AP gets it right, while the NYTimes omits

Phil over at the Camp Katrina blog posts about an interesting omission the NYTimes made in its version of an Associated Press story about a terrorist car bomb attack outside of hospital just south of Baghdad.

The AP story (emphasis added):

A homicide bomber blew up his car outside a hospital south of Baghdad on Thursday while U.S. troops handed out candy and food to children, killing 30 people and wounding about 40, including four Americans.

The NYTimes story:

A suicide car bomb exploded Thursday near an American convoy at the entrance to the main hospital in the volatile town of Mahmudiya, killing at least 30 Iraqis and wounding dozens of others in a burst of fire and shrapnel.

Notice anything missing?

I wonder why the NYTimes chose to omit that? Maybe they didn’t know? Or maybe they just wanted to leave it up to their readers’ imagination as to why the troops were there in the first place? You know the NYTimes wouldn’t want to leave too many favorable impressions on what our troops do – and it looks like to me that that isn’t going to change anytime soon, if this piece is any indication.

Read more commentary at Iowa Voice and Say Anything.

22 Responses to "AP gets it right, while the NYTimes omits"

stackja says:

November 25, 2005 at 7:55 pm

NY Times sins of omission will continue until hell freezes over.
destro says:

November 25, 2005 at 10:58 pm

Maybe the NYtimes doesn’t want people to think that american troops are in the business of attracting children to be near military targets.
stackja says:

November 25, 2005 at 11:46 pm

NY Times it seems continues a long tradition. Memoirs of Gen. William T. Sherman “Newspaper correspondents with an army, as a rule, are mischievous.” Moreover, they are always bound to see facts colored by the partisan or political character of their own patrons, and thus bring army officers into the political controversies of the day, which are always mischievous and wrong.
stackja says:

November 26, 2005 at 1:40 am

Copperheads – Columbia Encyclopedia Copperheads in the American Civil War, a reproachful term for those Northerners sympathetic to the South, mostly Democrats outspoken in their opposition to the Lincoln administration.
stackja says:

November 26, 2005 at 1:45 am

Personal Memoirs of General US Grant

The Northern press, a portion of it always magnified rebel success and belittled ours, while another portion, most sincerely earnest in their desire for the preservation of the Union and the overwhelming success of the Federal armies, would nevertheless generally express dissatisfaction what whatever victories were gained because they were not more complete. In the North the press was free up to the point of open treason. The copperhead disreputable portion of the press magnified rebel successes, and belittled those of the Union army. It was, with a large following, an auxiliary to the Confederate army.
Lorica says:

November 26, 2005 at 2:09 am

HOW Dare those nasty american GIs get those children addicted to candy. LOL /sarcasm off

What can you expect from the NY Times. This is why when people link to it, I tend to gloss right on over the story. I know it is packed full of lies or slanted to appease the hate America crowd.

Like I said in the previous post. It is getting late and I need some sleep. Always – Lorica
steve says:

November 26, 2005 at 10:46 am

Stackja–why were all of Lincoln’s assassins Roman Catholic? Peace
Dana R. Pico says:

November 26, 2005 at 1:05 pm

I followed the link to the New York Times‘ piece, and found that it had been written by one man, Edward Wong, with a dateline of Baghdad, Iraq. We cannot know, from this evidence, whether Mr Wong included the missing datum from his original, and it was edited out, or whether it was never in the original.

However, I suspect that the problem is rooted in the way that journalists gather data these days. In my article Is there really any doubt (and yes, I’m tooting my own horn, and plugging my own site here), I note that reporters have become less intrepid diggers and more sit-by-the-phone-until-someone-brings-information types. Domestically, all of the major news organizations are cutting back on newsroom personnel, to save money. In a place like Iraq, they’re just playing it safe; even Mr Wong noted, in the NYT article, that this happened in an area:

that is commonly called the Triangle of Death, because of the frequency of ambushes by guerrillas and bandits there.

Mr Wong was sitting in his hotel, with the other scribes, sipping iced tea and waiting for some locals and the military’s public information officers to bring him the news. He never saw what was happening, because he never went there!
Walter E. Wallis says:

November 26, 2005 at 2:24 pm

I am sure the edit was just to save paper and ink and the backs of the poor newsboys who carry the paper.
stackja says:

November 28, 2005 at 3:35 am

Stackjaâ€“why were all of Lincoln’s assassins Roman Catholic? Peace

They were all Italians? Peace
Aakash says:

November 28, 2005 at 9:42 pm

I was just thinking recently about how the New York Times has actually created controversy, within the past two years or so, for being the source of many false claims regarding Iraq, which were used to bolster the case for the war. The Times got into a great deal of trouble for that, and had to issue a formal apology for this reporting. And one of the reporters who was likely responsible for much of that went to prison, and retired from the paper earlier this month.

I have dealt with the issue of media bias before… As I’ve said then, the media is undoubtedly liberal, but that does not mean that the media will oppose warfare, interventionism, and other aspects of “liberal internationalism“… It could, in fact, mean the opposite.

A number of liberals in the media supported the Iraq war, including one of the most prominent columnists in America, New York Times writer Thomas Friedman.

…
Aakash says:

November 28, 2005 at 9:50 pm

[continued…]

The Washington Post is also very much pro-war, and pro-interventionism.

