I JUST GOT A COPY OF JOURNALISTIC FRAUD: HOW THE NEW YORK TIMES DISTORTS THE NEWS AND WHY IT CAN NO LONGER BE TRUSTED in the mail. I haven’t read it yet, but the title seemed, even to me, a bit strong.

But then I read this article on the Times’ coverage of the Alabama Ten Commandments flap:

When I first saw this story on The New York Times Web site, I knew it was bound to run on that newspaper’s front page, and it did:

“MONTGOMERY, Ala., Aug. 20 — They came streaming in from all directions, wearing their crosses and Confederate T-shirts, carrying dog-eared Bibles and bottles of water and enough power bars to last a siege.”

But I was immediately skeptical about this “color story,” every sentence written as if a punch line lurked just around the corner.

I had seen endless TV footage of the Montgomery protests, and I had noticed not a single Confederate T-shirt, nor any other Confederate memorabilia, for that matter.

Some of the protesters did wear shorts and T-shirts beneath the infernal August sun, but they were mostly middle-aged and elderly people, neatly groomed and, frankly, kind of dull.

Next time I have a surly crowd chasing after me, this is exactly the kind of mob I want it to be.

But by slyly clothing the protesters in “Confederate T-shirts,” Times writer Jeffrey Gettleman was pandering to his audience, eliciting snickers by conjuring up a revival of gap-toothed, barefoot, unreconstructed racists.

I’m no fan of Moore or his myrmidons (and neither is columnist Michael Marshall), but this sort of cheap shot is the kind of thing that has deeply wounded the Times’ credibility. Read the whole thing for more examples of apparent Times embellishment or worse, and for a more-than-usually sensitive take on journalism and the use of vivid images that aren’t representative.

UPDATE: This piece by Cathy Young is good. (It’s on Moore, not the Times.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dale Wetzel sends this link to a MediaBistro interview with Bob Kohn, the author of Journalistic Fraud.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Minority of One blogged the event here and here. Somewhat more Confederate stuff reported than in the column above, though Marshall does mention that the neo-secessionist League of the South showed up and was asked to leave. Certainly no evidence that the Times account was representative of the crowd.