Was I hallucinating or is the New York Times now advertising on, yes, Matt Drudge’s blog? Matt Drudge, constantly belittled and scorned in the Times’ news pages, derided as an internet “gossip” whom real journalists are “reduced” to reading when all else fails, is now helping sell the New York Times. Congrats to both parties.
THE FIFTH COLUMN: That’s Al Gore’s description of some conservative-leaning media outlets. Here’s the quote:
The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party. Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh – there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media … Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks – that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.
I think what he means is that conservative political bias is anathema to good media (implying, I think, that only liberals can be good journalists). He names names. He accuses individuals of being traitors to their own vocation. Now you’ll recall the hubbub when I suggested over a year ago that some politically leftist enclaves might at some point launch “what amounts to a fifth column” in the war on terror. I named no names; I made sure to qualify my remarks; even so, the hatred of the United States that worried me then has since flourished in several places, especially the academy. Still, that one sentence of mine was described in the New York Times as a “disgusting diatribe.” Eric Alterman even attempted to insinuate that I had described all New Yorkers or blue staters in this way. So I’m waiting for these same sources to denounce Gore for saying something far less nuanced or careful. He even insinuates that being Republican in the media is to represent a “fifth column.” And he does so long after the immediate emotions after 9/11 have subsided. Again, I’m waiting …
BLOGGER BARBIE: Yes, it was inevitable.
BBC BIAS WATCH: Check out this piece from the BBC news site. The headline: “Iraq Attack ‘Means Third World War’.” Look for the “balance” that is allegedly the BBC’s guiding principle. This is pro-Saddam propaganda, pure and simple – from a German former U.N. official. Can you imagine the BBC running a similar piece urging the need for disarming Saddam?
ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: As I pointed out last week, in France, the major publisher, Flammarion, has just published a children’s book called “Dreaming of Palestine,” a thinly veiled anti-Semitic tract. This kind of thing, I now learn, is by no means new to Flammarion. That publishing house also brought out Edouard Drumont’s “La France Juive,” back in 1886. According to Johns Hopkins professor, David Bell, “La France Juive” was “the most influential anti-Semitic work in French history, and probably the most influential in nineteenth-century Europe. It went through 200 editions, becoming one of the great bestsellers of the period, and helped create the atmosphere in which the Dreyfus Affair took place.” Plus ça change …
MISS WORLD, APPEASERS: From the semi-literate press release put out by the Miss World organization:
The Miss World Organisation and all of the Miss World contestants were shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling comments made in the Nigerian Newspaper “This Day” that led to such a tragic loss of life.
Jaw-dropping.
THE PAPER OF RECORD: Maybe you saw the piece that ran earlier this month in the New York Times on one of the writers for “The Practice.” It was about the show’s coverage of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church. The headline ran: “A Catholic Writer Brings His Anger to ‘The Practice'”. The accompanying photograph had as a caption: “David J. Kelley, writer of “The Practice,” was raised as a Catholic in the Boston Diocese.” The entire story was about a Catholic writer’s grappling with his own Church – and it was an effective one. The only trouble with this story is that it isn’t true. The Times ran a correction last Tuesday: “An article in The Arts on Nov. 7 about “The Practice,” the ABC television series that has been been addressing the scandal over sexual abuse by priests, misstated the religious background of the writer David E. Kelley. He was brought up Protestant, not Roman Catholic.” This correction essentially destroys the entire story. The writer’s Catholicism was the entire rationale for the piece. And it took them from November 7 to November 25 to make the correction! I guess they were waiting for people to forget about the original story. Sorry, Howell. We’ve got Nexis now.
POMO ANTI-SEMITISM: What happens when post-modernist critical theory meets the Holocaust? I guess we’ll soon find out. These guys are from Berkeley and Washington State University.
SO WAS IT FAKE? Swiss experts believe the Osama audio-tape is a fake. If it is, I think it’s an extremely good sign that OBL is dead. Here’s hoping.
THE MEME PROPAGATES: Newsweek has picked up on the damage Howell Raines’ dictatorial paleo-liberalism has done – and is still doing – to the New York Times. His unhinged campaign against the Augusta National Golf Club appears to have been the final straw for some Times journalists. “That was just shocking,” one anonymous Times staffer tells Seth Mnookin. “It makes it hard for us to have credibility on other issues. We don’t run articles that just say so-and-so is staying silent. We run articles when something important actually happens.” Of course, this notion that the silence of others makes something a news story is one of Raines’ leitmotifs. It was under that loopy rubric that he justified turning the Times into an anti-war propaganda sheet last summer. Meanwhile, Raines is … silent. Newsweek reports yet again: “Raines refused to discuss the Times’s coverage.” In fact his only recent response to his critics was to an audience of lefties at Berkeley. Here’s a simple question: what kind of journalist won’t talk to the press about legitimate stories about his coverage?
THE LIBERAL ARAB WORLD: They don’t execute gays; they just persecute them.
FATWA, FATWA: A left-wing black feminist has been targeted by the Islamo-fascists for killing. She has to live in hiding in the United States. Never heard of her? I guess her fellow lefties are too busy campaigning for the release of Mumia.
The Dish 