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September 26, 2004

An Open Letter to the New York Times

TO: Bill Kehler, Managing Editor
Daniel Okrent, "Public Editor"
Martin Klam, writer

In an article published September 26, 2004 in the New York Times Magazine, writer Martin Klam interviews several left-wing bloggers and names several more. He only mentions in passing the right-leaning blogger king Instapundit, and gives only a brief mention to the non-blog forum FreeRepublic. Mickey Kaus, a centrist Democrat, rates only a paragraph.

Mr. Klam wrote his article during the Republican National Convention, and apparently chose only to speak with the left-wing bloggers blogging from a location nearby to Madison Square Garden. There were, of course, right-leaning bloggers at the convention itself, and thousands more blogging from their homes or offices. Mr. Klam, and the editor of the piece, chose not publish an interview with or profile of a single right-leaning blogger, despite such bloggers' wide publicity, ready availability, and eagerness to talk to the press. (Signatures of right-leaning bloggers attending the convention will follow, attesting to this fact.)

Mr. Klam cannot claim that a mere lack of press credentials to enter MSG kept him from interviewing any but left-wing bloggers. All Republican-leaning bloggers at the convention would have been available at practically any time during the day or night.

It is breathtaking enough that the New York Times -- a paper which still maintains, albeit half-heartedly and increasingly ridiculously, to be non-partisan and objective -- would chose to ignore half of the entire blogosphere in an article purporting to report on the blogosphere. Indeed, "half" rather understates the case; most of the biggest bloggers lean to the right.

But it is all the more baffling that such an article would do so now, given the fact -- incovenient for Mr. Klam and your editors, I'm sure -- that it is the right-leaning blogosphere which has actually scooped the entirety of the mainstream media in reporting and then proving that the documents presented to CBSNews and USAToday were forgeries, and indeed rather transparent ones at that.

There can be no question that the reason the blogosphere is even worth discussing now is that the right-leaning blogosphere, and the right-leaning blogosphere alone, actually did the media's job of fact-checking, consulting experts, gathering evidence, and disseminating that evidence widely to the public.

And not due to, say, Wonkette's estimation of John Kerry's penis size.

Two of the left-wing bloggers Mr. Klam is most fascinated by were, to varying degrees, defenders of the authenticity of Dan Rather's documents; certainly neither had any hand at all in uncovering the truth.

When all the world is talking about the Rathergate debacle, the New York Times choses to highlight its fellow dupes in this scandal rather that those who actually presented the truth to the world.

It would be rather unremarkable that the New York Times would, once again, give prominent coverage of liberal voices while suppressing the voices of conservatives. That is so routine as to hardly be worth remarking upon at this point.

But to entirely ignore right-wing bloggers at the very moment when right-wing bloggers scoop, beat, and downright embarass the mainstream media -- including of course the New York Times itself -- is something else entirely.

This cannot be passed off as some mere oversight; this was a blatant and deliberate suppression of the actual newsmakers of the moment, in favor of those who aren't making any news but who are reliably parroting the liberal party line.

When Rathergate has been the major media story for the past three weeks, only deliberate intent can explain an article so studiously avoiding the topic at all. One would think that Mr. Klam would mention it more than once, if only by accident.

Can you rebut this? Can you offer any scoops recently provided by the Daily Kos, Josh Marshall, or Wonkette? Have all of their postings of the past three years combined come close to equalling the enormous tumult in the mainstream press caused entirely by the right-wing bloggers Mr. Klam so studiously ignores?

By what criterion did you, and Mr. Klam, decide to feature only left-wing bloggers while ignoring their right-wing counterparts? As far as actual media impact, any such comparison would be laughable. In terms of traffic, Instapundit garner much more traffic than Wonkette and Josh Marshall; Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs gets more traffic than either as well. Mr. Klam has apparently heard of Little Green Footballs, and even interviewed him for 43 minutes; strangely enough, not even a passing reference to Mr. Johnson, or his role in providing the smoking-gun proof of the discredited documents' fraudulency, is made in the entire piece.

One would imagine Mr. Klam could have lost one Wonkette quote about raw tuna appetizers to make the required room to mention that Little Green Footballs had almost singlehandly debunked a major political fraud (and embarassed the entire legacy media while he was at it).

While attempting to cover-up its negligence in passing off obvious hoaxes as "unimpeachable" evidence of court-martialable offenses committed by our President, Dan Rather chose to not feature the words of any of his actual critics. He did not quote them or give them time to make their case; he deliberately omitted any mention of the strongest evidence against the documents' veracity in order to mislead his audience into believing he was responding to criticisms actually made.

It seems now that the New York Times is engaged in a similar game. Having been embarassed and humiliated by unpaid amateurs you consider your intellectual, professional, and moral inferiors, you choose to simply expunge us from the record, and by doing so avoid any mention that you were beaten -- badly -- by the pajama-wearing wannabes for whom you have such contempt.

Journalism has never been a science, but it has usually been understood to be informed by a scientific spirit. And the most important part of the scientific spirit is that critics will be given a full and fair hearing, if only to then be rebutted vigourously. Instead, the New York Times has chosen the far simpler method of defeating an opponent's critique-- ignoring it and hoping that it doesn't get wide dissemination.

It is curious indeed for an organization ostensibly committed to reporting the news to actively and deliberately avoid any mention of actual newsmakers, lest those newsmakers' revelations prove too embarassing, and their critiques too difficult to rebut.

Journalistic enterprises have not traditionally suppressed any mention of their critics from the record. Political advocacy groups of course do this by routine; a political advocacy group will report only what it believes helpful to its position while intentionally omitting any mention of strong arguments against its position.

It seems that CBS News, and now the New York Times, have chosen to cease being journalistic enterprises and become all-but-admitted political advocacy groups. That is your choice, but you have no right to continue misrepresenting yourself as a news organization.

Signed,

Ace of Spades

Correction: As noted below, a coordiated assault by internet partisan political operatives has underhandedly exposed an error I made in this letter originally. It seems Josh Marshall says (says) that his big story was the Niger uranium story, not the Barnes/documents story. I have deleted the reference to that in the letter.

Furthermore, I have deleted the word "vigorous" in modifying Marshall's early defense of the forgeries as authentic. Kos defended them vigorously; Marshall merely defended them.

I was not presented with the defnititive proof of error that I usually require when dealing with internet partisans, but I've decided to be charitable in this case and relax that standard. For once.

posted by Ace at 03:26 AM

Comments

Get a grip dude. The New York Times Magazine is a style rag for New Yorkers, about 90% of whom are liberal democrats. If they wanna hear about blogs, Daily Kos or Wonkette is probably the hot tip for them. In fact, its probably true that TalkingPointsMemo and CalPundit are too RIGHT-WING for the average person who reads NYT Magazine.

In general, I do complain about the liberal bias of the TV networks. But the editorial bias of NYT, WaPo, and La Times is more conservative than their average reader.

Posted by: wallace stevens on September 26, 2004 05:14 AM

TO: Ace of Spades HQ
FROM: NYT Editorial Board

We received your open letter with some degree of curiosity. One sentence in particular piqued our interest. You wrote the following:

By what criterion did you, and Mr. Klam, decide to feature only left-wing bloggers while ignoring their right-wing counterparts?

First of all, Mr. Klam did not interview any "left-wing bloggers" while preparing his article. The "web-loggers" Mr. Klam spoke to during the course of his reporting were all centrists who we feel accurately represent the pulse of mainstream American political discourse.

Truthfully, we were every bit as disappointed in the quality of Mr. Klam's reporting as you were. He did not manage to work in any comments about the gender apartheid at the Master's Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, and there was nary a bit of commentary on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in his story. These problems will be noted in his employment file.

We were especially perplexed by your complaint that we did not include comments by "right-wing counterparts" of the centrist "web-loggers" who were quoted in the article. We can assure you that we had columnist Maureen Dowd search high and low throughout our offices for a "right-wing" "web-logger," and she was unable to find one. We even called our friends and colleagues at CBS News, and they were also frustrated in their efforts to find such people. Our conclusion was obvious--these people do not exist.

Mr. Klam did speak to a person who claimed to be "Charles Johnson," but he expressed a number of disturbing ideas which led Mr. Klam to believe that "Mr. Johnson" was, most likely, a patient in a psychiatric ward.

In short, we will be ignoring your concerns because of the fact that we are the arbiters of truth in a troubled nation, and what we say pretty much goes. As far as we're concerned.

You nasty little prick,
The Editorial Board of the NYT

PS: What are these forged memos of
which you speak?

Posted by: Sean M. on September 26, 2004 06:16 AM

Ace,

"It is curious indeed for an organization ostensibly committed to reporting the news to actively and deliberately avoid any mention of actual newsmakers, lest those newsmakers' revelations prove too embarassing, and their critiques too difficult to rebut."

Curious?

How about Standard Operating Procedure?

The Oz behind the curtain has been exposed.

What is different today as compared to the fairy-tale, is that in the real world the MSM still think they are the Great and Powerful Oz, despite their having been revealed.

Excellent, Ace.

Posted by: MeTooThen on September 26, 2004 09:29 AM

Well written, Ace. As good a summary of NYT ignorance as I've read.

Cheers,
Dave

Posted by: Dave on September 26, 2004 10:25 AM

Ace,

Great Letter - just needs a postscript:

"PS When are you going to register as a 527 organization. It should be soon (now) or you'll be in trouble."

