Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Van Guard   [Mark Steyn]

The New York Post's Kyle Smith has a peach of a column on the New York Times's explanation that it missed the Van Jones story because "our Washington bureau was somewhat short-staffed during the height of the pre-Labor Day vacation period":

Here’s how long-staffed The New York Times actually is. Long after Glenn Beck reported — back in July — that Jones was history’s first communist czar, and even after Gateway Pundit reported, on Sept. 3, that Jones had signed a wackadoodle 9/11 “truther” petition, The Times sent two reporters to Boston (in a story published Friday, Sept. 4) to pre-report the non-story of Joseph P. Kennedy II’s run for Ted Kennedy’s seat. (He later said he wasn’t interested. Also, the picture of Joseph the Times ran was actually of his brother Max.)

...Jill Abramson, the managing editor, admitted only to being “a beat behind” the story but added that the paper had caught up — after the saga was over. The EMS equivalent of this statement would be, “Sorry I didn’t take your 911 call for four days. At least I was in time for the funeral.”

There are two possibilities:

(a) the Times is as dopey as Ms. Abramson seems eager to paint herself as;

or (b), they decided to ignore what was very obviously a real story and thus (vastly overrating their waning powers as gatekeepers to "all the news that's fit") bury it.

The media have taken a conscious decision to serve as Obama's palace guard. This doesn't seem a commercially sound proposition. (The Washington Post is currently losing $1.10 on every copy, which suggests, as I've said before, way more than a transitional-challenges-of-the-Internet problem.) But, beyond that, it would seem unlikely to do much for your sense of self-worth.

09/13 11:54 AMShare