The New York Times executive editor writes to me

The American Thinker ^ | 1/20/06 | Thomas Lifson

[Kitten Festival]

The situation is worse at the New York Times than I thought.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, sent me an email the other day. At least I think it is an email to me from the Bill Keller who runs Grey Lady’s editorial staff.

Actually, it is quite plausible that Mr. Keller might be writing me. My article on the fake photo published on the New York Times website has spread far and wide in the blogosphere, and it picked up talk radio coverage from some of the big national shows. It even broke through just a bit to cable news talk.

[van_erwin]

Looks like they had a photo with wrong info in the caption, and they fixed it. That's an awful lot of sound and fury on your blog over not much at all.

[george wythe]

The only problem is that the long cylindrical item with a conical tip pictured with the boy and the man is not a missile at all. It is an old artillery shell. Not something that would have been fired from a Predator. Indeed, something that must have been found elsewhere and posed with the ruins and the little boy as a means at pulling of the heartstrings of the gullible readers of the New York Times.

What a crude hoax.

Residents displayed what they said was damage from U.S. airstrikes.

Correction appended Jan. 17, 2006: A caption Saturday on NYTimes.com with a photograph of damage from a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan misidentified an item in the photograph. Agence France-Presse, the agency that provided the photograph, later changed the caption to report that the item appears to be an unexploded artillery shell, not a piece of a missile from Friday's attack.

[muawiyah]

It's not a casual error ~ the editor's at the NYT had to KNOW that it was a propaganda picture. They have all the resources at hand to identify each and every item in the photo, so there's no excuse for them.

NYT is of a piece with AlQaida.

[coloradan]

You're absolutely right. And 60 Minutes merely did a show on some incompletely vetted National Guard documents; it's not like they were intentionally trying to take down a presidency with fraud or anything. What's the big deal? We can still trust the New York Times on everything else they publish - after all, you know they make errors from time to time in photo captions that support the war effort and show the military in a good light, right?

[Alberta's Child]

No, it was more than just a matter of correcting information in the photo caption. The context of the photo made it clear that the photo was staged for propaganda purposes -- either by the newspaper or by those who were photographed.

[Juan Medén]

This guy's good! The NYT is several hundred pages of overinflated egos penning underinformed opinions based on uninformed sources. . . . Hmmm, that's rather poetic, if I must say so myself.

[patton]

Can you tell if that round has been fused? I cannot tell if the fuse is in it, or if it is just the rock behind it.

Also, that looks like an 8-inch to me - not US.

[frankjr]

I thought that's why newspaper's had editors. To edit items for errors before they make it into the news. Mistakes happen, but they often seem to have a bias one way. It's not that the NYT new the caption was false, it's that they wanted it to be true. So why bother editing.

[JohnLongIsland]

lately, you have to check the slimes obituary columns at
deadoralive.com to see if they are accurate, along with the page numbers to see if they are sequential. it has reached the point that half the nation knows that this liberal rag has zero credibility.

[Buck W.]

"The context of the photo made it clear that the photo was staged for propaganda purposes -- "

Absolutely. You can tell by the smart sweater that the kid is wearing.

[frankjr]

I need an editor as well...'knew' not 'new' and the last sentence should end with a question mark.

[plain talk]

I agree with you. Much ado about nothing as far as the error is concerned. The greater issue is printing the photo in the first place since it is a propaganda picture - not that there was an error.

[skinkinthegrass]

Oh! MY! ...Tom Lofton, gets it right, as usual the NYT doesn't @ least not for 40 years.

[Crawdad]

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[ASA Vet]

It's a dud 152mm Soviet artillery round. Also notice "Afgan" in the photos URL.

[webheart]

Looks like they had a photo with wrong info in the caption, and they fixed it. That's an awful lot of sound and fury on your blog over not much at all.

Sure, it was just a simple mistake. Lets put this behind us and move forward. There's no liberal agenda here. The NYT doesn't intend to mislead, it was just a simple innocent mistake, that's all. It was just such a tiny little oversight. They didn't mean to convey that the US military attacks innocent people by picturing some youngsters with some poor destitute senior citizens. They probably actually were fooled by Karl Rove, and duped into publishing the photo, as part of a plot to discredit the NYT. The NYT is an institution that values truth and honesty above all else. They exude integrity from every pore of their being. They are nothing if not objective.

[OldFriend]

LOL......once got an email from the NYSlimes letters editor.

The man professed offense that I would believe that the NYSlimes DELIBERATELY published false information about republicans.

[OldFriend]

Would seem that you work for the NYSlimes.....pity!

[johnny7]

Their sistah-paper... the Boston Globe, used porn-site pics instead of REAL Abu Ghraib pics. Hey... whad'ya expect from the 'Brokeback Globe'?