Free Republic

The New York Times has published a new account of the deadly 9/11/12 terrorist attacks against two US compounds in Benghazi, Libya. Reporter David Kirkpatrick's sources, some of whom are anonymous, say there is little indication that international terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda were involved in the attack. Kirkpatrick's story also claims that the raids were not "meticulously planned," and were, in fact, touched off by an obscure YouTube video trailer that some say denigrated Islam. A snippet from the piece: Then, on Sept. 8, a popular Islamist preacher lit the fuse by screening a clip of the video on...

Front-page editorials, disguised as news stories, have become such familiar features of the New York Times that it should have been no surprise to discover in the December 28th issue a front-page story about a professor of finance at the University of Houston who has been a paid consultant to financial enterprises. Since professors of all sorts have been paid consultants to organizations of all sorts, it is questionable why this was a story at all, much less one that covered an entire inside page, in addition to a central front-page opening, under the headline "Academics Who Defend Wall St....

**SNIP** But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks. “It was a coordinated attack. It is completely false to say anything else. … It is completely a lie,” one witness to the attack told Fox News. The controversial Times report has stirred a...

David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times has published a lengthy account of the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. While much in Kirkpatrick's report is not new, the piece is receiving a considerable amount of attention because of this sweeping conclusion: "Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault." But how much effort did Kirkpatrick expend to uncover any...

Fifteen months after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the narrative of the attack continues to be shaped, and reshaped, by politicians and the press. But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks. “It...

A senior Obama administration official said the White House does not dispute a New York Times article published Saturday about the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which found no evidence al Qaeda was involved. **SNIP** The newspaper said its investigation took months and was "centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context." It is not surprising the White House would welcome this report. Since the attack, Republicans have accused the Obama administration of downplaying the perpetrators' links to al Qaeda for political gain. The attack...

**SNIP** The cable was a last token of months of American misunderstandings and misperceptions about Libya and especially Benghazi, many fostered by shadows of the earlier Sept. 11 attack. The United States waded deeply into post-Qaddafi Libya, hoping to build a beachhead against extremists, especially Al Qaeda. It believed it could draw a bright line between friends and enemies in Libya. But it ultimately lost its ambassador in an attack that involved both avowed opponents of the West and fighters belonging to militias that the Americans had taken for allies. Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on...

The “American Dream”of a traditional nuclear family is getting harder and harder to come by, and the New York Times can hardly contain its glee. The Times’ entire Nov. 26 “Science Times” section was devoted to the “redefined” American family. In her featured articles, NYT reporter Natalie Angier identified traditional family as a thing of the past: “the old-fashioned family plan of stably married parents residing with their children remains a source of considerable power in American – but one that is increasingly seen as out of reach to all but the educated elite.” What’s taking its place? A lot...

I'm trying to find the author/past posts regarding the NYTimes front pages from the WWII years. There was a post I believe on Veterans day regarding combat on Bougainville that I believe my Wife's grandfather (Marine Corsair pilot) recieved the Distinguished Flying Cross for. PM me if you can help find it, thanks in advance.

The stampede for the exits continues at Jill Abramson’s beleaguered New York Times. On Tuesday, three high-profile names said they were departing the Gray Lady — media columnist Brian Stelter, Chief Political Correspondent Matt Bai and Sunday Magazine Editor-in-Chief Hugo Lindgren.

Poor Barack Obama. Ending his fifth year as the world’s most powerful man, he is running out of scapegoats and fairy tales. Blaming George W. Bush has lost its punch, and the ObamaCare debacle is shredding the myths he is competent and honest. Still, before he rides off into that sunset of self-pity and low poll ratings, he ought to invite his remaining friends over for a heart-to-heart. That way he can tell The New York Times that its fanatical support does him no favors. Instead, it feeds his arrogance and reinforces his belief that he can solve any problem...

