 17 contained eight separate articles on the staff report, consuming nearly 550 column inches. Unable to wander through all these glades and thickets of prose, many readers rely on headlines to provide as much of a summary as they are prepared to absorb.
While headlines may be short, their impact is large. Willful distortion? I don't see it. Misstep? Sure. Is an apology needed, as Internet columnist Bob Kohn, one of the paper's most forceful (and, often, most incisive) critics on the right, demanded by e-mail? No. Good reporting and careful presentation are what's needed. If out-of-tune headlines required apologies, the newspaper business would soon turn into a cacophony of confession.
CHIEF book critic Michiko Kakutani's review of Bill Clinton's "My Life," published in last Sunday's paper, was brutal. For any author, it would have been the review from hell, the one from which a career (much less the book at hand) could never recover. Of course, Bill Clinton isn't just any author, and early reports indicate that "My Life" might be the fastest-selling nonfiction book in United States history.
That a far more positive take on the book by novelist Larry McMurtry will appear in next Sunday's Book Review says more about reviewing than it does about "My Life." (It's already posted on the Web and can be read, along with other articles cited here, by clicking on a link in the online version of my column at nytimes.com/weekinreview.) McMurtry and Kakutani didn't read different books; they're just different people, who appear to agree only on the book's sporadic wonkiness. But Kakutani's review came first; it ran on the front page; and it featured a vocabulary of critical invective that might have knocked the breath out of even a Clinton hater.
Needless to say, Clinton supporters were displeased. Some wrote to say the review was another ambush in a Times anti-Clinton vendetta that began when "Whitewater" referred just to rafting conditions. Many wondered why Kakutani was allowed to include in a review her judgments not just of the book but of the Clinton presidency itself. Others chastised her for failing to mention the book's criticisms of The Times. And quite a few took her to task for the reference in the review's closing sentence to "Lies about . . . real estate." They argued that the failure of the Resolution Trust Corporation or the Office of the Independent Counsel to charge either of the Clintons with any Whitewater-related deceptions proves that the "lies" comment is a calumny.
I don't buy the vendetta charge; it suggests that the different parts of this newspaper operate in sync, when my seven months here have convinced me that the various departments are as carefully coordinated as Manhattan traffic in a thunderstorm. Kakutani herself doesn't seem party to any kind of Kill Bill campaign, as she demonstrated last year in her evisceration of Nigel Hamilton's full-frontal attack, "Bill Clinton: An American Journey." I can't for the life of me come up with a rule that would limit what a reviewer should be allowed to comment on in a review, and I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't keep personal opinions of a presidency in mind while reading the president's memoirs.
The other two complaints about Kakutani's review - failure to mention criticism of The Times and reference to real estate lies - would be absolutely appropriate to a news story. But critics exist to have opinions. Short of committing factual inaccuracy, libel or other major sins, they are free - must be free - to say what they wish. To my knowledge the R.T.C. and the O.I.C. never concluded that one or the other Clinton did not lie; the two offices found that they had committed no offenses that justified prosecution or taken any actions that would subject them to civil penalties. Thankfully, in the United States justice system, the threshold for establishing criminal behavior or a civil liability is much higher than the threshold for your opinion, my opinion or Michiko Kakutani's opinion.
But it was a different threshold that this review crossed: the sanctity of the front page as an opinion-free zone. Executive editor Bill Keller told me that "the voice of a brilliant critic was something we could add to the coverage that was uniquely ours." As far as I know, the only other time the paper put a book review on A1 was almost exactly a year ago, for Harry Potter. But Bill Clinton is no Harry Potter; his role in the ever intensifying political debate remains substantial, and in some ways might even be determinative. The front page is the home for news, and arguably for analysis, but if it's also the home for unbuckled opinion about figures on the public stage, then you could argue that editorials belong there, too. Managing editor Jill Abramson believes that the review "was every bit as interesting and newsworthy as the front-page stories disclosing its contents." But if Michiko Kakutani's opinions are news, it would be just as logical to write a story about them, or about especially strong columns by William Safire or Maureen Dowd. And that's a logical step too far for me.
I asked both Keller and Abramson whether they would have run the review on Page 1 had it been an unqualified rave, suspecting as I do that anything overly sunny and positive might seem almost promotional in so prominent a position; both said they would have.
I'm sure they believe it. I'm not sure I do.
NOW, up the middle. In my June 13 column on anonymous sources, I ended with the admonition "Stay tuned; this is a complex issue, and I intend to explore it further in a future column."
"Complex" doesn't begin to describe it. Readers, journalists, interview subjects and one chronically off-the-record "senior aide" had much to say about the issue, and the gradations of their views are as finely calibrated as a microscope. I do plan to explore these complexities at some later date, but for now I'll stick to the one point on which there was near unanimous agreement: that "background briefings" of government and political figures are an affront to journalistic integrity and an insult to the citizenry. Even my senior aide (not in the current administration, nor particularly active in the current campaign, but a past master of the background briefing) doesn't like them very much.
