You almost feel bad for the authors for failing to follow the change in the media climate.

I'm sorry, did I fall asleep and miss a "change in the media climate"?

Or did this post fall through a wormhole from sometime in the future?

Timesmen. Is that something like Bonesmen, or Shrinermen? What about HighLifeMen?

You really must be aware how ridiculous you sound worshipping at the alter of Judy Miller and Adam Nagourney.

Come now. There are some very good reporters and editors there, who were terrifically embarrased by the Miller debacle. And yeah, I do think the media and political climate has changed, thanks in part to the blogs, Media Matters, and the years of Bush administration lies.

Only Garance could be "surprised" that Jeff Gerth -- the inventor of Whitewater -- would make unwarranted pronoucements about the Clintons.

Watch Chris Matthews some night and try to argue there's been any change in the media climate. Clintons are to be trashed (same for Gore, if he truly runs); that's an immutable law of mainstream press coverage. The public, of course, feels different -- but then, they have all the way along.

one thing i don't understand about books like these: who reads them? really.

sure, ann coulter sells lots and lots of books, but they're only a small step up the literary evolutionary ladder from pop-up books. so idiots who just want to HATE libruls can get their red meat.

a biography on the other hand requires a little bit of interest in actually knowing more about a person AND an interest in actually, you know, reading.

so who will buy these? i suspect they're mostly just vehicles to get the authors on talk shows.

Gerth was part and parcel of the "media and political climate" of the late 1990's. It should be no surprise that his book reflects that long-held anti-Clinton "nasty" attitude.

Today's Daily Howler lays it all out for you.

It is only very very recently that today's "media and political climate has changed," and even so that change is far from returning to any sort of equitable balance and objectivity.

guy, you answer your own question. ann coulter's book sell at three for $3 on conservative websites. The bestseller status comes from massive bulk purchases by conservative leaning groups. it's all a scam. and here we have garance acting like she is shocked, shocked to find out "timesmen" publish lies about the clintons. i'm so tired of useful fools...

True. The changes are new and not set in stone and not yet as deep as many would wish. But they are happening.

Garance:

Your post is astounding--and you're on the wrong planet. Be fair and be honest: Accept the fact that you're simply ineducable when it comes to matters like this. Stop writing about politics today.

Stop now. It can only be destructive to have someone so clueless writing about press and political issues. Stop today. This post is straight from Neptune. As the country crooner once begged, hat in hand: Please release us/Let us go.

Garance, we know you love Hillary and that's great, but to remark that bash-books on her are so '90s seems like wishful thinking. As the commenter noted above, tune in to Chris Matthews. Yeah, he's a ridiculous chucklehead, but add him to Dowd, and the GOP infrastructure, and the fact that this is America, and the fact that 59 million people voted for George W. Bush a scant two years ago ... and I gotta think you're wrong. I'm no Hillary fan because I think she'll get crushed in 2008, but I think that because she is the wrong gender, and that is a lousy and discouraging reason. Any campaign with her in it will be a nightmare of frivolity and press-driven bullshit, all against her, as the media tells us how much fun that Fred Thompson is and what a calculating cold ambitious bitch he is trying to save us from.

surprised by Jeff Gerth? Really? Anyone who is surprised by this book shouldn't be writing about politics.

I wonder: is this cloying naivete an affected act, or is it actually real? Either way, just as Gerth's reporting is beneath the Times, this post is beneath the Prospect. Deal with your naivete on your own time. You're not the only one who has expectations about what they read.

Remember, The Clenis sells. That's all that matters, whether true or not...

The more important fact is the write-up that the book received at WaPo. It shows that some in the media still think there's an audience for "who is Hillary, really?" narratives.

And is this surprising? Hillary is a terrifically smart woman, but she's got the personality of a well-dyed hot dog: bizarrely bright.

I will express it again: why the anti-GFR venom? Her points that:

a) journalists who work for the Times are *generally* good and have high standards

b) the media climate has shifted somewhat since the bad old days of the Watergate era

seem totally innocuous.

Now OF COURSE Gerth, Nagourney, Bumiller and the rest of the political reporting crew are awful. Expressing the sentiment that they should be better and live up to their brand isn't earthshattering.

Bob Somerby's comment above falls short of the perfect singularity of correct understanding of the media that exists in the One True Mind. Bob, stop writing now, because your imperfectly expressed views only serve to prop up the corrupt media establishment.

a) journalists who work for the Times are *generally* good and have high standards

But, of course, we're not talking about the reporters who *generally* work at the Times. We're talking about very specific reporters with long track records of this kind of stuff.

