Frequently, a careful reader of foreign policy coverage in the New York Times finds oneself confronted by a headline or lead paragraph which seems to be clearly contradicted by the article that follows. And, in such cases, it often appears that the contradicted claim bears a remarkable resemblance to the State Department line. Such examples would seem to be clear evidence of an editorial bias in favor of current U.S. government policies.
Case in point: an article below the byline of Alissa Rubin, "Oil Law Stalls in Iraq as Bomb Aims at Sheiks," in Monday's New York Times.
The lead paragraph cites the delay as a blow to "efforts to achieve national reconciliation." But as the article reports, the draft oil law in question is not about revenue-sharing, as many seem to believe, but about the "system for managing and developing Iraq's oil resources," including the very controversial question of the role of multinational oil companies.
Indeed, the sixth paragraph of the article reports,
"The oil law, which would set up a system for managing and developing Iraq's oil resources and would have a companion revenue-sharing law that would apportion oil income among the various groups, had been considered the most likely to be passed before the September report to Congress. But by the time the Iraqis return to Parliament in September, it is highly unlikely that they could meet the midmonth deadline in the United States."
So - according to the article - the law that is being delayed is not the "companion revenue-sharing law" but a law which would "set up a system for managing and developing Iraq's oil resources."
It's far from obvious why Iraqis opposed to provisions of this law for managing Iraq's oil resources should be portrayed as being against national reconciliation, as is implied by the lead paragraph. Indeed, as many Iraqis have argued, it may well be the case that the rushed passage under foreign pressure of a law that could dramatically expand the role of foreign corporations in Iraq's oil sector could greatly exacerbate sectarian tensions.
My own headline above - suggesting that the lead paragraph of this article was written by an NYT editor and not by Alissa Rubin - is an inference, which is why I terminated it with a question mark. Having read many articles under Alissa Rubin's byline about Iraq, I think she would not have written a lead paragraph that was contradicted by her own reporting.
My inference about this is informed by a story that the actor and activist Ed Asner told when he was doing public speaking about U.S. policy in El Salvador in the 1980s. He would explain to reporters that the opposition FMLN-FDR was a coalition of the center-left. It included marxists, but it also included social democrats. Invariably, the newspaper article that followed referred to the "Marxist-Leninist FMLN." When he followed up with a reporter, he was told: "I didn't write that - the editor put that in."
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