Last month, in response to a piece by Thomas Friedman, Rocket Man wrote that there is a serious national debate going on but “the New York Times just isn’t part of it, because it operates at too low a level of information to be useful to knowledgeable news consumers.” This piece by the Times’ Sarah Boxer about the Iraq the Model bloggers confirms Rocket Man’s judgment. It also demonstrates both the bias and the stunning irresponsibility of the author.
Let’s start with the Times’ “low level of information” (commonly known as ignorance). As Jeff Jarvis notes, two of the Iraq the Model bloggers were in this country last month. They met with President Bush and even made it to New York where they were interviewed on WNYC. The visit was reported by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post and Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal, as well as by many major centrist and conservative blogs. Yet, Boxer treats the bloggers existence as a “mystery” that she discovered by searching the internet and selecting a blog that “promised three blogging brothers in one.”
A miserable performance across the board.
UPDATE: Gerard van der Leun looks at Sarah Boxer’s history and observes:
It isn’t a mystery to me how Boxer was assigned to, or pumped for, this “Blogging” article in the Times. Having been in and around the editorial types at New York newspapers and magazines for decades, I can well imagine the editor’s mindset when confronted with either Boxer’s desire to write about this or the need of the Times’ “Arts” section to get with it on ‘the blogging thing.’ Boxer is young, Boxer is “hip,” Boxer must “get it.” Except, of course, she doesn’t, but the editors at the Times have no way of knowing that, because they get it even less.
Indeed.
UPDATE: Derek Rose offers a rejoinder that seems rather weak to me. He notes that the names of the IraqtheModel bloggers weren’t secret. True, but open speculation that they’re CIA agents — and in the NYT, which terrorists in Iraq may still regard as trustworthy — seems to make that a bit different, doesn’t it?
He also can’t resist a snarky link to Arthur Chrenkoff, together with a claim that Chrenkoff thinks everything’s fine in Iraq, though Chrenkoff has explicitly disclaimed that. If this is the best defense the Times can claim, it’s in real trouble. And I think it is.
Meanwhile, reader John Friedman notes that the Times looks bad no matter what:
Hasn’t the Times either (a) outed two CIA operatives, implicating the Plame criminal issues or (b) if their suppositions are false, defamed the bloggers?
Surely in this great nation of litigators some one can make a case here!
We’ll see.
And in case Iraqi terrorists miss the New York Times art section, the BBC has picked up the story.
Meanwhile, Richard Brookhiser faults Boxer on style: “Among other things, the Sarah Boxer piece on the Iraqi bloggers is notably jejeune–college newspaper level stuff.” Ouch.