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05.07 YouthWorks Campaign Needs Support for Summer Jobs
05.15 Frances Fox Piven's "Challenging Authority"
05.15 Major Omissions Flaw Book on Global Economics
05.14 George W. Bush’s Other Undeclared War: NCLB
05.13 New Buchanan Book: Anglo-American Ascendancy Lost in Unnecessary Wars
04.30 A Litany of Horrors
04.17 Peter Hallward's "Damming the Flood" (Part II)
Ref. : Letters to the editor
05.12 The World above 350 ppm CO2
04.28 Green Scare State Terrorism
04.21 Hunger Plagues Haiti and the World
04.16 WORLD FACING HUGE NEW CHALLENGE ON FOOD FRONT
Ref. : Single-Payer FAQ
Ref. : Environmental Health News
Ref. : Sundance Channel's THE GREEN
Ref. : What is Global Warming, and what can citizens do about it?
Ref. : Global Warming Links
Ref. : Health & Nutrition Links
05.06 US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008
05.06 Death's Factotum: Michael Gordon and the Times Pour Pentagon Poison into Nation's Ear
05.05 TV News Blackout on Pentagon Pundits
05.05 Color-Coded: Jeremiah Wright and the Real Deal on Race
05.02 The Right's America-Hating Preacher
04.23 Pentagon Pundits
04.22 US News Media's Latest Disgrace
04.18 ABC's Debate Debacle
04.16 Reprising the Genocidal Fury of Thomas Friedman
05.16 Danger: Tough Talk & Wishful Thinking
05.14 Bush Operative Pushes Voter-ID Law
05.13 Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the "Stupid" Vote
05.13 McCain and the 'Unitary Executive'
05.09 The Democratic Presidential Race: A View from Pennsylvania
05.08 Serving the System: Corporate Control of U.S. Would Continue Under Obama
05.06 A Republican for Barack
05.05 Thinking About Voter Registrations
05.05 'Beware the Terrible Simplifiers'
