Mind you, it couldn't have happened to a nicer newspaper, though. 
Posted on 05/29/2003 5:04:52 PM PDT by No Truce With Kings
The New York Times' considerable credibility problem is now our problem, as well.
But unlike the Times, which has been engaged in a torturous exercise of naval gazing and self-flagellation, with its accustomed arrogance, since it was revealed that one of its younger reporters had committed all sorts of journalistic sins, we are doing something about it, and fast.
Until she explains to our satisfaction her own ethical transgression -- an apparently deliberate distortion of a comment by President Bush — you will not find the work of Times columnist Maureen Dowd on this page.
Since publishing a mea culpa on the Jayson Blair fiasco, the ethical woes have only continued at the Times. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg resigned this week after it was revealed he had passed as his own, work reported by interns and freelance writers. Not even his friendship with the Times' top editor could save him.
The storm clouds have now moved over Dowd, also a Pulitzer Prize winner whose work has appeared here and other newspapers across the country -- and coincidentally, like me, a graduate of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. A Times spokeswoman said the newspaper is "looking into" a column, which we did not publish, in which Dowd apparently twisted to fit her point of view Bush's assessment of the danger posed by al-Qaida terrorists just days before a terror attack in Saudi Arabia.
Dowd, it seems, may have taken the title of her column -- "Liberties" -- way too far.
Here's what Dowd wrote in the column in question:
"'Al-Qaida 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.'"
Here's what Bush actually said:
"Al-Qaida 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-Qaida operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."
New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets offered a perfect criticism of what Dowd did.
"The words in italics were replaced in Dowd's column by three little dots. Those dots say to the reader: Trust me, I'm abbreviating here, but what I'm leaving out doesn't change the meaning.
"But the dots did change the meaning," Chafets wrote. "In fact, they turned it upside down. Far from declaring al-Qaida 'spent,' Bush was warning the country against complacency. The only terrorists the president declared 'no longer a problem' were the ones already jailed or dead."
Dowd quietly "corrected" herself by including the full quote in a subsequent column that appeared in The Lufkin Daily News on Thursday.
That's not good enough, and until Dowd, and her newspaper, fully account for her infraction, her column will not appear on this page.
Critics of the Times, who are everywhere, are watching with glee as Dowd, one of the more clever columnists around, tries to write herself out of this one. Here in Lufkin, at least one reader thinks she has dragged The Lufkin Daily News into the muck with her, noting that we frequently publish her work.
"That does not say a whole lot for The Lufkin Daily News editorial page," one Sound Off caller said Thursday.
Hopefully, our decision to suspend Dowd from these pages will help restore our credibility with the caller and other readers.
Dowd violated one of the cardinal tents of the newspaper business: Don't mislead your readers, because your credibility is your only currency. Lose it, and the reader won't care how good a writer you are.
How we can best serve you, the reader, is a daily challenge here at The Lufkin Daily News, for our credibility is the only thing that those of us in the newsroom have to sell. We may not always get it right, and you may not always like what you read, but we will always do our best to make this newspaper, your newspaper, a place where the likes of Jayson Blair, Rick Bragg and Maureen Dowd will never feel at home.
Mind you, it couldn't have happened to a nicer newspaper, though.
How we can best serve you, the reader, is a daily challenge here at The Lufkin Daily News, for our credibility is the only thing that those of us in the newsroom have to sell. We may not always get it right, and you may not always like what you read, but we will always do our best to make this newspaper, your newspaper, a place where the likes of Jayson Blair, Rick Bragg and Maureen Dowd will never feel at home.
You get a gold star!
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 Schadenfreude  |
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HA! :^>
I didn't realize the hierarchy of the RCC was into camping. A cardinal tenet of mine is that auto spell-check will only get you so far and, every once in a while, you have to actually proof read.
What Dowd has done is way over the top and having blown her one real chance to retract and explain (as if there is an explanation other than sheer hateful spite against the president) she should be fired.
Quote of the Day by Grampa Dave
Way to go Grampa Dave!
Guess she's not so clever then, is she?
You are absolutely right. In fact, she made the situation worse by pretending that the full quote had the same meaning as the abbreviated quote, thereby "vindicating" her abbreviated version. What a jerk.
WASHINGTON — Once when I was covering the first President Bush, I took one of his top political strategists out to dinner.
After a couple of martinis, he blurted out that the president was having a hard time with the idea that I was the White House reporter for The New York Times.
Dumbfounded, I asked why.
"We just picture you someplace else — at The Chicago Tribune maybe," he said.
Growing up in a Victorian mansion in Greenwich, the son of a Connecticut senator and Wall Street banker, the president had conjured up a certain image of what the Times White House reporter would be like. Someone less ethnic and working-class, with a byline like Chatsworth Farnsworth III.
I remember this tripe from last January..I didn't believe it then..and I really don't believe it today..as if Bush 41 sat around the Oval Office obsessed with the background of a reporter..the utter gall and delusional thinking of Dowd, er I mean Dowdinski if she wants to pretend she is "ethnic".
Also reminds of making stuff up like sid vicious made up about clinton telling him never to send in white men only..that he wanted minorities and women opinions..that story along with dowd's lies belong in the category of: THINGS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN!
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