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Contributors
Chris Field- Contributor
Chris
Field is Editor of Human
Events Online [go
to Field index]
TWO
CENTS
 Not
All "The News That's Fit To Print"
If They're Not Biased, How Did the Times Miss This?...
[Chris Field] 7/26/04
For years,
conservatives have been decrying the liberal bias of the "mainstream" media,
with the New York Times often cited has the most offensive
perpetrator. Of course,
denials of such bias fly out of the Times' newsroom, but are
their cries anything more than complete and utter nonsense?
No.
What the Times doesn't understand about their reputation as
a liberal rag is that reputations are, quite often, earned --
whether they are positive or negative. And in their case, the
Times has not only earned the proper reputation but also is actively
living up to it.
This time,
the so-called "Newspaper of Record" buried
what was arguably the biggest story last Tuesday.
If you paid attention
to the news at all Tuesday morning, you heard or read that
Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national
security advisor and an "informal advisor" for John
Kerry, is the subject of a federal criminal investigation for
removing highly classified documents from the National Archives.
But if your only source
of news was from reading the pages of the New York Times, you
could very easily have missed this (not-overly-surprising)
story that a Clinton official did something seemingly underhanded.
In this case it was the taking of documents which the AP said "were
highly classified and included critical assessments about the
Clinton administration's handling of the millennium terror threats
as well as identification of America's terror vulnerabilities
at airports and seaports."
The AP also reported
that "some drafts of a sensitive after-action
report on the Clinton administration's handling of al Qaeda terror
threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still
missing."
What was Berger's
response to questions about documents that are still missing?
Said the former Clinton advisor: "When
I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing,
I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents
that I apparently had accidentally discarded."
So, how did the New
York Times treat this major story? They buried a small, six-paragraph,
220-word story in a box at the
bottom of Page A16 -- without a picture -- with the title "Clinton
Aide Took Classified Material." Notice the Times didn't
mention Berger's name or position in the title; instead, they
simply called him an "aide" -- as though he worked
for the Clinton White House as a secretary or a staff researcher.
The Times article goes on to omit the fact that Berger "accidentally
discarded" some highly classified documents -- documents
critical of the Clinton Administration.
Exactly what news
is considered "fit to print" by
New York Times? CRO
copyright
2004 Human Events
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