NYT Public Editor Accuses The BRAD BLOG of 'Political Agenda'; Plus: Blogosphere call for his firing

[BradBlog]

NYT Public Editor Accuses The BRAD BLOG of 'Political Agenda' on Par With ACORN Smear Artists, Hoaxsters Breitbart and O'Keefe
PLUS: Blistering blogosphere reaction for Clark Hoyt's refusal to recommend corrections to NYTimes' inaccurate reporting
ALSO: Online petition launched, calling for retractions from the 'paper of record'...

After not hearing from New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt for nearly a week --- during which I'd sent him more and more indisputable evidence that Andrew Breitbart employee James O'Keefe never played his infamous "pimp" character in the offices of ACORN --- he responded with a couple of blistering charges. The email was sent several hours after we'd published our article yesterday, detailing his various untenable justifications for not recommending retractions by the "paper of record" for multiple undeniably fallacious articles on O'Keefe and Breitbart's discredited hoax ACORN "pimp" videos.

Hoyt equated our use of offering independently verifiable and incontrovertible hard evidence, demonstrating the Times, their Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock, and Hoyt himself were simply wrong, time and again in falling for the rightwing hoax, and my attempt at seeing accountability for it, with a "political agenda" on par with the Rightwing propagandists who ran the dishonest partisan smear campaign to destroy ACORN.

The fall-out in the blogosphere has been quickly broadening since The BRAD BLOG's exclusive yesterday. Responses from a number of influential blogs and bloggers include a call for Hoyt to step down as the paper's ombudsman, a blistering description of this particular rationalization of his (emphasis Hoyt's)...

The story says O’Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time

...as "unforgivable", and the charge that "the paper allowed its desire to seem 'fair' to the right trump its commitment to being fair to the facts." (More details and fall-out at link below.)

Hoyt wrote back in response to the "Last Chance" note I'd sent him on Monday, offering a final opportunity to re-consider his previous assessments, in which he'd found that no correction was in order for the paper, "because that would require conclusive evidence that The Times was wrong, which I haven't seen"...

FULL STORY, HOYT'S FULL EMAIL RESPONSE: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7716

Recently related at The BRAD BLOG:

Exclusive: NYTimes Public Editor Declines to Recommend Retraction for Multiple Erroneous Reports on False ACORN 'Pimp' Story
Despite repeated confirmation that the 'paper of record' was wrong, Clark Hoyt declines to recommend retractions
Describes O'Keefe as 'journalistically unethical', but recommends only that editors avoid 'dressed as pimp' language in future coverage...
FULL STORY, COMPLETE EMAIL THREAD WITH HOYT: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7715

[Political Heretic]

1. I'm so proud of BradBlog and thank you for keeping this updated at DU

[Echo In Light]

20. +1

[rufus dog]

2. My Mother never spanked or hit me

But she raised her hand twice, once is where I tried a defense similar to this... I was twelve!


"The story says O’Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time"

[Nikki Stone1]

3. Go BRAD BLOG! Hoyt's phrasing implied a chronological narrative, not two separate events

unrelated in time. However, notice how close Hoyt is to Cheney and Bush who constantly mentioned 9/11 and Iraq side by side in speeches, implying by linguistic proximity a relationship that never existed. This is the same rhetorical trick. Hoyt knows that everyone who reads his sentence will take it to mean that O'Keefe dressed up as a pimp and then went, dressed as a pimp, to ACORN, where he put people on camera.

[Electric Monk]

18. Damn straight, it's no accident. k&r

[bkohatlanta]

23. Finally someone says that Reporters Need a Moral Compass and Tell The Truth

Go Brad!!!

[Uncle Joe]

4. There damn sure should be a political agenda by anyone with integrity to correct

this political, morphing into unConstitutional atrocity enabled by the NYT to disenfranchise the American People.

The NYT trashed a good organization doing a public service with a cheap smear campaign.

Thanks for the thread, BradBlog.

[Joanne98]

5. Good.

[pleah]

6. K&R Thanks for all you hard work.

:)

[matt819]

7. The MSM still doesn't understand the power of the blogospher

Some bloggers are legitimate reporters. They have sources. They report with integrity and abide by generally accepted journalistic principles. There may not be many, but they are out there. Unfortuntely, the MSM doesn't recognize this - witness the uproar when bloggers demanded a spot at WH press conferences - and thinks they can be dismissed.

