Posted on 07/26/2006 4:27:38 AM PDT by linwms
Biased Times And Post Badmouth BushThe New York Times has done it again – laced Uncle Sam’s feet in a sack for the race between liberty and terrorism. It revealed last week a secret monitoring program for international electronic bank transfers between Al Queda cells. This was done legally with cooperation of the Brussels-based Worldwide Interbank for Financial Telecommunication. The “Gray Lady” of journalism (so called presumably for venerable age) considered this an encore for a similar, irresponsible revelation last December. In that, the Times asserted the National Security Agency (NSA) was tapping illegally into telephone calls of Americans. Hogwash. Our government was searching telephone numbers for Al Queda links – not conversations of anyone, terrorists or not. The leak is thought by some to be why CIA chief Porter Goss was canned with unseemly haste though he was trying to weed out dysfunctional subordinates he inherited.
Many people believe subordinates in government departments who blab should be dismissed and prosecuted – right or wrong. Their bosses, with legally designated responsibility, are nitpicked sufficiently by Congress. Did Times executives appreciate the difference? For enlightenment, one could examine the origin of that newspaper’s nickname. The Sulzberger family, owner of the newspaper chain since its founding, met frequently at dinner to discuss the business. Young daughter Judy was bored and once wrote that she “was reminded of Gray’s lady.” The latter was a character in a poem by Mary Wortley (1760): “Facing rape, the lady cries, ‘I thought this fellow was a fool, but there’s some sense in this,’ and is careful not to bawl until he gets safely away.”
Apparently Judy Sulzberger thought the Times a bit hypocritical about its famous slogan: “All the news that’s fit to print.” Problem is that the New York Times, Washington Post and other mega-chain newspapers are too full of themselves. They feel no responsibility to anyone but their newsroom comrades. In the recent Times transgressions, the Bush administration called publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and editor Bill Keller, asking that the monitoring programs – legal in every respect – not be published. Keller’s response: “We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data.... is a matter of public interest.”
Questions: who elected Sulzberger, and other media barons, to determine public interest? Where does Congress fit in? Article 1 of the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and the press. However, as the Supreme Court has ruled many times, this does not give anyone the right to falsely shout “fire” in a crowded auditorium. Congress, if somewhat reluctantly by die-hard liberals, has conceded that the Times “scoops” were wrong and irresponsible. Liberal media outlets are often irresponsible when reporting President Bush. He spoke last Wednesday at a fund-raiser in Clayton, Mo. He defended his post 9/11 efforts to ward off terrorist attacks on our homeland.
Washington Post reporter Peter Baker let his bias surface when he wrote about this event. Note the sly phrasing tacked in: “Bush offered a robust defense of his decision to invade Iraq even though, ultimately, no weapons of mass destruction were found.” Of course, everyone, including Congress and the United Nations originally believed otherwise. Recent discovery of thousands of poison gas bombs in Iraq indicates Saddam did have WMD. Bush did not mention WMD in his speech, so why did Baker insert his bias into a news story? One is reminded of another famous Times article written about Soviet Union’s Stalin who deliberately starved to death eight million Ukrainian farmers resisting communism. Stalin’s Times-toady, Walter Duranty, wrote: “ Stalin is “the greatest living statesman” and “communism is a heroic chapter in the life of humanity. There is no famine in the Ukraine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be.”
Lenin is famously reported to have said – upon being informed that thousands of Americans were demonstrating in support of the Russian revolution - “Ah, yes. My useful idiots.” For the New York Times idiocy regarding Stalin, other useful idiots at Columbia University – which award Pulitzer Prizes – recognized Duranty for “outstanding reporting.” With idiots like these, who needs enemies? This article and four decades more on LindseyWilliams.org
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"Biased NY Times And Post Badmouth Bush"
In another development, the sun rose in the morning and set at night.
Nothing like a little shameless self-promotion eh Lindsey?
linwms: Lindsey Williams
registered: July 23, 2006 [3 days ago]
(ahem)
"Welcome to FR"
[no, we don't give Air Miles]
Did you see anything original in this?
Lindsey has been writing to deadline for 64 years...
During four years with the U.S. Navy in World War II...
I'd like to read what this gentleman has to say and appreciate his signing up and posting.
Or, it could have been posted in the blog section.
FOX NEWS last night refused to disclose their where abouts at the Israeli - Lebanon border. Guess they were leaving that up to the NY Times.
Personally, I don't have time to follow most links Freepers put in their taglines. When an author posts his full article, I can immediately take a measure of him, and if the article makes me curious enough (which in this case it did), I'll look into who the author is.
In respect to original ideas in this piece, veteran Freepers should keep in mind that many potential Freepers who tentatively peek at this site do not have the political savy that old timers have and general pieces such as Mr. William's can help them grasp the basics of our positions. It's like Rush occasionally repeating old news to help new listeners catch up.
And to Mr. Williams, thank you for your service in the Navy during WWII.
But...an article from 7/2/06?
As do I. My father was a SeaBee in WWII in the Pacific.
Shameless promotion: maybe
Self promotion: No
I'm the webmaster for my father-in-law's website, a project I undertook originally as a birthday present to him 2 years ago. It has turned into a gift for all yearly occassions and a learning process for me.
I'm promoting Lin's work, not my own.
Lin ran his newspapers during the years of hot type and has graduated to the virtual electronic world ... with the help of his geek son-in-law. At age 86, he still writes an editorial a week for a local paper in Charlotte County, Florida. He creates ... I post it.
In monitoring website search phrase/search engine logs, I noticed Free Republic frequently showed up on the same search result pages as Lin's site.
So, I thought introducing Lin's work to Free Republic might not be a bad idea. I've used OCR to convert hundreds of his old editorials to webpages (project still in progress.) The website now has over a thousand of his editorials, anecdotes, musings and one of his full historical research books.
There is no money making intent.
If there is a more palatable way to post some of Lin's writings on Free Republic, I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks,
David Hager, M.D.
If you posted under a name that does not look like a shortened version of your father-in-law's name, it might help alleviate the suspicion of shameless self promotion.
I think Flightdeck summed up any concerns, the impression I (and I suspect others) received was that your father-in-law was actually posting his own material direct from his website, which everyone can (now) see is not the case.
Your father-in-law's views are certainly aligned with what I would consider strong conservative thought and from what I've read so far, I find myself generally in agreement, I might add that if Mr. Williams is still writing for his local paper(s) at age 86, that calls for a *bravo* and more power to him. :)
Had I known that you, Dr. Hager, were posting Mr. Williams articles, I would not at all thought anything amiss. While I have not been around FR as long as many more veteran Freepers have, I've seen a fair amount of what I call "register and post" type of activities where there is no interest on the part of the person registering for an FR account in actually participating in the forums and commenting on the news, but rather to piggyback their own writings on FR and Jim Robinson who is the founder of this website. I'm sure that was never your intention.
Having said all that, "Welcome to FreeRepublic"!
Simple solution.
Sounds good.
Will do.
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