Monday, May 5, 2008

New York Times: Not A Reliable News Source

Sad to say, but the New York Times is seriously calling it's usefulness as a source for accurate information in question. Go read this article by Michael Gordon. It reads as a relatively informed piece telling you about troubling new developments in the Middle East. But notice anything odd? Look carefully, who are the sources for this new information about an Iran/insurgent connection?

Here are, in order, the sourcing for each statement in the article which alleges an Iranian or Hezbollah connection to Shiite insurgents in Iraq:
"An American official"
"The United States"
"the Americans"
"President Bush and other American officials" (noting general condemnation)
"American officials"
"American officials"
"The officials"
"Americans say"
"American officials"
"they" (referring to American Officials)
"American officials"
"American officials"
"captured men described themselves in the accounts" (according to American officials)
"American officials"
"interrogation reports"
"American officials"
"An American official"
"American officials"
"The Bush administration"
"American officials"

The only direct quotes in the article are from Iraqi government spoksemen discussing the official Iraqi position on Iranian relations.

This is propaganda. It's an entire A1 Sunday Times story based on anonymous US Government sources. Completely uncritical, and completely uncorroberated. It's 100% regurgitation of administration talking points with the protection of anonymity. The author doesn't even talk to academic middle east experts for an independent evaluation of the truthfullness of the claims. Nope, Michael Gordon just tells us straight up that Iran is training people to attack US troops inside Iraq "according to American officials."

Please read Glenn Greenwald here for a complete deconstruction of this abysmal hackery. Also, as Glenn notes, this is not the first time that Mr. Gordon has been involved in craptacular reporting. Mr. Gordon was the co-writer on a number of pieces by Judith Miller who wrote all those "Iraq has WMD, according to American officials" stories (see here for example).

It's truly sad. The fact that the New York Times still takes this man seriously as a reporter and prominently features his work is disappointing. It used to be that you could pretty much trust the work of the New York Times. Maybe you wouldn't get the whole story, but at least what youread wouldn't be an active attempt to misinform the reader.* Now, at a minimum, I would reccomend check the by line before crediting a New York Times article.

*I'm sure the work of Jason Blair will spring to some people's mind here. But Blair would make up details and interviews to enhance his narrative about some general interest story he was writing. That's wrong, but he was lying out of self interest and laziness. Blair had no stake in decieving you about the appearance of Jessica Lynch's house, he just made it up so he didn't have to go himself.

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