New York Times: Corruption, Lies, and Plagiarism
Two of the latest corruption/fraud stories coming out of the media, ABOUT the media, are from the New York Slimes!
I realize that this is incredibly surprising to hear about one of the most reputable news organizations in existence today, but it is important to remember that it can happen to any of us…/sarc.
The New York Times has finally admitted that it “spiked” the ACORN/Obama corrupt association story.
Acknowledging what the blogosphere has known for weeks, the New York Times finally went on record to admit that just before last Election Day it killed a politically sensitive news story involving corruption allegations that might have made the Obama campaign look bad.
But the admission on Sunday, which came seven months after NYT staff reporter Stephanie Strom’s reporting about possibly illegal coordination between the Obama campaign and ACORN last year, took the form of a snarky column from Clark Hoyt, the Old Gray Lady’s “public editor.” Hoyt used the word “nonsense” to describe the allegations of impropriety leveled against ACORN and the Obama campaign.
When isn’t the NYT snarky and condescending? It’s not like they have the country’s or the American citizens’ best interests at heart…
A little background:
The aborted story that gave rise to the Obama/ACORN controversy centers around information provided by Anita MonCrief, a former ACORN employee whom Hoyt acknowledges “fed information to Stephanie Strom of The Times for several articles on troubles within the group.” Apparently the information MonCrief provided was good.
We know this because Strom broke a number of important stories about ACORN and surely much of the information she used came from her trusted source Anita MonCrief. In July she reported that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from the group. She also reported that ACORN management covered up the embezzlement for eight years, withholding information even from ACORN’s national board.
The next month Strom reported that Tides Foundation founder Drummond Pike, a comrade-in-arms of liberal philanthropist George Soros, had personally covered what remained of Wade Rathke’s debt (the embezzler had agreed to a slow-as-molasses repayment plan that would have kept him in debt well into old age).
In September Strom reported on two ACORN national board members’ lawsuit aimed at forcing ACORN to provide financial documents regarding the embezzlement.
She followed up the next month with a story on ACORN’s efforts to sever its remaining ties with its founder. (Strom reported that Wade Rathke resigned as chief organizer of ACORN. In fact, Rathke was fired, as shown in the ACORN national board’s minutes of June 20, 2008, available at page 11 of the linked PDF file.)
The same month Strom wrote about an internal memo written by ACORN’s lawyer that alerted the group to potential legal problems related to its organizational structure.
But apparently MonCrief’s information was suddenly no good when it might have embarrassed the Obama campaign.
Heidelbaugh testified before a congressional committee in March that the nonprofit group violated a host of tax, campaign finance, and other laws. She said the Obama campaign sent ACORN its “maxed out donor list” and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group’s employees “to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”
As if the withholding of a story that size during a presidential election wasn’t enough, there is also proof of plagiarism by one of NYT’s most prominent/famous columnists; Maureen Dowd.
It was a wild Sunday for New York Times columnist. It opened with her latest column in the newspaper, which closed by declaring that she had once opposed a wide-ranging probe of the uses of torture, and who authorized and knew about it, during the Bush administration but now favored it. This brought some praise liberal news sites and bloggers often critical of Dowd.
But by mid-afternoon she was on the hot seat for using a paragraph almost word-for-word from one of the most prominent liberal bloggers, Jost Marshall of Talking Points Memo, without attribution. Charges of “plagiarism” ensued.
By early evening, Dowd had admitted wrongdoing, in an email to Huffington Post, and said she wanted to apologize to Marshall. She also said that the Times would issue a correction tomorrow — and the copy was changed in her column to attribute the line of thought to Marshall.
She seemed to be suggesting, however, that she had merely heard the line of argument from a friend, who did not attribute it to Marshall. This wouldn’t explain, however, why the rather lengthy sentence, a full paragraph, matched Marshall’s writing virtually word for word.
Can I ask why this liberal rag is still in business or is used as a credible source?
Awww Shucks… Nancy Pelosi Hides and Declines Sunday Morning Circuit
You don’t think there could be a reason she is hiding do you? Could it be that she doesn’t want to be trapped in yet another lie or contradictions from previous recollections of her CIA briefings?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turned down invitations to be on several Sunday morning talk shows and is instead spending the weekend with her family.
The Speaker was invited to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to sources at the networks.
One source said Pelosi (D-Calif.) will be attending her granddaughter’s first communion in Phoenix on Sunday.
The Sunday morning talk show circuit is a traditional place to find politicians trying to recover from political missteps or trying to explain themselves after a week at the top of the news cycle. It can also give them a chance to set the agenda for the week ahead. A Sunday show appearance, with its in-depth, one-on-one interview format, gives politicians a chance to answer many questions on a specific topic, often resulting in a controversy being put to bed.
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), for example, opted to go on the Sunday morning show circuit after his decision to switch parties, appearing on “Meet the Press” and CBS’ “Face the Nation” on May 3.
Am I buying the “communion?” Nope! Everyone knows that you go on the Sunday morning circuit if there are current events going on in which you are involved… As many of us already know, the controversies will not be put to bed because Nancy Pelosi is not smart enough to lie well and tends to put her foot in her mouth. The fact that these lies are directed at the national intelligence community only hurts her more.
I think it might be time to find out the truth!
San Fran Nan Piglosi ~ Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
We all knew that Ms. Piglosi was lying from the get go when new information came to light regarding who was privy to the CIA briefing about interrogation methods, namely waterboarding. She came up with a Bill ‘Clintonesque’ to attempt to confuse anybody who can’t read or surf the net.
She admitted the CIA briefed her and others on interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay prison. BUT her excuse was she didn’t know that they would ACTUALLY use those methods on the terrorists. She then asked what the definition of IS, is.
Most of us were not born yesterday, so it was obvious she was grasping at straws during her press conference. However, there was no proof, only “he said, she said,” of the briefing; that is until the CIA released their briefing report yesterday.
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.
In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.
*EITs = Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
Human Events obtained the list of those who were briefed and privy to the interrogation techniques in 2002 – and not surprisingly, Democrat after Democrat is listed on this document:
- Nancy Pelosi
- John Rockefeller
- Harry Reid
- Dianne Feinstein
- Jane Harman
- Babs Mikulski
- John Murtha
- Adam Schiff
- Carl Levin
- Russ Feingold
- Evan Bayh
- Bob Graham
They are going to need another made up CRISIS to get out of this one!
