Opinionmakers Largely Silent About Absurdity Of GOP's Assault On NY Times
September 26, 2007 -- 4:02 PM EST // //
One of the more astonishing things about the controversy over MoveOn's New York Times ad criticizing General Petraeus has been the unwillingness of so many leading opinion-makers to directly confront the core absurdity at the heart of the GOP's ongoing assault on the paper.
The crux of the argument being made by Republicans and conservatives is that The New York Times as an institution gave MoveOn a cheaper rate for the ad specifically because its institutional position is an antiwar one and hence is in sync with that of the group. In other words, what's being alleged here is institutional ideological collusion.
This argument, of course, is batshit insane. The decisions about the price and content of the ad were made in the ad sales department. Even if the ad rep himself who approved the ad was a member of the Kovert Kos Konspiracy to end the war, and thus secretly gave MoveOn a break to further the Konspiracy's dark ends, this wouldn't in any way mean that the ad was the result of institutional bias reaching to the highest levels of The Times. Yet this absurd suggestion is precisely what many wingers and GOPers are lobbing at the paper.
Nonetheless, astonishingly few commentators are coming right out and confronting this core argument. They're getting sidetracked into arguing over ad rates and policies, as well as over the political effects of the whole controversy, rather than the merits of the controversy itself.
Here, for instance, is Howard Kurtz devoting much of a column to the whole fracas. He writes that the affair helped Republicans, adding that "the argument that the NYT aided and abetted an alleged smear provided triple bonus points for the right." Kurtz does represent the left's position, quoting lefty bloggers and adding that "liberals felt the conservative noise machine had totally bamboozled the media over a non-issue."
That's fine, but what does Kurtz himself think of this? Does he believe that this is a "non-issue"? Kurtz is a media expert. He's been covering the media for many, many years. So what does he think of the GOP's central charge here? Likewise, another media expert, Times public editor Clark Hoyt, managed to write a whole column about this affair without passing judgment on crux of the right's allegations.
What about other opinionmakers? What does Joe Klein, who rapped MoveOn early on, think of what the GOP's saying? David Ignatius? David Broder? Tim Russert? Maureen Dowd? This is the story of the week, and a storied journalistic institution we all admire is getting badly slimed. These folks know how newspapers really work. Wouldn't it be nice to hear from them about this?
Let me be clear: Yes, the Times screwed up. Yes, the paper mishandled the P.R. war. Yes, MoveOn committed a bad misstep. But let's cut through the crap -- The Times isn't being faulted because it violated its ad policies or because it printed mean things about Petraeus. Rather, it's being criticized for the alleged reason this happened -- that as an institution it's so riddled with anti-military bias that it secretly conspired with MoveOn to slime a decorated military commander during wartime. Yet our opinion-makers and pundits are talking about everything but the central allegation being made here.