Setting the Record Straight - [FR v. The NY Times, Or How NOT To Do Activism]

New York Times ^ | March 14, 2004 | Daniel Okrent

[Hon]

Now I'm going to pick on the worst habits of certain anti-Times critics lurking on the Web. Last Sunday, an item appeared on FreeRepublic.com under the headline "FReeper Call to Action! Help make N.Y. Times correct the phony setup outrage story of Bush ads." Posted by "Doug from Upland," it exhorted readers of the self-described "Premier Conservative News Forum" to call Washington correspondent Richard W. Stevenson and demand that he "correct the record." Stevenson's apparent offense was a March 5 story he and Jim Rutenberg had written about negative reactions to Republican ads invoking the events of 9/11. Stevenson's telephone number was reproduced in the posting in large black letters.

Soon Stevenson's phone was ringing like an alarm clock, his voice mail filling up, he told me via e-mail, with "messages that impugned my professionalism and patriotism." Only one person, he said, bothered to leave a name and a phone number.

Had they all done so, Stevenson might have called them back and told them neither he nor Rutenberg had written what Doug from Upland had attributed to them. An Australian newspaper had run a story that included details from several different news services but left the Times writers' bylines in place. The material that provoked the posting and the calls had never appeared in The Times; informed that this was the case, Doug replaced his earlier exhortation with an apology to Stevenson.

I've been through several escapades like this one, launched from various ideological precincts scattered around the Web. They all conclude with the same lesson: It's all right to knock The Times. It's even your privilege to hate it. But it's always useful to read it first.

The public editor serves as the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. The public editor's column appears at least twice monthly in this section.

[Betaille]

This is all such a load of crap. You made a mistake, it was an honest one. If the New York Times wants to see reckless dishonesty, how about the fact that they buried their own poll... just because it showed bush winning!
We should all be more careful in the future since such mistakes dilute our legitimate argument that the NYtimes is horribly biased and sometimes outright dishonest. However, this guy is very much a part of the media bias problem and nobody here needs to apologize to him.

[mrustow]

This is not good.

I beg to differ. This is VERY good. You know how many letters to the editor I've sent to the Times, pointing out their bias and misrepresentations, just over the past year? How many do you think they published?

There are only two ways the Times will deal with FR: by ignoring us, or by seeking to discredit us. When the Times ignores a critic, it is because its editors feel they can get away with it. If they seek to discredit it, it is because they are resigned that that critic is now part of the political landscape, and will now seek to positively ruin him. But with rare exceptions, the only way you ruin a political critic, is if you can kill him off with silence. Now that the Times has attacked us, and spelled our name correctly, its readers can check out FR, and get our side of the story.