'NYT' Public Editor Hits Paper's Surge in Blaming 'al-Qaeda' in Iraq [View All]

[Newsjock]

Source: Editor & Publisher

In a remarkable column today, Clark Hoyt, the newly arrived public editor at The New York Times, charges that the Times in recent weeks has too often gone along with the new drive by the White House and the military to blame insurgent attacks on al-Qaeda. The column arrives on the same day the paper calls for a U.S. pullout in Iraq. .

... Today, Hoyt charges that the Times "in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

... "There is plenty of evidence that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is but one of the challenges facing the United States military and that overemphasizing it distorts the true picture of what is happening there. While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the accuracy of his statements."

Read more: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003608639