July 2, 2006

Biased Times And Post Badmouth Bush

The New York Times has done it again – laced Uncle Sam’s feet in a sack for the race between liberty and terrorism.  It revealed last week a secret monitoring program for international electronic bank transfers between Al Queda cells.

This was done legally with cooperation of the Brussels-based Worldwide Interbank for Financial Telecommunication.  

The "Gray Lady" of journalism (so called presumably for venerable age) considered this an encore for a similar, irresponsible revelation last December.  In that, the Times asserted the National Security Agency (NSA) was tapping illegally into telephone calls of Americans.  

Hogwash.  Our government was searching telephone numbers for Al Queda links – not conversations of anyone, terrorists or not.  

The leak is thought by some to be why CIA chief Porter Goss was canned with unseemly haste though he was trying to weed out dysfunctional subordinates he inherited.

Many people believe subordinates in government departments who blab should be dismissed and prosecuted – right or wrong.  Their bosses, with legally designated responsibility, are nitpicked sufficiently by Congress.

Did Times executives appreciate the difference?  For enlightenment, one could examine the origin of that newspaper’s nickname.  

The Sulzberger family, owner of the newspaper chain since its founding, met frequently at dinner to discuss the business.  Young daughter Judy was bored and once wrote that she "was reminded of Gray’s lady."

The latter was a character in a poem by Mary Wortley (1760): "Facing rape, the lady cries, ‘I thought this fellow was a fool, but there’s some sense in this,’ and is careful not to bawl until he gets safely away."

Apparently Judy Sulzberger thought the Times a bit hypocritical about its famous slogan: "All the news that’s fit to print."

Problem is that the New York Times, Washington Post and other mega-chain newspapers are too full of themselves.  They feel no responsibility to anyone but their newsroom comrades.  

In the recent Times transgressions, the Bush administration called publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and editor Bill Keller, asking that the monitoring programs – legal in every respect – not be published.  

Keller’s response: "We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data....  is a matter of public interest."

Questions: who elected Sulzberger, and other media barons, to determine public interest?  Where does Congress fit in?

Article 1 of the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and the press.  However, as the Supreme Court has ruled many times, this does not give anyone the right to falsely shout "fire" in a crowded auditorium.

Congress, if somewhat reluctantly by die-hard liberals, has conceded that the Times "scoops" were wrong and irresponsible.

Liberal media outlets are often irresponsible when reporting President Bush.  He spoke last Wednesday at a fund-raiser in Clayton, Mo.  He defended his post 9/11 efforts to ward off terrorist attacks on our homeland.

Washington Post reporter Peter Baker let his bias surface when he wrote about this event.  Note the sly phrasing tacked in:  

"Bush offered a robust defense of his decision to invade Iraq even though, ultimately, no weapons of mass destruction were found."

Of course, everyone, including Congress and the United Nations originally believed otherwise.  Recent discovery of thousands of poison gas bombs in Iraq indicates Saddam did have WMD.  Bush did not mention WMD in his speech, so why did Baker insert his bias into a news story?  

One is reminded of another famous Times article written about Soviet Union’s Stalin who deliberately starved to death eight million Ukrainian farmers resisting communism.  

Stalin’s Times-toady, Walter Duranty, wrote: " Stalin is "the greatest living statesman" and "communism is a heroic chapter in the life of humanity.  There is no famine in the Ukraine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be."

Lenin is famously reported to have said – upon being informed that thousands of Americans were demonstrating in support of the Russian revolution - "Ah, yes.  My useful idiots."

For the New York Times idiocy regarding Stalin, other useful idiots at Columbia University – which award Pulitzer Prizes – recognized Duranty for "outstanding reporting."

With idiots like these, who needs enemies?  

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers