NY Times mea culpa

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday May 25, 2004 · 8:34 PM PDT

2004/05/25 · 20:34

NY Times says oops.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.

They wish they had been more aggressive. So probably did 913 allied troops and thousand of Iraqis killed in the war. Not to mention the thousands more wounded in the war.

I spoke at a media conference a few months ago, where scandalized Big Media execs and journalism professors expressed outrage that people would read the blogs. "How --" they asked, "Can readers trust what they read in the blogs?" Didn't the public know they needed media execs to filter out the news from the chaffe?

I launched into one of my tirades --

"How can you claim to be the rightful gatekeepers of news when you have failed the American public so fully? You feed them Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Martha Stewart, and every single WMD lie the administration has fed you, with nary an attempt to learn the truth. And we are supposed to trust you? You've had your chance. You failed."

Idiots. The editors, Judith Miller, and every other journalist who helped enable the administration's lies have blood on their hands.

I'm sure the chickenhawk warblogging cabal (or, as TBogg calls them, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders) will be more than happy to share some of that blood on their hands. And if there's ever a shortage, there's barrels of it in the offices of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Powell, etc.

NY Times mea culpa

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