Kossacks-- The folks at the New York Times who have decided to go after CT AG Dick Blumenthal with a very thin attack that threatens his candidacy, his career, and an important Senate seat are not backing down. Yet. We need to hit them hard on this. We need to bury their public editor (public@nytimes.com) in email demanding corrections to their story, or an admission that they swallowed a McMahon campaign narrative. I've emailed just now expressing my frustration, using links to illustrate my argument. My email is below. I encourage you to do the same.
Email NYT public editor Clark Hoyt now at public@nytimes.com
Please, share thoughts/language/responses in the comments.
Mr. Hoyt,
After reading this article which makes clear that AG Blumenthal correctly identified the nature of his Vietnam-era military service in the same speech as the one the old grey lady has highlighted;
after reading this post which suggests very strongly that your reporter was hand-fed this story by the McMahon campaign;
after reading Greg Sargent's post about your paper's decision to double down on the allegation of a "long and well established pattern of misleading his constituents" despite the failure of your story to demonstrate any "pattern" (but rather 2 concrete instances and a bunch of innuendo);
and after reading this thorough rundown of the holes in the story you front-paged despite the obvious flaws, I have questions for you.
(1) When are you going to admit publicly that your story was not thoroughly reported and was designed as a hit-piece?
(2) When and how will you clarify the provenance of the edited Norwalk clip you ran, and the cherry-picked single "we" quote you use to assert a "pattern" of willful deceit?
(3) Why does the New York Times want to see a Republican win Chris Dodd's seat?
Finally, I want to share with you a quote from an NPR article by David Folkenflik: "There are not many serious treatments of Blumenthal's early life by the press. But in interviews for those that were written — with, for example, The Washington Post and The Hartford Courant — Blumenthal appears to have invariably spoken precisely and accurately about the nature of his military service."
Thank you for your response,
etc [I signed off with my name, and as "A Connecticut voter" and "A Times reader"