And during the previous presidency, CNN (the Clinton News Network) was incredibly biased in favor of the war in the Balkans, as were other U.S. media outlets; in some cases, the major reporters there had connections to the Clinton administration.

And some non-liberal news sources, such as the UPI news wire, have also been providing a great deal of negative news coverage and commentary, about the Iraq war situation, and the foreign policy management of the Bush administration.

More on these issues here.
Sister Toldjah says:

November 28, 2005 at 9:58 pm

Nice try but it won’t wash. The media is not “pro war” – one of their very own (quoted here) admitted that the media has a blatant anti-military bias. The media hasn’t been “pro war” since WWII. Nice attempt at spin with your selective linkage, however.
Sister Toldjah says:

November 28, 2005 at 10:09 pm

BTW, the NYTimes was not the “source for many false claims” about the Iraq war. Unless you think they’ve been making them since 1998.

Also, if you have a comment to make here, make it here. Don’t post several links to other blogs that have your comments attached to them. There is a word used in the blogosphere for posting numerous links to your stuff on other blogs that I won’t use here unless you continue to try to do it.
Lorica says:

November 28, 2005 at 11:46 pm

Aakash, I don’t know how anyone can use Kosovo to show the media is pro-war. They were pro-clinton, and that is it. The proof is in the pudding here. Has the WaPo or the NYT had a single story about how bad Kosovo has turned out?? About how our allies in that war the KLA are now causing problems for Macedonia?? About how these same people have killed or driven out almost everyone that is not Albanian, including other Moslems?? About the 200 or so Christian Churches that have been blown to bits or burned to the ground?? I have not seen one in the last 5 years. But what can you expect from narrow minded individuals. If you wanted a cause to be anti-war, Kosovo was it. – Lorica

P.S. Whatever happened with Milosevic’s trail by the way. I don’t think I have ever seen a news article on that either. Wonder why. Not that this link is going to be of an unbiased nature, but it does give us some insight as to what is happening over there, and it is just not pretty.

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/
Aakash says:

November 30, 2005 at 4:10 pm

BTW, the NYTimes was not the “source for many false claims” about the Iraq war. Unless you think they’ve been making them since 1998.

Yes, they have… I have addressed before the issue of the deceptions that the Clinton/Gore administration used, to justify their domestic and foreign policy actions.

The New York Times themselves admitted – and formally apologized for (in a widely-circulated statement) – their role in providing false information, in the run-up to the current Iraq war. And yes, they were doing so in 1998 as well. Just look it up in the encyclopedia. The Bush adminstration itself has also acknowledged (as a cursory news search will reveal) that they relied on inaccurate information, from the same sources as the Times did. Among these NYT-produced “facts,” that have ended up being unproven or flase, is the infamous “aluminum tubes” claim. Both the NYT and the Bush administration, to their credit, have acknowledged that their methods in obtaining this information were wrong, and that the “information” itself was false, or highly-questionable.

(This is one issue that the Times has faced the most criticism for, in recent years… and one reason why Judith Miller was canned.)

As for the other issues – of course the media was pro-Clinton. In fact, in reporting on the Balkans, a number of the journalists responsible for the false reporting (Christiane Amanpour, Peter Jennings, etc…) had family connections to the Clinton administration’s foreign policy team. (And keep in mind that Clinton was President in 1998, during his ‘Wag the Dog‘ attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and elsewhere, so it makes sense for the liberal media to support his policies. The Washington Times, a leading national conservative newspaper, editorialized that Clinton’s war against Iraq was [additional] grounds for impeachment.) But I’m not going to once again go over what has been addressed many times before… especially before Finals Week.
Sister Toldjah says:

November 30, 2005 at 4:13 pm

LOL! You are a piece of work – the NYTimes “admitted” ‘their role’ in the Iraq war and you just swallowed it whole as truth .. too funny.
Aakash says:

December 2, 2005 at 12:53 am

And one of the Times journalists who was responsible for that went to jail, and the Bush administration admitted that they used that same information (from the Times, or its sources), and that it was inaccurate, or higly questionable. I remember seeing a transcript of a Fox News segment, anchored by conservative commentator Tony Snow, in which he questioned Condoleeza Rice about the “aluminum tubes” claim. Thankfully, the Bush administration’s members have been more honest than some of their supporters.

The assertions that I made in my last comment post are not opinion, or debatable claims; they are factual.

No one – War supporter, war opponent, Republican, Democrat, or independent, has denied the Times role in allowed lax journalistic standards, which resulted in this misinformation. You are making an argument that has never been made before.

It’s not me who has “swallowed things as truth” that aren’t so.
Sister Toldjah says:

December 2, 2005 at 1:03 am

Wikipedia? Don’t make me laugh.
Pam says:

December 2, 2005 at 9:55 am

Didn’t the Times actually apologise for running Millers stories as a way of discrediting her because she didn’t support their position and didn’t bring them the big “get” of a Rove indictment?
Pam says:

December 2, 2005 at 9:56 am

P.S. I didn’t get my info from the dictionary:lol::lol: That cracks me up:lol::lol:
PCD says:

December 2, 2005 at 10:00 am

I wish I could do a decent Jackie Mason immitation. I could then do a shtick on “first the Times said this, then they said dat, then when do know when to believe them? When the Times says so?”

Comments are closed.