Soccer Dad

Moveon already

Richard Cohen - What she ducked

Certain Republicans, particularly Rudy Giuliani, have attempted to exploit the MoveOn.org ad for their own political purposes, even wondering whether the Times violated election law by selling the page at a (standard) discount. This is silly.

Clark Hoyt - Betraying its own best interests

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

Unfortunately, Hoyt can't resist editorializing a bit

By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”

The Times is, like MoveOn.org an opponent of the war.
It's editors assign stories colored by their perceptions and beliefs.
Don't belittle this by calling it "fresh ammunition." It's what many of us call "confirmation."

And of course many of those questions about the war arise from the way your editors and reporters choose to portray the war. If the Times were as balanced as you're assuming, I don't think that the war would be as unpopular as it is now. That's not to say that the administration hasn't made mistakes or that it has communicated the importance of the war particularly well. But given the almost almost universal opposition of the media, it would be very difficult for the war to be popular even if it were run perfectly.

This was also interesting

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times and chairman of its parent company, declined to name the salesperson or to say whether disciplinary action would be taken.

Well let's say for the moment that a member of the administration had bungled something. Would the editors say that it was acceptable that no disciplinary action be taken? Well glad you asked.

Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so — even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing.

Well someone clearly mis-informed the public even if he or she didn't lie. Will the Times demonstrate the same of level of accountability that it demands from its government?

Confederate Yankee deserves a lot of credit for breaking this story!

new york times, media bias.