[rgbecker]

8. O, I get it now. They dressed up as a pimp and whore but not at the same time.

Did I miss something? I didn't hear the story of the guy being the pimp ...in fact, what was their story...I mean before they edited the tape.

Brad, did you say there is a transcript of these tapes? How about a link...I wasn't following this O'Keefe guy then, I mean before he decided to wire tap the senator's phones.

Where do they find these guys who work for the Times?

"The story says O’Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time"

Is he serious?

I hope he puts out a "how to read the New York Times" cheat sheet with each issue so those of us who went to school in America can read the paper according to what he thinks it actually says.


How about a link to the NYT orignal story?

Thanks,

[Kingofalldems]

9. Kick and rec all Watergate II threads

[angelicwoman]

10. The New York Times lied

The Times said the following on January 30th:

"“Mr. O’Keefe made his biggest national splash last year when he dressed up as a pimp and trained his secret camera on counselors with the liberal community group Acorn — eliciting advice on financing a brothel on videos that would threaten to become Acorn’s undoing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/us/politics/31landrieu.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

As we all now know, O'keefe was not dressed as a pimp. A correction is necessary.

[bertman]

11. If I subscribed to that corporatist rag I would withdraw my subscription and demand his

resignation. Hard to imagine it would have any effect at the NYT, patrons of Judith Miller and enablers of Bush/Cheney.

Last night I heard a news article on NPR that was parroting the same crap about the O'Keefe-instigated ACORN setup that we have heard over and over again from the corporate media. Not a word indicating that O'Keefe's video and his account of the incidents might be anything other than top-notch investigative reporting. Sickening.

Today I fired off an email to NPR calling them out for their failure to exercise any depth of journalistic integrity by actually DIGGING into the facts of the ACORN case. (My contributions to NPR have ceased due to this blatant disregard for the truth). The reply from the NPR representative assured me that they attempt to look into every aspect of their news stories. Bullshit!!

Thank you, Brad for your unflinching stance against these unscrupulous bastards.

REC.

[sendero]

12. It's just a matter of time..

.. before this and most other "mainstream" newspapers go BANKRUPT. And they deserve it, because they have long since abandoned telling the truth about much of anything.

None of these newspapers serve any real purpose other than spouting the party and corporate line. We're on to you assholes, and incidents like this just make it clear to everyone what huge douchebag liars you are.

[nyc 4 Biden]

13. How far NYT has fallen.

what a shame.

[Michigan-Arizona]

14. A huge thank you Brad!!!!!!!!!!! n/t

[Overseas]

15. K&R . //nt

[gratuitous]

16. See, the conjunction "and" doesn't mean it happened contemporaneously

It just means that he did both of these things. Right. This is the kind of over-lawyered parsing we came to expect out of the Bush administration. Like when Bush said late in 2002 that he had no plans "on his desk" to invade Iraq. See, they were in the drawer! Yuk, yuk.

Besides, what's the big deal about ACORN, anyway? What did ACORN ever do for overpaid public editors of the New York Times? Nothing! They just educated a bunch of people who don't deserve to know how they're getting ripped off, and registered them to vote, and vote in their own interests. And that's what the Times is doing - telling society's underclass what their interests are, like making tax cuts permanent for overpaid public editors at the Times.

[tomp]

17. there's nothing wrong with having a political agenda...

...as long as that agenda serves the interests of the people and is based on truth.

[ooglymoogly]

19. KR; Integrity is called a political agenda?

Searching out the truth is a left wing agenda?
The truth is a left wing agenda?
Just how far right batshit crazy has this country become? Goodonya BRAD BLOG. A pox on the joke called "the paper of record".

[BradBlog]

21. "Just how far right batshit crazy has this country become?"

Very. Incredibly. Exceedingly. Ridiculously.

Thanks, in no small part to the "liberal" NYTimes...

[Echo In Light]

22. Anything, any data, any view that challenges corporate/govt doctrine is a 'crazy, lefty conspiracy'

yadda-yadda ... meant to neutralize any opposition to the aims of the corporate/state nexus

[democracy1st]

24. kick