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"Moody's May Downgrade New York Times Ratings"
By Ed Driscoll · March 17, 2006 12:49 PM · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Oh, That Liberal Media!
The New York Times' stock value has certainly taken a beating since 9/11 and the rise of the Blogosphere. (And from both sides: the left views the Times as not being leftwing enough, conservatives view it as the liberal newspaper its then-ombudsman declared it to be in 2004.)
Given the hits the Times' equity prices have suffered, it seems consistent that the ratings on its debt should suffer as well.
In his interview with Hugh Hewitt yesterday, Mark Steyn said:
Well you know, one of the things I find, and I'm sure you do, too, you travel a lot around the country. And the thing about American newspapers in particular, but it's also true of Canada and certain others, is that if you get off the plane at almost any airport on the continent, and you'll pick up the local paper which will be a monopoly daily, published by Gannett or some other similar company, and it will just have like the world's dullest comment page, the world's dullest op-ed page. This is a great riveting time of war, and say what you like about crazy folks on left or right, but there's a lot to say about it. And in fact, the newspapers, and their monopolies, have made them dull, and that's the danger, I think, in much of the United States, that you want someone, whether you agree with him or not, that you want something that will be riveting and thought-provoking. And some of these guys have been just holding down prime op-ed real estate for decades. It's amazing to me.The Times has long been the model for other newspapers in America (not to mention network TV news as well). And unless they want to follow the Gray Lady into similar red ink territory, they'd be very wise to consider adopting a new tone to their coverage. Certainly, from the Howell Raines era until today, they can look to the Times as an example of what not to do.
Gray Lady Admits Being Willingly Taken In
As we noted earlier this week, the New York Times was so eager to put another Abu Ghraib story on Page One that they let themselves be hoodwinked by a fraud: Cited as Symbol of Abu Ghraib, Man Admits He Is Not in Photo.
In the summer of 2004, a group of former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison filed a lawsuit claiming that they had been the victims of the abuse captured in photographs that incited outrage around the world.
One, Ali Shalal Qaissi, soon emerged as their chief representative, appearing in publications and on television in several countries to detail his suffering. His prominence made sense, because he claimed to be the man in the photograph that had become the international icon of the Abu Ghraib scandal: standing on a cardboard box, hooded, with wires attached to his outstretched arms.
He had even emblazoned the silhouette of that image on business cards.The trouble was, the man in the photograph was not Mr. Qaissi. [Editors Note, Page A2.]
Military investigators had identified the man on the box as a different detainee who had described the episode in a sworn statement immediately after the photographs were discovered in January 2004, but then the man seemed to go silent.
Mr. Qaissi had energetically filled the void, traveling abroad with slide shows to argue that abuse in Iraq continued, as head of a group he called the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons.
The original story was titled, Symbol of Abu Ghraib Seeks to Spare Others His Nightmare.
UPDATE at 3/18/06 7:58:35 am:
Their corrections page gives you a sense of how sloppy and riddled with bias this piece was, as they rushed it to print with laughably inadequate fact-checkingand even misrepresented statements from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissis insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissis account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.
Despite the previous reports, The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military. A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissis claim.
The Times also overstated the conviction with which representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed their view of whether Mr. Qaissi was the man in the photograph. While they said he could well be that man, they did not say they believed he was.
