Friday, May 10, 2013

A Tale of Two Cities: Sanitizing The New York Times

Go to the home page of the Washington Post. The lead story in the upper left-hand corner is "Benghazi e-mails show State Dept., CIA clashed." Directly below this story is a link to "Republican lawmakers seek review of IRS practices."

Now go to WaPo's "Opinions" page, which is headed by an editorial entitled "Playing politics with tax records" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/playing-politics-with-tax-records/2013/05/10/e36dfe5a-b9b7-11e2-aa9e-a02b765ff0ea_story.html). This editorial states:

"A BEDROCK principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends.

So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation.

. . . .

The agency [IRS] said that it now has rules in place to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. How could such basic safeguards not have existed in the first place? And what are the new rules? In response to our questions, officials did not say.

Thankfully, it’s a safe bet that the decision on whether to answer such questions won’t rest solely with the agency for much longer."

Obama and Lew need to apologize to the American people? Hey, that's pretty powerful language coming from a liberal newspaper.

But now go to the home page of The New York Times. The lead story in the upper left-hand corner is "E-Mails About Benghazi Put White House on Defensive." This is already an improvement given desperate efforts over prior days to ignore this scandal (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/05/david-brooks-beyond-fence-new-jg.html). The horrifying mess involving the IRS? Well, if you look hard, tucked away at the bottom of "Other News," you will find in small letters "I.R.S. Apologizes for Overzealous Audits of Conservative Groups."

"The Opinion Pages" of The Times today? You can select in descending order from such enticing items as: "Pakistan’s Tyrannical Majority," "The Man at the Piano," "Europe’s Careless Dithering," "Missing: Jonathan Winters. Badly.," "Beyond Basketball and Bigotry," and "Pay People to Cook at Home." A problem at the IRS? Not a sign of it. Meaningful discussion of Benghazi? No way. We are informed, however, that "Charles M. Blow is off today. Gail Collins's column will appear in the Sunday Review." Yup, it's a good time for "progressive" columnists to take a break.

Kudos to my friend Andrew Rosenthal for keeping "The Opinion Pages" fresh and relevant.I suppose we should be grateful that there is not some new anti-Semitic opinion piece tarring Israel.

But it's not just Andy. The colossal entirety of The Times has its head buried in the sand.

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