Krauthammer, Washington Times Blast NY Times

"It's only a slight stretch to state definitively that The New York Times is a corrupt institution, wrote Russ Smith, (Mugger) in the New York Press.

Smith was commenting on Charles Krauthammer's blast at the Times ("Kidnapped by the Times") for its blatantly dishonest story fallaciously citing former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as having broken with the Bush administration's attack Iraq policy.

Wrote Krauthammer: "Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled his correspondent in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines's New York Times. Hearst was for the Spanish-American War. Raines (for those who have been incommunicado for the last year) opposes war with Iraq."

Noting that Raines campaign against the Bush Iraq policies is an ongoing one, Krauthammer wrote that a "story ("Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy") that should be on Page A22, the absence of one Iraqi opposition leader (out of a dozen-odd) at a meeting in Washington, is Page A1, above the fold. Message: Disarray in the war camp. A previous above-the-fold front-page story revealed -- stop the presses! -- that the war might be financially costly."

The story lumped Kissinger with several other Republicans said to be at odds with Bush on Iraq despite the former Secretary of State's statement in the article the Times used to prove that Kissinger in the opposite camp from Bush: "The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system and the demonstrated hostility of Hussein combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action."

There is, Krauthammer wrote, "hardly a more succinct statement of the administration's case for war."

Such statements fail to prevent the Times from "making Kissinger one of its two major Republican poster boys breaking with the president (the other being former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft). Indeed, the very next day's paper, again the lead front-page story, reiterated the fiction, citing Kissinger (with Scowcroft) as part of 'a group of leading Republicans who were warning [Bush] against going to war with Iraq.' "

Against going to war when Kissinger actually lays out the case not only for "going to war, but for going to war soon," Krauthammer wrote.

"It is one thing to give your front page to a crusade against war with Iraq, Krauthammer wrote. "That's partisan journalism, and that's what Raines's Times does for a living. It's another thing to include Henry Kissinger in your crusade. That's just stupid. After all, it's checkable."

Krauthammer and Smith weren't alone in their outrage at the Times' sleazy partisan journalism. The Washington Times weighed in with this blast: "Last Friday, the New York Times ran a willfully misleading front-page story which mischaracterized Henry Kissinger's critical endorsement of President Bush's Iraq strategy.

"Combined with the intellectual slovenliness and pack instincts of much of the Washington press corps, the Times article could undermine support for the President's Iraq war aims - which, of course, was the purpose of the article," The Times wrote.

Noting that the New York Times is the pre-eminent newspaper in America (and probably the world) the Washington Times said the it has "a singular responsibility to get its stories right."

"News outlets around the world rely on the accuracy of its reporting and assume they are not being intentionally misled," the Washington paper wrote. "It is one thing to add opinion to a news story. But to intentionally mislead and confuse its readers on the newspaper's top, right, above-the-fold front-page story (presumably a report on the most important event of the day) is a dangerous and disgraceful occurrence.

"The New York Times takes pride in being considered America's newspaper of record. This willful misrepresentation on a story of historic importance will leave a deep and perhaps indelible stain on that reputation."

Russ Smith is almost right except for saying it's "only a slight stretch" to accuse the New York Times of being "a corrupt institution."

I had a similar experience with a New Jersey paper a few years ago, but the reaction on the other end was pretty remarkable. In my case it was not an employee of the newspaper, but an independent sales office. When I told him that I would never buy this particular newspaper again, specifically because of their disgraceful editorial position on Bill Clinton's impeachment, the guy sounded almost cheerful.

"You'd be amazed how many times I've heard that response," he said, "and I'll be passing them all on to the newspaper. Thank you for your time."

Oh I know my call was probably from some independent company but to me they represent the NYT.

I had some gal come to the door a while back saying she represented some electric utility consumer group and in her presentation she made the mistake of blaming President Bush for high rates or some such nonsense.

I stopped her in mid sentence and told her "Honey, you are in Bush country here (Chicagoland's DuPage County) and your going to have a tough sell as I handed back her clipboard with the canned message she wanted me to read. Her reply was, "funny, none of your neighbors felt that way". I told her my neighbors don't think for me. I wished her luck. /sarcasm

Following is the editorial on this issue from the Wall Street Journal from 08/19/02.

This Is Opposition?

