Judith Miller Redux: New York Times Lies Again-- Shouldn't They Lose Their License To Practice Journalism This Time?

-by Noah

A bit of background first: One of the sickest canards traditionally offered up by the wingnut population has always been that the New York Times is a card-carrying pillar of the imagined “Liberal Media.” Sure, the Times editorial page usually endorses Democrats, but, as we know, most Democrats are hardly what a reasonable person who thinks beyond media-fed buzz phrases would call liberal. Back when Bill Clinton won the White House, I realized that the Democrats had won the election by cloaking a Republican in Democratic slogans. What did he do once in office? He gave us right wing media consolidation in the form of corporations like Clear Channel, an operation that amounts to the wingnut think tank that controls thousands of broadcast outlets across the entire country, shaping opinion along the way. Clinton did that by picking up a pen and signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He even smiled for the cameras while he did it. Let’s not forget NAFTA either. That worked great, for his corporate buddies, but certainly not what Washington loves to call “ordinary Americans.”
 
More recently, the Times endorsed Barack Obama, a centrist at best, who can only be called liberal when compared to an angry old coot named John McCain and an utter dingbat nutball attention-whore named Sarah Palin who considers the lower 48 so damn communistic that she harbored desires of secession for her state when she was governor. So, it’s all relative.
 
The Times’ news section, or A-section is significantly worse. It was demonstrably pro-Dubya, twice; even going so far as to, at best ignore the massive election irregularities and illegalities that led to their boy sitting in the oval office. Even a review of the Miami Herald’s examination of the Florida fiasco and resulting coup began with a top of the page headline that told the reader that, in spite of everything, Bush had legitimately won anyway, hanging chads or not. It was only once you got down to about the 20th paragraph on an interior page that an analytical mind could add up the statistics and see that the opposite was true and that Gore would have won if all of the votes in Florida had been re-counted. That said, re-counting all the votes is what Gore should have pushed for, but, with friends like the Times, whose editorial page had actually endorsed him, who needs enemies. The Times reporting ended up presenting it both ways in one article. The problem was the initial impression they deliberately and purposefully conveyed with their headline.
 
Skipping ahead, the Times engaged in a now notorious and infamous campaign to, as the paper of record and led opinion former, led us headlong into a charge for the war in Iraq. “Reporter” Judith Miller and her boss, Executive Editor Bill Keller helped Bush sell the war to the country based on smoke and mirrors about non-existent WMDs and a war on terror when all it was a war for the Iraqi oil fields on behalf of the Bush Crime Family’s multi-national oil company friends, including the Saudi royal family. A platinum opportunity for war profiteering for Halliburton and the like was nothing to sneeze at either.
 
Judith Miller has now moved on to be a hero of the extreme right and now peddles her lies and propaganda for operations such as Newsmax, ‘nuff said. She’s where she should have always been, lurking on the fringe in cuckoo-land instead of framing the discussions of crucial matters for mainstream society. By the time she’s 60, she’ll be writing for a monthly UFO magazine. 
 
So what has the Times done now? Here it is: On Monday, February 21st, A. G. Sulzberger, no less than the son of the paper’s publisher, and Times reporter Monica Davey, ran a front page story headlined Union Bonds In Wisconsin Begin To Fray.


The article was based on a complete fiction and represented more than a little wishful thinking on the part of the Times and those it was trying to help. Looking to illustrate a crack in union solidarity, the Times built its false premise and centered it on a man who they claimed was a United Auto Workers union man named Rich Hahan who they described as

“… a supporter of Gov. Walker’s sweeping proposal to cut the benefits and collective bargaining rights of public workers in Wisconsin, a plan that has set off a firestorm of debate and protests at the state Capitol. He says he still believes in unions, but thinks those in the public sector lead to wasteful spending because of what he sees as lavish benefits and endless negotiations.”

Yep. That’s Repug talking point numero uno in this debate. It’s all part of the Republican strategy of setting private sector workers against their counterparts in the public sector.

“Across Wisconsin, residents like Mr. Hahan have fumed in recent years as tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished, and as some of the state’s best known corporations have pressured workers to accept benefit cuts.”
 
“Something needs to be done, he said, and quickly.”

It’s all about building up the envy. Hey, those guys get more than we do! It’s the Republican strategy of divide and conquer. If it’s not those blacks (polite term), it’s those longhairs, or damn women wanting equal pay, or those gays, or them a-rabs. Now it’s unions again, as it was way back in the mid-20th century. One wonders who the Republicans will hate when they have run out of groups to hate. 
 
Oh, and there’s one more problem in all of this concoction in the Times. The United Auto Workers has never heard of Mr. Hahan, real name Hahn, as the Times re-write now states. The paper whose motto is “All The News That’s Fit To Print” went out and looked for a kind of “great white hope” person in the form of a pro-Walker union guy. That he ended up being a phony is just a minor detail to the Times. The original story was worth a front page space to them but the retraction was buried well back in the paper. There are only two possible reasons for burying the retraction and neither of them reflect well on the paper. 1) The paper didn’t want to be embarrassed about getting it wrong  again, or, the more likely 2) The paper got its lie out there and damn well wasn’t about to correct it. That would not be all the news that fits the agenda now, would it? More importantly, the real damage was done, not just because first impressions always matter more even if you issue a correction, but because the original fraud of an article went out fully syndicated to daily papers in other cities and towns all across the nation. No, the paper’s intentions were not on the up and up or it would have issued a loud and bold retraction and correction right on their front page, AND, they would have done it in less than the five full days that it took them! There are times when the New York Times is just the same as Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, except with a better vocabulary.
 