Posted by: max on September 26, 2004 11:17 AM

A couple of grammatical queries:

chose -> choose
garner -> garners
either -> indefinite pronoun

I don't mean to nitpick. Hope these questions are helpful.

Regards.

P.S. I agree with Sean M.

Posted by: Birkel on September 26, 2004 11:34 AM

Sean M - Very good sarcasm. The best has to be 90% truthful, and your post was.

ACE - If you actually sent your letter to the NYTimes, it could have benefited from being more concise. Not that there is a snowball's chance in hell that they would actually read and consider a concise complaint though......

Posted by: Cedarford on September 26, 2004 11:59 AM

Nicely Put, Ace,

By rights, this should appear in total on the Time's editorial page.

In reality, it'll be buried in a shallow grave along with the rest of their enemies.

Posted by: krakatoa on September 26, 2004 12:01 PM

"Whaaaa! The other kids got toys, and I didn't!"

If you really consider the NYT and the rest of the MSM to be on the way out, why are you so damn upset that you and LGF and Powerline didn't get into the story?

Get your story straight: if they're worthless liberal shills, then out of principle, you should be glad that they didn't talk about you.

But the obvious jealousy here speaks of a deeper truth: you actually want to be validated by appearing in the NYT, even as you curse it out. Conflicted much?

Posted by: ahem on September 26, 2004 12:29 PM

And of course the breaking story about which Josh Marshall was so excited was the Ben Barnes/"official TANG records" story that CBS News as well as your own publication were so easily, and eagerly, duped by.

Except, as has been pointed out already, it wasn't.

That's the good thing about the blogsphere: we get to fact check your ass as well.

And the fact that you couldn't be bothered checking up what Josh Marshall was actually working on, or what he wrote about the CBS story once Powerline and LGF raised questions about the memos, makes your complaints about the 'scientific spirit' required of journalism ring pretty darn hollow.

Posted by: ahem on September 26, 2004 12:40 PM

YES INDEEDY I SAW THE GUY BEING INTERVIEWED ON CNN AND I THOUGHT

yeah, this guy is just citing left wing bloggers, but then he works for NY Times, no one should be surprised......

Posted by: wannabe on September 26, 2004 01:54 PM

Ace and Sean M: Great work!

"ahem": Nice try. From what I saw, Ace would have been quite satisfied if the Times had deigned to publish the views of *any* right-leaning bloggers--something they clearly didn't do.

You tried to negate Ace's perfectly accurate point by attributing his criticism to bruised ego. Unfortunately for you, anyone with an ounce of objectivity can see that the Times piece was woefully slanted, deliberately omitting the *real* story of the bloggers who spotted the *obvious* forgery.

But why should you be concerned about logic--you're just trying to make a living, right?

--sf

Posted by: sf on September 26, 2004 02:15 PM

Unfortunately for you, anyone with an ounce of objectivity can see that the Times piece was woefully slanted, deliberately omitting the *real* story of the bloggers who spotted the *obvious* forgery.

Do you know what the lead time is for the NYT magazine? Hint: it's more than two weeks. It's not a blog. Am I denying that Klam's piece focused on left-leaning bloggers? Not at all. But accusing him of deliberately ignoring the Rather story is just silly.

Anyway, Ace still hasn't issued a correction w/r/t Josh Marshall yet. Until he does so, any comment he makes about the ethics of the MSM and the need to restore the 'scientific spirit' of journalism carries no weight at all.

If you talk the talk, Ace, walk the walk.

Posted by: ahem on September 26, 2004 03:08 PM

ahem, there is a reason why newspaper magazine sections avoid stories that are developing even as the editor reads the latest draft. The NYT forgot this and created a situation where they lead with a piece that was grossly obsolete well before it hit paper.

Posted by: Eric Pobirs on September 26, 2004 03:20 PM

The NYT forgot this and created a situation where they lead with a piece that was grossly obsolete well before it hit paper.

I don't see how Klam's story is 'developing' now. There are lots of stories in the Naked Blog City, and Klam is telling one of them. You don't think that Powerline and LGF got plenty of column inches over the past two weeks on the basis of the work they did? Lexis/Nexis suggests otherwise.

So what's the problem? That LGF and Powerline didn't get the glossy photospreads and the cute little backstories and the psychobabble and the style-rag treatment? Like I said, I thought the lede here was about offering something different than the MSM, rather than accepting its clichés?

Again, the disjunction here is really weird. Do Charles or the Powerline bloggers really want to appear in the fluffy weekend magazine of the NYT? They got Safire writing about them in the op-ed section. Which has more credibility in the eyes of the conservative blogosphere?

