Posted on 10/26/2004 7:58:26 AM PDT by crushelits
Yeah, I said it in the title. The New York Times’ Iraq explosives story was an October surprise. It was to the Presidential election, what the L.A. Times’ groping story was to the California Recall election. I said last week that Bush’s campaign should be preparing the public for the dirty tricks to come, like Arnold’s people did in California. If they had done that, they could be pointing at the big, gooey yellow yolk of the egg on the N.Y. Times’ face right now. They can still do that, but it would have received much more attention if it had been publicly predicted.
Here are some quick off the cuff points that occur to me can be made from the example of the New York Times’ Iraq explosives story:
1 - somebody rushed to report this story without fully investigating it and without checking with allies in the media to verify it
2 - somebody misled the public about the location of weapons in Iraq
3 - somebody has not admitted they were wrong about the weapons in Iraq
4 - somebody has not apologized for the mess they made of this story
UPDATE: At 2:30 a.m., MSNBC was still running the NYT story as fact with video of the related Kerry attack on the President, and with no mention of the NBC report from 2003 refuting the story. This is MSNBC and they are not reporting their own information that, at the very least, calls into question the story they continue to run? Just when you think that Chris Matthews’ attack on Michelle Malkin, or Lawrence O’Donnell’s “lying creepy liar” speech or almost any episode of Keith Gooberman’s Countdown is the lowest MSNBC can go, they lower the bar. (Even though O’Donnell’s meltdown took place on Scarborough Country, it is still one of the few shows on MSNBC that is actually consistently good.)
I am REALLY mad at FOX for not exposing this. I've stopped watching them for the last few weeks. I may not go back.
They talked about it on Fox and Friends and pointed out that the NYT has yet to retract it story. E.D. looked disgusted.
Of course, since you are not watching them, you do not know that they ARE exposing it.
OTOH, how did you miss the posts here on FR about FOX reporting?
They talked about it this morning...
FOX has been on the story all morning.
I did not get the feeling that this was the lead in most media outlets?
I have not been watching much TV at all, just because of my schedule. But I hear Fox is becoming less reliable. I wonder what gives?
On the bright side, if this story is the best the NYT can come up with, then we must be in good shape. But I assume they are holding even worse (manufactured) stuff for Thursday, Friday or the weekend - enough time for it to reach people, but not enough time for a rebuttal. Time will tell.
DUD, backfiring on kerry.
WSJ is becoming more and more liberal the last several months, most of the first section stories are left. Only the editorials are right.
I may stop buying the WSJ and e-mail them. They give very few insights on emerging stocks or companies anymore.
Fox is going that route also, probably to get a wider audience for advertising rates. I can't stand O'Reilly's voice anymore.
The Yolk is on the New York Times and MSNBC.
I agree 1000 percent.
As a news reporter myself, the Fox News lead on this story should be something like...
"The 380 tons of explosives the NYTimes on MOnday claimed are missing were not even there when US troops arrived, administration officials confirmed today.
In fact, according to NBC reporters embedded with US troops in early 2003, the weapons facility in question HAD NO EXPLOSIVES when US soldiers arrived there during the early days of the Iraqi liberation."
Instead, Fox News simply parrots the partisan mainstream media without giving all the facts ALONG WITH THE CORRECTIONS.
Frustrating aint the word for how I feel about Fox News.
Betrayed is more like it.
In the tradition of John Kerry, that great spiritual mind of the 21st century, I give you a Bible verse that will help to leesen your disappointment when the MSM does not own up to their errors:
Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. [James 3:11-12]
They won't repent, dear friend, because they CAN'T! It is alien to their nature.
Yours truly,
A_R
Fox is reporting on it, Rush will be all over it today, and so will Sean. Doofus will get his appropriate come-uppins.
Ooops, I was assuming their webpage mirrored their network. The webpage is still lacking, as far as I can tell.
The real attack comes at the end of week and is directed at Bush's character, a follow-up to the Kitty Kelly and Dan Rather types of attack. All they need is to keep a tiny fraction of lukewarm Bush voters home on election day. It came within a few hundred votes of working for Gore. The polls are roughly parallel to where they were four years ago at this time. Without a clear 6 or 7 point lead at this time, the Bush campaign is in serious trouble. The upcoming dirty tricks, coupled with the usual voter fraud, make a 2 or 3 point Republican lead in the polls meaningless.
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