*On Thursday, March 25, The New York Times published on its front page a picture sympathetic to Israel’s cause, namely a Palestinian teen with an exposed bomb belt. However, in an insidious attempt to undermine the media advantage that this picture represented for Israel, the Times, in its coverage of the story on page A12, stated as follows: “In the propaganda battle that is always a component of the Middle East conflict, Israel is swift to highlight the Palestinian use of youths barely in their teens. In this case much of the drama was recorded by an Associated Press Television News cameraman, a Palestinian, who was among those waiting to cross the checkpoint.”
“First, it is very clear that neither the coincidental appearance of the cameraman (a Palestinian!) nor the scene itself was orchestrated or pre-planned by Israel. Moreover, it is just unbelievable that, in all of the countless instances of Mideast photos that the Times has published over the years — of which a great number portrayed the Palestinians as ‘victims’ or otherwise in a sympathetic light — I cannot recall the paper ever taking the trouble to point out that the pictures may have been generated as part of a ‘propaganda battle.’ It seems that only when a picture favors Israel does the Times feel the need to do so.”
Speaking of the Times, a couple of recent front-page headlines illustrate the extent to which the paper forces an anti-Bush spin on stories that in and of themselves are more or less even-handed.
Example 1: The Times’s main headline on Wednesday, March 24 proclaimed: “Bush and Clinton Aides Grilled by Panel.” From the way the headline was worded, it might have seemed to the casual reader or newsstand browser that President Bush and some Clinton administration officials were aggressively interrogated the day before by the 9/11 commission. President Bush, of course did not appear at all, so a more precise — and factually accurate — way to write that headline would have been “Aides to Bush and Clinton Grilled by Panel.”
Example 2: On Tuesday, March 30, the Times headlined its story on the controversy over whether National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice would go before the commission in this manner: “9/11 Panel Wants Rice Under Oath In Any Testimony.” Fair enough. Then there was this: ” “A Compromise Is Sought.” So far, so good. But then came this little gem of obfuscation: “Need “Penalty of Perjury,” Chairman Says, Citing Conflict in Accounts.”
Reading the third line, doesn’t it seem that the chairman, Thomas Kean, felt that Rice needed to testify under penalty of perjury because in her public statements to date she’d given differing stories. The article makes it clear that Kean was referring to “discrepancies between her statements and those made in sworn testimony by President Bush’s former counterterrorism chief.” But the lines above the article — which often linger longer in readers’ minds than actual articles — make no reference to the former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke.
Some readers may see such criticism of the Times as nitpicking on the part of the Monitor, but the two inaccurate headlines proffered above hardly represent isolated incidents.
In his book Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can Longer Be Trusted, Bob Kohn fills page after page with examples of how the Times consistently misrepresents reality in headlines, photo captions, news accounts — and even by selective representation of its own polls.
The latter phenomenon was addressed in detail by political consultant-turned-pundit Dick Morris in his book Off With Their Heads. It’s bad enough when a newspaper — particularly one still living off past glories in trying to maintain its veneer as the Newspaper of Record — can no longer be trusted to present a reasonably factual overview of the news. But what is there to say when reporters routinely subject their prose to pretzel-like contortions in order to downplay their paper’s own positive polling results about George Bush and Republicans — while putting the brightest possible sheen on John Kerry’s numbers?