That’s one thing, that you can say about the New York Times; you only have to hit the gray lady upside the head with a 2*4, five or six hundred times over the period of a couple of weeks to get her attention… and that’s being kind. But you’ll never get her to really admit her own biases.
The public editor, Clark Hoyt, now has a column up suggesting that the ad running, as such, was against the written policy of the New York Times. In other words, he’s saying that the paper broke its own standards to play political favorites. See the kid of fire we’ve got to hold your feet to to get you to admit what everyone else already knew?
Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?
The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.
The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.
By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”
Ignoring, of course, that what he calls the cottage industry, is the American people, and that the Times has in fact established that reputation of being a bastion of the liberal media all by its lonesome…. Hoyt goes on to whitewash the whole affair, blaming lower echelon, again.
Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, “We made a mistake.” She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, “That was contrary to our policies.”
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times and chairman of its parent company, declined to name the salesperson or to say whether disciplinary action would be taken.
The kind of denials that we’re seeing here, strikes me as being of the kind with that of Dan rather and CBS, as regards the falsified documents that CBS tried to steal the election for the Democrats with. It strikes me is the same kind of dissembling that occurs when officials from Columbia university were pressed on the question of why they allow the Iranian president to come on their stage and spew his particular brand of hatred, and yet they won’t allow ROTC on campus. And so on.
Sorry, New York Times, your excuses have been noted and are herewith summarily dismissed. They don’t wash with the facts, including that of your long history of left-leaning. Funny how you don’t seem to remember an incident which was reported in your own paper. Was it really so long ago?
Your constantly quoted edict of how news organizations shouldn’t choose sides, is something else where you’ve broken policy. Repeatedly. You’ve chosen sides. America was not the side you chose to be on. As such, don’t expect Americans to be sympathetic to your plight.
Addendum: (Bit)
He who doesn’t need the links goes for the throat:
“This also leaves some of those who defended the Times’ discounted rate by claiming that the critics didn’t understand the ad business in an awkward position.” But of course, we’re all part of that “cottage industry that loves to bash The Times.”
Heh.
Tags: WHAT biased press?
