UPDATE: Karl at Protein Wisdom has some words on the tenets of basic journalism and the inverted pyramid, slams NYT ombudsman’s criticism of the article.
ORIGINAL POST: Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Stephen Labaton. Remember those four names. They’re the four reporters whose bylines appear at the top of the already-infamous New York Times article entitled “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk” (published on February 21).
Remember the name Bill Keller, too, because he’s the NYT editor who gave the green light for the article to be published.
Okay, so I’ve been listening to the back-and-forth among the pundits on television for the past two days, trying to ingest the implications of the thing. And this morning I decided to write about it. But naturally, I had to read the article first.
Which I did. (It was tedious affair, I must admit.)
There are four pages to the online article. Three of those pages are devoted to the task of trying to convince the NYT readership that John McCain has an ethically-checkered past. The last page, basically, outlines the flimsy accusations of two unnamed “former associates”—accusations that center around McCain’s relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman and certain letters he allegedly wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to promote the interests of Iseman’s clients.
Unnamed former associates….
No need to go into detail here. It’s been well discussed on the airwaves these past two days. All I have to add is that I totally agree with the NYT critics—on both the left and the right—who have come forward to condemn the Gray Lady for her apparent new penchant for below-the-belt, shoddy, yellow, tabloid “journalism”.
It was a lame attempt to hobble the presumptive Republican nominee, pure and simple. And having endorsed the McCain campaign less than a month ago, I think the New York Times has a lot to explain.
Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick, Stephen Labaton, and Bill Keller should be ashamed of themselves—as journalists and as human beings.
To be honest, I sincerely hope that each and every one of them is fired. Summarily.
In the meantime, I’d like to think that all five of them are currently grabbing their ankles in some sort of “Lubyanka room” in the deepest, darkest recesses of the New York Times Building basement.
And let’s hope that they’re crying inconsolably for their mommies and wondering why their sphincters are throbbing like those of a quintet of overachieving paid male escorts on gay pride day….
Yeah. The “Gray Lady” isn’t a newspaper at all. At least not anymore.
It’s simply a whore for the liberal cause.
And it got caught this time.
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