We're pleased, we guess, that the New York Times thought our article on Iraq by Brent Scowcroft last Thursday was important enough to lead its front page two days in a row. We'd be more pleased, though, if instead of trumpeting our story to advance a tendentious theme, the Times kept its opinions on its editorial page.

The Times's theme is that the Scowcroft article means the Republican Party, or at least some major faction of it, is in revolt against the Bush foreign policy. This is not news; it's a wish in the eye of the remnants of the old anti-Vietnam left. The Democrats have been pretty much cowed into silence by fear of the voters; the latest Washington Post poll shows 69% of Americans favor military action to force Saddam from power. This leaves a vacuum to be filled by a few maverick Republicans with assorted motives, amplified by a media looking for August news or with an ideological agenda.

Dick Armey, in any event retiring from Congress, is fundamentally a libertarian. He was also the last Republican to sign on for the Gulf War; we wish his views on economics were deemed as newsworthy as those on foreign policy. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel knows he can grab a fast headline by opposing his President; his crack volunteering Pentagon adviser Richard Perle for the first wave was particularly shabby.

While the Times was spinning such opposition into a major revolt Friday, the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times gave page-one headlines to Condoleezza Rice's case that Saddam Hussein "is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbors and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, on all of us." Except for a brief editorial put-down, the Times left this to the following day, wrapped into a story on the President "listening" to dissent.

Not only that, but the Times front-page stories on both Friday and Saturday enlisted Henry Kissinger as another Republican opponent of the war. Here's what Mr. Kissinger actually said in his most recent op-ed, appearing in the Washington Post last Monday: "The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, the demonstrated hostility of Saddam combine to produce an imperative for pre-emptive action." This is opposition?

Which brings us to Mr. Scowcroft, who does speak for a point of view worth debating. Honest debate is nothing that advocates of regime change in Iraq, whether President Bush or us, need fear. Indeed, we solicited the Scowcroft article precisely to put on record a view that has a long and honorable tradition, particularly within the Republican Party.

This view describes itself as realism. It upholds national interest narrowly defined, striving for balance of power in the old European sense. It resists a foreign policy with a strong moral component or one designed to expand U.S. principles and democracy. So it typically favors "stability," even when it's imposed by dictators, over democratic aspiration.

This is a legitimate point of view, but its track record doesn't inspire confidence. Mr. Scowcroft (and Lawrence Eagleburger) favored keeping Yugoslavia together, even under Slobodan Milosevic. That mistake kept blood flowing for a decade until even the Europeans begged for U.S. intervention. Mr. Scowcroft also presided over the first President Bush's "Chicken Kiev" speech that argued for keeping the Soviet Union together under Mikhail Gorbachev. And of course he urged that same President Bush to stop the Gulf War early, based in part on a CIA fear that a divided Iraq without a dictator was worse than a "stable" Iraq ruled by Saddam or his Baath Party successor.

Colin Powell was complicit in all of those mistaken judgments, as was the State Department over which he now presides and which is usually the home of such Realpolitik. It dominated Bush I, but not the Reagan years, and it looks to be losing under Bush II. Vice President Dick Cheney, also involved in the Gulf War decisions, has come around to favoring Saddam's ouster, though he is too loyal to say so publicly.

And after all, the leading spokesman for Realpolitik used to be Henry Kissinger, who has since declared that realism needs to be tempered with a dose of American idealism. And on September 11 we learned that in the modern interdependent world national interest cannot be narrowly defined, that the internal character of even the most remote regime can be a life-and-death matter to Americans. Indeed, while reports of Mohamed Atta visiting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague are obviously not conclusive evidence, the probability that Saddam was complicit in September 11 is not zero.

Mr. Kissinger's actual point is that the U.S. has to think through how it goes about ousting Saddam so it can succeed in a way that creates an entirely new era in the Middle East. It's ironic that Mr. Scowcroft's narrower view of "stability" is now championed by the anti-war left, which never before had any use for Realpolitik. Its current stance shows how little faith an increasingly elitist left now has in promoting democracy and U.S. principles.

President Bush has from the beginning understood the broader moral and strategic implications of the war on terrorism and its state sponsors. He has increasingly cast his foreign policy in Reaganite terms of freedom and self-determination for Muslims -- for Afghans, Iranians and even Palestinians. This is something most Republicans, and indeed most Americans, instinctively understand and will support if Mr. Bush decides to liberate Iraq.

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