05.01 U.S. Military Coordinated Day Of Prayer Events With Christian Right Group
04.30 John McCain Won’t Be Looking for the Union Label
04.30 Put Him Out With the Pastor!
04.25 Clinton Courted Racists in the Pennsylvania Primary
04.24 Groundbreaking Book Documents Widespread Election Fraud; Warns Elections Vulnerable to Theft
04.24 Triviamongering in the U.S. presidential race
04.24 Campaign 1988 Lives!
04.23 Hillary Clinton's Monstrous Threat
04.21 Brilliant Disguise: Bush Torture, Obama and The Boss
04.19 The Clintons, Triangulating with China
04.18 American Hegemony Is Not Guaranteed
04.18 Are the Clintons Playing Joe McCarthy?
04.17 The Weather Underground 'Theme'
05.16 Election Fraud, not Voter Fraud, is a National Security Threat
05.16 Constitution’s Checks, Balances Failing As Bush Prepares Iran Attack
05.14 Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond
05.12 Armed Truce: Surging Into Slaughter on Sadr City's Jerusalem Street
05.10 Lost E-Mails Obscure 'Plame-gate'
05.09 Fallujah Revisited: Bush, Petraeus Prepare 'Cleansing' of Sadr City
05.09 Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe
05.07 Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia
05.05 The Terror Master: Bush Orders Covert 'Surge' Against Iran, with Dem Support
05.01 American and Israeli War Crimes: Same Atrocities, Different Responses
04.30 Halliburton Bribe Case Haunts Cheney
04.29 Getting Over Scalia
04.29 The Iraq War Morphs Into The Iranian War
04.28 The Torture Election
04.28 The Clock is Ticking for A US Attack on Iran
04.28 The Bush Team's Geneva Hypocrisy
04.25 New Terror War Atrocity: Beheading the Innocent for Bush in Somalia
04.23 Glorious Fruits of the War for Civilization
04.22 VA Tried to Conceal Extent of Attempted Veteran Suicides, Email Shows
04.21 What About the War, Benedict?
04.18 Updating Sami Al-Arian - His Ordeal Continues
04.16 Would Obama Hold Bush Accountable?
05.12 Thinking About Strategies
05.08 Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower
04.28 Thinking About Subtleties
04.23 The Oil Vice
04.22 The US Economy and the Costs of War
04.21 Thinking About Shakiness
05.16 Africa Must Produce or Perish
05.16 Grow Them Young, Pay Them Well - Anti-Chavistas, That Is
05.12 Disturbing Stirrings - Ratcheting Up For War on Iran
05.05 Sixty Years of Palestinian Displacement, Occupation and Suffering
05.02 Feeding Moloch: Last Barriers to War on Iran Come Down
05.01 The Iranian Chessboard
05.01 Blood Diamonds, Blood Oil and Blood Food
05.01 Denying Palestinians Free Movement in the West Bank
04.30 The Ignored Lessons on the Stupidity of War
04.24 Breaking the Silence - Israeli Soldiers Speak
04.23 What the Iraq War is about
MEDIA REVULSION ALERT:
New York Times Explains Winter Soldier Blackout
Public editor responds to concerns raised by FAIR
The idea that the Times was unaware of Winter Soldier is remarkable; the paper's D.C. reporters were repeatedly sent press releases about the events, the same ones that other media outlets received that did manage to cover the event, ranging from Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! to the New York Times' corporate sibling the Boston Globe.
Hoyt's letter in full:
Dear Reader,The Times’ D.C. bureau editor’s claim to have not heard of the hearings is remarkable, given that the AP newswire carried a story on the hearings, and IVAW has confirmed to FAIR that the D.C. bureau had been sent three separate rounds of different IVAW press releases. In addition, at least 150 Times staffers were sent press releases about Winter Soldier by the Institute for Public Accuracy, a group that encourages inclusion of overlooked facts and progressive perspectives in media coverage. Given that media organizations operating on a small fraction of the Times' budget were aware of and able to find the resources to cover these hearings, the Times’ D.C. bureau’s plea to ignorance about the hearings is all the more disappointing.
Thank you for writing about the Winter Soldier event in Maryland last month and its lack of coverage by the Times.
My assistant checked with various editors at the Times to see if there was any discussion about covering the Winter Soldier meeting. The editor in the Washington bureau who oversees national security coverage said he had not been aware of the group or its meeting. The Times normally has three Pentagon reporters. The meeting fell within their area of coverage, and one of them probably would have been assigned had editors chosen to staff the event. But one is on book leave, one was traveling with the secretary of defense, and one was in Iraq covering the war. The Times also did not cover an announcement the following day by Vets for Freedom, a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13 times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group which organized Winter Soldier.
One group was emphasizing what it charged were war crimes, war profiteering and war mismanagement. The other group was protesting what it charged was the failure of the media to report more fully on signs of progress in Iraq, such as rebuilt schools and infrastructure.
News organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war, rather than relying on charges and counter-charges at home by organizations with strongly held political viewpoints about the war.
Sincerely,
Clark Hoyt
Meanwhile, Hoyt’s justification of the Times failure to cover Winter Soldier on the grounds that they also did not cover “an announcement the following day by Vets for Freedom, a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13 times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group which organized Winter Soldier,” draws a far-fetched parallel between a group presenting eyewitness testimony about atrocities in Iraq and a group releasing a press release about media bias. (As a group that often puts out press releases about media bias that don't get covered by the Times, the comparison strikes us as rather absurd.) Further, the size of IVAW and Vets for Freedom are not directly comparable, as IVAW is a group of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, whereas anyone can sign up on the Vets for Freedom website, which stipulates that “non-veterans can also be members of Vets for Freedom.”
Hoyt's claim that “news organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq, tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war” is akin to asserting that reporters on the police beat prefer to write about crimes they have seen themselves rather than talking to eyewitnesses. Given that Times reporters, like all Western journalists in Iraq, have great difficulty travelling freely outside the Green Zone, it is hard to imagine that they could provide a full and accurate picture of the war without interviewing people who have participated in it. And of course the paper does often interview U.S. military personnel about what they've seen, though when they are whistleblowers trying to call attention to what they describe as "the human consequences of failed policy," the Times suddenly has much less interest in what they have to say.
The New York Times’ decision to assign one of its two available correspondents to tour with the Secretary of Defense instead of hearing the first-hand accounts of the Winter Soldiers demonstrates a very strange notion of “independent reporting.”
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This story was published on April 8, 2008.