It gets even better/worse. Monday, as I was thinking about writing this post, it hit me that I had heard the would be Grand Banana(s) Republican Dictator of Wisconsin, Scott Walker himself refer to the article in question. Where? I couldn’t remember. Then it hit me. The lightbulb came on brightly. The phone call! Let’s go to the transcript!

Walker: “The New York Times, of all things. I don’t normally tell people to read the New York Times, they’ve got a great story, one of those unbelievable moments of true journalism, what it’s supposed to be, objective journalism They got out of the capitol went down one county south of the capitol to Janesville; to Rock County. That’s where the General Motors plant once was.
 
David Koch Imitator: “Right. Right.”
 
Walker: “…The lead on this story’s about a guy who was laid off two years ago…  who points out that everyone else in his town has had to sacrifice except for all these public employees, and it’s about damn time they do, and he supports me… It’s unbelievable. So I went through and called all these, uh, handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day, and said to them, everyone, get that story and print it out and send it to anybody giving you grief.”

“True journalism.” “Objective journalism.” Mission accomplished, eh, Mr. Sulzberger? You got that made up story out there, just like your Judith Miller got out that bullcrap about WMDs and mushroom clouds and all the rest. No mention of the fact that the rich aren’t sharing in any sacrifices either. And, all you sacrificed, Mr. Sulzberger, is what little integrity that you may have had to begin with.
 
Of further interest was the description of the writers at the end of the article. Sulzberger was described as simply a reporter from Janesville, WI, not as the son the publisher and heir of the paper.
 
                   
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Does this kind of strategy on the part of the forces of the righties work? The answer is yes and no. Obviously, as I said, first impressions matter, especially when they are spread so wide and far and you don’t go out of the way to publicize the corrections once you are caught. But, since the Judith Miller episode, plus the other things I mentioned, and even the time the Times fired Jayson Blair for being “way too creative” in his reporting, there is at least at least a well-deserved, if not as large as justified, dent in the reputation of the paper. Combine that with the tsunami of arrogance in bold-faced lying provided daily by twisted entities such as FOX “News,” and the level of dishonesty and corruption of today’s politicians and industry leaders up to and including the “Supreme” Court that would make Richard Nixon look like the purest, most honest man that has walked the face of the Earth since Jesus by comparison, and you have an increasingly skeptical public.
 
The difference now, even when compared to the time of Judith Miller’s assault on the truth and the deadly consequences it led to, is that people have more sources of information both good and bad now than even a short time ago. The traditional media and our politicians still haven’t caught up to the fact that it isn’t quite as easy to fool all of the people all of the time as it once was. It must particularly gall those who fancy themselves as the puppet masters and the gatekeepers that no matter how many virtual psyops entities like FOX or Politico come along, or how many lies get planted in the public discourse by once trusted institutions like the New York Times, or all the millions of dollars that are spent in what amounts to attempts at brainwashing; huge numbers of people just aren’t buying the crap they are fed. The Internet, ironically created by our military, came along and changed things. Yes, the Internet can be used to spread all sorts of fraudulent conspiracies, just as Glenn Beck does, but it can also lead people to truths. Most importantly, it gets people talking to each other. As we heard and saw with Egypt and Tunisia, social networking has taken it one step further. Today, everyone is carrying a camera in their smart phone. Today, you can instantly get news from people who you know, or who know one of your friends, who are actually at the spot where the news is happening. You can see it yourself and make up your own mind without the intervention of a corporation or politician with an agenda. It’s not perfect and it never will be but it is important when it comes to what people think.
 
The Republicans have been pushing their union busting agenda while most of the Democrats remain silent in their acquiescence. But, the public has its own opinions. Some are led one way. Some are lead another. But, a lot of people are hearing and seeing for themselves; in these recent situations, from people who are protesting on the scene and are sophisticated enough to know the difference between propaganda and reality. Polls aren’t perfect either but as the saying goes they provide “a snapshot in time”.
 
On Monday a new poll done by, of all people the New York Times and CBS brought the news that the majority in their latest poll backs public sector employees. It must have killed them to publish it but they said the poll was coming so they couldn’t very well hide the results. In their poll, Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of 60% to 33%, a dominating differential. The poll also shows that Americans oppose the cutting of pay or benefits to reduce deficits by 56% to 37%. 61% of the respondents, including just over half of the Republicans say they think that the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either “about right” or “too low.” Even so, in their February 28 article on the poll, the Times quickly got in a dig at the unions in the second paragraph.

“Labor unions are not exactly popular, though: A third of those surveyed viewed them favorably. A quarter viewed them unfavorably…”

They couldn’t just state the stats. They couldn’t resist taking a crack at coloring. The bottom line is that most Americans, including most who refer to themselves as independents are supporting the public employee unions as they fight the newly elected Republican teabagger governors in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Maine, etc. In fact, if Governor Walker ran today for his current position in Wisconsin, polls show that he would not win. He barely won anyway in November. According to the latest PPP poll, Walker’s November opponent, Democrat Tom Barrett would win by 52% to 45%. Walker’s approval ratings have been going down for 10 days or so. One has to wonder what the polls would say if the corporate media wasn’t so in the bag for the right wing money interests and influencing so many people to vote for their own self-destruction.