So let me offer a blatant, grandstanding challenge to the five largest American papers and The Associated Press. Newspapers are by nature competitive rather than collaborative, but the very existence of the cooperatively owned A.P. demonstrates that concerted action can be good for journalism. Therefore: will the chief editors of USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The A.P. jointly agree not to cover group briefings conducted by government officials and other political figures who refuse to allow their names to be used?
If I hear from any of them, I'll let you know.
The public editor is the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this section.
I want to know how many books have been reviewed twice by the New York Times.
Then you're a blind man. Big Time, as Dick Cheney would say.
So, he's saying that the NYT distorted the facts and ran a misleading headline, but that they have no intention of apologising or printing a correction. Nice journalistic ethics there.
And fish don't notice the water they swim in. It's normal to them.
Dan, you're a nice guy. But you don't see it because you don't want to see it.
I'll bet you don't see media bias either.
At lunch the other day a guy talking to his friend said, "I just bought Bill Clintons book". My question to him, "WHY? "Because I want to know about Clinton". My reply "What makes you think you're going to find out anything about willard from this piece of trash, Evry review says it a REALLY BAD BOOK.
Media bias? What media bias?
He doesn't address the Times Editorial that called for President Bush to apologize for suggesting the tie between al-Qaeda and Hussein that he acknowledges in his piece.
It's pretty common for the NY Times to have multiple reviews of the same book; usually there is one in the weekday NY Times and another on Sunday in the Book Review, which is a separately-edited section.
In this case, Kakutani (who is sharp as a tack) reviewed the book for the news section, which is idfferent from a Book Review review -- even though her review was published on a Sunday.
I understand, though, that the Times did have another weekday review a few days after hers, and it was a glowing review. I find it unusual for the paper to have two reviews written by weekday reviewers.
And fish don't notice the water they swim in. It's normal to them.
Great response!
entries found for Obfuscation.
ob·fus·cate  ( P ) Pronunciation Key ( b f -sk t , b-f skt)tr.v. ob·fus·cat·ed, ob·fus·cat·ing, ob·fus·cates
[Latin obfusc re, obfusct-, to darken : ob-, over; see ob- + fuscre, to darken (from fuscus, dark).]ob fus·cation n.ob·fus ca·tory (b-fsk-tôr , -t r, b-) adj. |
| Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
Obfuscation
\Ob`fus*ca"tion\, n. [L. obfuscatio.] The act of darkening or bewildering; the state of being darkened. ``Obfuscation of the cornea.'' --E. Darwin.
| Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc. |
Obfuscation
n : confusion resulting from failure to understand [syn: bewilderment, puzzlement, befuddlement, mystification, bafflement, bemusement]
| Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University |
The NY Times made two specific claims:1. They said that the Bush Administration somehow convinced Americans that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.
2. They said that the 9/11 Commission found no Iraq - Al Qaeda ties.
But reviewing *every* speech by President Bush and most speeches by the other high-ranking Bush Administration officials shows that all involved went out of their way to say that Iraq was specifically *not* involved in 9/11, based upon the evidence at hand. I've found not a single one who said that Iraq was behind 9/11, and more importantly, the NY Times is unable to show so much as a single quote to that effect.
Yet they made that claim in no fewer than two Editorials.
Furthermore, the NY Times itself published on January 14, 2001 and on June 26, 2004 front page news stories detailing specific ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on non-9/11 activities. Moreover, the 9/11 Commission specifically cited Iraq sending a high level officer on 3 trips to Sudan to meet with Osama Bin Laden in 1994.
Thus, both claims by the NY Times are refuted by the evidence at hand.
Their public editor, their ombudsman, Mr. Okrent, addresses neither claim nor refutation successfully in this "reply."
He even claims that distortion is part of the news business and that no apology is required. How quaint.
But what is addressed above is not even something as benign as "distortion." No, those are outright fabrications by the NY Times.
They've misrepresented what the 9/11 Commission said. They've misrepresented what the Bush Administration said.
And they've even misrepresented what their own staff has published in various FRONT PAGE articles!
But what can they do at this point. Like any crook caught completely red handed, there is no benefit to them at this point to being contrite. They can only play the idiot kid who always claims that he "didn't do it" when caught on camera doing it again.
It's not intellectual. It's not honest. It doesn't show integrity.
That being said, it's probably the best that the Left can offer on any large scale. They simply aren't capable of arguing issues any longer.
No, they have to fabricate wild-eyed tales to even stay in the debate.
This guy even gives more ink to the book review story than he gives the link story. One thing you can say for liberals in the media, they are always kind to themselves.
Did you buy those dictionaries?
Do not miss this completely self-righteous disgustingly Clymerous piece of dog droppings from the NYT.
Ya don't say!
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