Sheesh. That's why I'm perplexed by the obvious envy on display (and believe me, it's obvious). I can't believe that people seriously think that the anti-MSM revolution is going to begin with a fluff-piece in the NYTimes; in which case, the basic complaint is 'waaa, waaa, Wonkette got her picture on the cover [because she's a pottymouthed gossipmonger] and Charles Johnson didn't!'

That's pretty conflicted, no? That's not really about the 'scientific spirit' of journalism. It's about wanting a picture in the New York Times magazine.

And Ace still hasn't corrected himself about Josh Marshall. Tick, tick, tick.

Posted by: ahem on September 26, 2004 04:04 PM

BRAVO!!!!!!!!
Tremendous, well articulated letter. Keep up the great work.

Posted by: Canadian Ken on September 26, 2004 04:07 PM

Ahem,

Provide the evidence that supports your claim that Marshall meant something other than the Rather documents, and I'll consider a retraction.

As for Josh Marshall admitting the documents were forgeries-- of course he did. Eventually. His first few posts on the matter, however, defended them; in one post he pointed out, as Dan Rather did, that one known-authentic document had a superscripted "th."

Posted by: ace on September 26, 2004 04:32 PM

Is it correct to define a so called, "right-wing" blogger as right wing especially in comparison to the blogger apologists for the faux war hero and the well documented treasonous swine John Kerry, the party of the SEDITIOUS & SLEAZY or liberals in general as right wing or as it seems to me, more closely aligned with reality?

Posted by: russ on September 26, 2004 06:08 PM

Provide the evidence that supports your claim that Marshall meant something other than the Rather documents, and I'll consider a retraction.

It's in the previous thread, but I'll repeat it, with the link from Newsweek:

In its rush to air its now discredited story about President George W. Bush’s National Guard service, CBS bumped another sensitive piece slated for the same “60 Minutes” broadcast: a half-hour segment about how the U.S. government was snookered by forged documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium from Niger.
The journalistic juggling at CBS provides an ironic counterpoint to the furor over apparently bogus documents involving Bush’s National Guard service. One unexpected consequence of the network’s decision was to wipe out a chance—at least for the moment—for greater public scrutiny of a more consequential forgery that played a role in building the Bush administration’s case to invade Iraq.

A team of “60 Minutes” correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies.

Although the edited piece never ended up identifying Martino by name, the story, narrated by “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley, asked tough questions about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the questionable uranium purchase in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech.

But just hours before the piece was set to air on the evening of Sept. 8, the reporters and producers on the CBS team were stunned to learn the story was being scrapped to make room for a seemingly sensational story about new documents showing that Bush ignored a direct order to take a flight physical while serving in the National Guard more than 30 years ago...

“This is like living in a Kafka novel,” said Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer and a Web blogger who had been collaborating with “60 Minutes” producers on the uranium story. “Here we had a very important, well-reported story about forged documents that helped lead the country to war. And then it gets bumped by another story that relied on forged documents.”

That good enough for you?

And Josh Marshall earned plenty of flak from his liberal readers for linking to LGF and Powerline on the supposed TXANG memos, and saying that the burden of proof lay with CBS News, not the people raising questions.

So, that correction and apology, please...? Given that you're in favor of better journalistic standards, and all?

Posted by: ahem on September 26, 2004 06:42 PM

Grammar note:

"While attempting to cover-up its negligence [...] Dan Rather chose to [...]"

Dan, despite his many shortcomings, is not an "it."

Unless you're working with more information than I've got.

Posted by: DTLV on September 26, 2004 07:25 PM

Excellent letter. Sorry for the nitpicking =p.

By the way, I expect Rather's/NYT's next line of defense to be only to issue corrections in the face of irrefutable evidence.

Posted by: Elric on September 26, 2004 08:06 PM

ahem, I see you didn't watch CSPAN interview Klam Sunday morning.

Do you know what the lead time is for the NYT magazine? Hint: it's more than two weeks.

I called and asked Klam "when part two is coming out" because in the ten pages, there was maybe one sentence "about what happened to Dan Rather."

The host intercepted the question by asking Klam when the Magazine gets printed,and Klam said that everything goes to the printer seven to ten days before the Magazine hits the newsstand.

Posted by: conelrad on September 26, 2004 08:24 PM

Well writtten. Not that the NYT will acquiese. Their one-sided excuse for 'journalism' is, as always, disappointing.

Posted by: Miss O'Hara on September 26, 2004 09:51 PM

Good on ya, Ace. Marshall's tectonic-plate shifting work on the French forgeries in re: yellowcake doesn't exactly cover him with glory....Since those forgeries surfaced after other research was done, and conclusions drawn.

Pretty easy call for See BS to make, given its current shame, and the risk of exposing erstwhile hero Joe Wilson to thousands more cuts.

Cordially...

Posted by: Rick on September 27, 2004 12:46 AM

poker me up

Posted by: poker me up on December 30, 2004 04:23 PM