June 05, 2007
Agenda...
The NY Post has a good editorial (thanks for the tip, Frank), Gray Lady, Grim Agenda, excoriating the NYT for trying its best to downplay the Queens terror plot...
...Let's be clear here: The "paper of record" isn't guilty of merely poor news judgment. It's got an agenda.
Numerous newspapers understood the gravity of a plot against New York by terrorist upstarts from a seemingly unlikely part of the world - the Caribbean, just a few hours from U.S. shores. The Washington Post, for example, put the story on its front page Sunday.
Nor is the Times' coverage of this story a quirk: The paper has downplayed several other terror cases because the plotters were "merely" in the "talking" stage. Last month, after the Fort Dix Six case came to light, the paper ran a piece called "Informer's Role Draws Praise and Questions" - casting doubt on "the legitimacy of the investigations" because of the role of an FBI informer.
None of that should matter.
The point is, an unknown number of ruthless actors around the world - some in our backyard - continue to emerge and threaten the nation. No doubt the 9/11 plot also once seemed like something no one could pull off....
The NYT does have an agenda, and is savaging the truth to promote it. And this is a particularly sick thing because most local papers and TV stations take their lead from the Times.
The agenda, in its larger sense, is to return to the days when the NYT was the "flagship" of the liberal establishment. And to return to the glory-days of their youth, when they helped the Communists conquer South Vietnam. (They probably imagine that American defeat in Iraq would be similar, with the mass-murders etc. conveniently hidden behind an "iron curtain," so that the ice-hearted bastards of the Left don't need to take any responsibility. Me, I think the world has grown too small for that.)
They want all the nascent terror plots hidden, because they don't want us "little people" to be aroused. We have no interest in NYT editors being part of a "ruling class."
Posted by John Weidner at June 5, 2007 04:52 PMYears ago I stopped reading the Times because it stopped reporting the news. Instead it reported the activist Agenda, with only those stories and facts that were convenient to the Agenda. I had to go elsewhere to find missing and concealed information, which was usually more significant than whatever was reported.
Throughout the 80's, the Times grievously misreported every major continuing issue, from homelessness to AIDS to the booming US economy to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But something else happened. Inevitably, over time, they only hired reporters and editors who didn't question the Agenda, whose news judgment didn't inconvenience the cozy but false mythology they had created.
With the rest of the Media, they shared from a shallow talent pool that was unalterably convinced that Jimmy Carter was a better president than Ronald Reagan, that socialism was a morally superior system, that tax cuts hurt the economy, that great Art is always obnoxious, and on and on.
So, like Academia, the Media restricted its employment choices to the immature, the foolish, the easily indoctrinated, and utter assholes.
Throughout the 80's, the Times grievously misreported every major continuing issue, from homelessness to AIDS to the booming US economy to the collapse of the Soviet Union. - Yes, exactly right.
Does anyone remember the guy (a bona fide liberal - I think he was from Newsweek but it may have been Time) who said, during the '04 campaign, that the left's control of the media probably translated into fifteen percentage points in the vote totals? He took a lot of heat (from the media) and he "backed-off" and said, "Well, maybe five percentage points".
I distinctly remember that, but I can't remember who it was that said it. Anyway, I think his first estimate was much closer.
Posted by: Mike Plaiss at June 6, 2007 07:49 AMI remember that. Of course it means that they have to dread a fair fight...
Posted by: John Weidner at June 6, 2007 02:56 PMEvan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek...
Posted by: Ethan Hahn at June 6, 2007 04:25 PMThank you Ethan. That has to go into the files for future reference.
I think Thomas was exactly right and I have always thought this largely explains the Democrat's desperation - in a fair fight, they lose everything. And they know it!
Posted by: Mike Plaiss at June 7, 2007 06:52 AM
