Posted on 05/28/2003 11:04:39 AM PDT by Paul Atreides
Leading New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has been swept up in the Timesgate scandal that began earlier this month when the paper fired reporter Jayson Blair for fabricating stories.
Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis admitted Tuesday that a recent column by Dowd criticizing President Bush is being "looked into" after questions were raised about whether the celebrated columnist had deliberately misreported a Bush quote.
"If Dowd intentionally misrepresented the President's words, she is guilty of a journalistic offense much worse than [reporter Rick] Bragg's intern problem, or even Blair's fantasies," wrote New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets, to whom Mathis revealed news of the Dowd probe.
Chafets noted that if Dowd had indeed deliberately distorted the president's words, it could impact the Times' credibility even more than the Blair fiasco.
"Blair is a kid, after all, who made things up for fun and profit," he wrote in his Wednesday column. "Dowd is a major figure at The Times, a role model. A syndicated role model."
The controversy stems from Dowd's selective editing of a Bush quote in her column last week, "Osama's Offspring."
Here's what Bush actually said:
"Al-Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."
But while Bush was clearly referring to the "top al-Qaeda operatives" who were "either jailed or dead" when he said they were no longer "a problem anymore," Dowd's truncated version made it sound as if Bush was boasting that he'd wiped out al-Qaeda entirely.
Here's how the Times' Pulitzer Prize winner covered the president's remarks:
"'Al Qaeda is on the run,' President Bush said last week. 'That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated ... they're not a problem anymore.'"
In a move that was largely viewed as an attempt to keep the Timesgate scandal from metastasizing, last week the paper waved off probers from the office of the U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District, who wanted to review Jayson Blair's work for possible wire fraud charges.
Dowd, Krugman and Moore Make Inflammatory Accusations
And there is this from a 2001 article by Ben Fritz (scroll to bottom) --
Backhandedly calling businesses that lay people off unpatriotic is unfair. Dowd simply brushes over the fact that the United States is almost certainly in a recession, and businesses that don't cut back on costs face consequences ranging from severe losses to the prospect of bankruptcy. Patriotism cannot overrule the basic rules of a capitalist economy--and Dowd should be ashamed of accusing businesses that follow them of dismissing their duty to the country.
They all do it! That's in the past! I don't remember!
For using a tried and true pinko-liberal-socialist-progressive quoting out of context tool?
I don't think so.
Every journalism schools sees it as a perfectly honest and valid tool!
"'Al Qaeda is on the run,' President Bush said last week. 'That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated ... they're not a problem anymore.'"
An ellipsis signifies that something has been left out, that the quote is not in its entirety. But how many people who read the Times actually know this, however.
Had she left out the ellipsis, you could definitely call it a misquote.
On another level however, it is disingenous, sleazy and designed to mislead.
I've been thinking there should be a term for using the ... to change the meaning of what someone says when writing an article. How about a "Dowdy"? I think it could become as popular as a "Jayson" for making things up out of whole cloth, but I doubt it will ever reach "Clymer" status.
And "it's all about sex" -- since every one of these people got here in the first place through sexual reproduction, right? It's undeniable, that if it weren't for that, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
Unable to speak on his own behalf, he was dowdlerized in the press.
Yes, she can...
but ONLY to a liberal black woman.
Actually, its more than that. When an ellipsis is used, words can be omitted only if they are not necessary to understanding the intent of the comment or passage. In this case, Bush's use of the word 'either', in two cases, was essential to understanding his remark. But of course, the Times is only concered with advancing its political agenda so their editorial reviews don't provide much of an oversight mechanism to stop such disengenuous and misleading practices by their cadre of liberal "journalists".
Shoe on the other foot and whatnot -
Works for me
Can't say that I do. But Imus just goes with his gut. In fact, I thought I heard him blasting her this morning.
I doubt Howell interferes with Dowd's columns; she does that stuff without being asked. It's the real reporters who have their stories mangled by editors.
Bad as it is, what Dowd did to Bush is NOTHING compared to what Michael Moore did to Charlton Heston.
Moore took recorded parts of two separate speeches by Heston -- given a year apart -- and constructed them out-of-sequence into an easily bashable series of sentences in a context Heston never intended.
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