Did the New York Times help to throw the 2004 Election to Bush?
We now know of at least two stories that were killed or held up before or around the election. Both would have been damaging to Bush. And Bush did only win by about a 100,000 votes in Ohio....maybe.
First there was the story about the box strapped to Bush's back during the debates. If I remember the stories from a year ago, the NYT was about ready to run a story where they did reporting both with pictures of the box and experts saying what they thought it was. Then at the last minute the story was killed.
If this really was a receiver, then the fact that Bush couldn't get through a debate without coaching should have been a serious part of the American people's decision about whether he should be President.
Now, we know that the NYT has held up on the story about domestic spying 'for a year'. Well, when exactly did they get this story. Was it before Nov,2004?
Can you picture the impact on the election if the current debate we are having about whether Bush has deliberately broken the law was occuring during the election campaign? Do you think that maybe that would have made some people change their minds? And either switched their votes, or just stayed home? And remember, despite the Bush claims of a mandate and political capital, that was really a very close election.
There are other very questionable decisions being made at the NYT. Decisions that usually seem to favor the neocon faction. Judy Miller's stories leading up the Iraq war are an obvious set of very questionable decisions. Contrary to what she says, there were some very knowledgeable experts calling BS on what she was writing. Would you think that one of the most prestigious papers in the country might have checked with some of those experts before printing the fantasies of Iraqi defectors?
And just recently, before the Dec 15 Iraqi elections, the NYT ran a story that appears to be a pure disinformation attempt from the neocons and the Allawi faction in Iraq. The story was one about a tanker full of forged ballots being seized coming over the border from Iran.
Later reports, who did some fact checking by doing the obvious step of talking to Iraqi border official in the area have revealed this story to be a complete fabrication. But the NYT ran it just before the Iraqi election.
Is the NYT an inpartial publication? Its starting to develop an interesting track record of being either a prime neocon propaganda vehicle, or of holding up truthful stories that would be harmful to the neocon faction.
I don't subscribe to the NYT. But if I was a Democrat who did subscribe to the NYT, I'd be thinking of canceling that subscribtion. I wonder how much of their subscriber base is from Democrats? The paper is already on rather shaky financial ground. If large groups of Democrats started canceling their subscriptions, particularly over the issue of the domestic spying story being withheld from the American people, then that would certainly get their attention.