The correspondent for the disputed “60 Minutes'’ segment about the attack on the United States Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year apologized on the air Friday morning, saying it was a “mistake'’ to put on a security officer whose credibility has since been undermined by his diverging accounts of his actions that night. The correspondent, Lara Logan, said on “CBS This Morning'’ that the news division was misled by the officer, adding, “We will apologize to our viewers, and we will correct the record on our broadcast on Sunday night.” The apology followed disclosure by The New York Times...

"Apparatchik" is defined as as unquestioningly loyal subordinate: a subordinate who is unquestioningly loyal to a powerful political leader or organization. You can find a cadre of Obama apparatchiks here. They are known as the Editorial Board of the NY Times. It is claimed that this board operates independently of the regular "news operations" but if no one objects to it, well.... I was going to title this "The Devil Wears Pravda." Pravda is the Russian government information outlet, unflinchingly loyal to the leader of the Communist government. The NY Times editorial board has become the US version of Pravda....

Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 4:37 AM Not that any of us are surprised but Barack Obama’s mouthpiece, The New York Times, praised the Marxist redistribution of wealth enforced by Obamacare. And the author savors the fact that Obama is deliberately undoing “what historians have called the age of Reagan.” For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago. Over most of that...

The leaders of the Republican Party, in full flight from their disastrous and juvenile shutdown stunt, now want to restock their ranks with grown-ups. “Let’s face it: it was not a good maneuver,” Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah told The Times recently. “You’ve got to have the adults running the thing.” Mr. Hatch and other establishment senators believe that grown-ups would not threaten the country’s full faith and credit, or keep the government closed, in order to get their way. That’s true, but it’s a rather pallid definition of maturity. A mature and responsible political party would do more than...

The New York Times’ recent 6,000-word major opus, “Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll ,” is the latest installment in the paper’s self-described series on “the gun industry’s influence and the wide availability of firearms in America.” In this article, it took the authors 75 paragraphs before they acknowledged that federal statistics, in fact, show a dramatic 30-year downward trend in accidental deaths involving firearms. But that’s not the impression that the Times wanted to leave with its readers. The article focused dramatically on case vignettes involving the accidental deaths of children from firearms, which we all agree are tragic...

Unless you’ve been bamboozled by the frantic fictions of the right wing, you know that the Affordable Care Act, familiarly known as Obamacare, has begun to accomplish its first goal: enrolling millions of uninsured Americans, many of whom have been living one medical emergency away from the poorhouse. You realize those computer failures that have hampered sign-ups in the early days — to the smug delight of the critics — confirm that there is enormous popular demand. You have probably figured out that the real mission of the Republican extortionists and their big-money backers was to scuttle the law before...

Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of The Washington Post, is the Weil family professor of journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. This article is based on his report “The Obama Administration and the Press,” forthcoming Thursday from the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the Watergate era, the Nixon administration’s telephone wiretaps were the biggest concern for journalists and sources worried about government surveillance. That was one of the reasons why Bob Woodward met with FBI official Mark Felt (a.k.a. “Deep Throat”) in an underground parking garage in Arlington, and why he and Carl...

The New York Times, in one more effort to paint the Southern states as hotbeds of racism, estimates that two-thirds of poor blacks and single mothers will be denied health insurance under Obamacare because the Southern states refuse to expand their Medicaid programs. The Times adds that more than half of low-wage workers without insurance won’t get any, either. Well down in the Times piece is this nugget: more than half of states in the United States have rejected Medicaid expansion, including Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, which are hardly Southern. To make the charge of racism stick, the...

What influenced President Obama's mercurial decision on military intervention in Syria? According to Michael Calderone, it may have been the editors and op-ed writers at the New York Times. Calderone confirms that President Obama had an off-the-record meeting with Times editor Andy Rosenthal, members of the editorial board, and opinion columnists David Brooks, Gail Collins and Ross Douthat. The meeting took place on on August 29, the day before he reversed course and decided to postpone military intervention. The meeting came amid the White House’s push for military intervention in Syria, one of the topics discussed that day. The Times...