Bob,

If you'd ever respond to my e-mails I'd be happy to have a conversation off line with you about my thinking. But I'm not going to buy into the BS that the entire MSM is 100% evil. I did find the book's tone dated. It's not the '90s anymore.

GFR

Perhaps the tone of reporting at the Times has changed to atone for the Miller debacle, and blogs and MediaMatters have been added to the mix. But the media climate is mostly effected by the free media - television - that most people see every day. And the climate there is still very hostile to Clinton and Gore. Outright ridicule is standard.

GFR wrote, in response to Bob S: "I'm not going to buy into the BS that the entire MSM is 100% evil."

OK, this comment basically sums up the problem with GFR. If she truly thinks that Somerby thinks that "the entire MSM is 100% evil," then she has discredited herself from the start. The Daily Howler has a big archive, check it out! Of course, reading comprehension seems to be an issue, so suggesting more reading might not be a good remedy.

And if she was engaging in hyperbole, well, then what's the point of engaging with her? The hyperbole was her whole comment. (And FWIW I don't think she was being hyperbolic or sarcastic.)

GFR still hasn't responded to the main complaint in the comments: why in the f&*% would she expect better from Gerth?? The fact that she won't confront that complaint head-on tells us all we need to know: she doesn't know of Jeff Gerth, and doesn't care to find out. Those are problems for someone who is presumably paid to care about this. I care, and no one's even paying me.

Have the conversation on-line. We would all like to know what you are thinking.

... "these are Timesmen, of whom I would expect better"

This statement is a good indicator that you don't know the _Times_ or the nature of its "reporting" (on any political subject, let alone the Clintons).

If we live in a world with any journalistic standards Jeff Gerth would have been exiled for his Whitewater and Wen Ho Lee reporting. Instead Gerth has a million dollar book deal to dish out more disinformation.

Jeff Gerth is also the guy who ruined Wen Ho Lee's life. He is a disgrace, from whom there is absolutely reason to "expect better".

BTW, why is "ambitious" always used in a negative way about Hillary Clinton?

Don't you have to be ambitious to run for president? I am guessing Biden, Romney, McCain...........they are all ambitious. And yet with men it is meant to be flattery. With a woman ambitious is something to be ashamed of.

Garance,

Name one person at the Times who has come out and publicly criticized Judith Miller. Name one editor who lost his/her job for accepting JM's reporting. Name one who was tossed for Gerth or Nagourney. I'll be waiting.

You say these are "Times men" who are writing this...as though you slept through Jeff Gerth's long sordid history of getting it wrong on the Clinton's. Gerth is the tool that got Whitewater so profoundly wrong as well as the one who got the Wen Ho Lee story wrong. The two biggest false stories of the last decade and they are both Gerth's. He is an incompetent, pathological partisan liar and if there were any justice in this world, he wouldn't get a job putting out a garden club paper.

It shames the Times and all newsmedia that someone who was so appalling and recklessly wrong as Gerth was TWICE is still employed.

"There are some very good reporters and editors there, who were terrifically embarrased by the Miller debacle."

You *are* naive!

They didn't fire Miller because they were embarrassed. They fired her because it became a huge story on the Internet and they wanted the distraction to go away.

Second michael's call to see Garance's thinking on this matter online.

Also second Jim E's assertion that Garance hasn't responded to the general point (why she is "surprised" by a nasty book about HRC by people who have a track record of being nasty to the Clintons), instead choosing to turn it into a general referendum on the Times and/or rantings of crazy people who think the press is 100% evil.

What Bob Somerby and most of the other commenters in this thread said. Garance, you just don't seem to get how the press works and it's recent history. This is not the first time. Your colleague Scott Lemieux has tried to politely explain to you before, more than once.

A suggestion: read Somerby's archives on Gerth. Or read Lyon's book.

Nan,

I have spoken with current and former editors and reporters about Miller, though not Gerth, which I believe makes me informed on the issue, not naive. The whole focus of the Media Matters critique of Gerth is that other journalists have expressed doubts about him. A lot of people at the Times try to hold themselves to high standards and deeply dislike it when they feel their brand is being diluted by a renegade reporter or someone with a personal vendetta. The book wasn't just written by Gerth, but also by Don Van Natta, who has previously won a Pulitzer for explanatory journalism and whose career is not a matter of particular controversy. I think it is fair to be surprised by the tone he also takes in this book, though I agree, the Gerth stuff should come as no particular surprise.

Also, according to The New York Observer, Gerth apparently no longer works for The New York Times. From a story last year: "But instead, Mr. Van Natta plans to leave the paper in April for a one-year book leave. During that time, he will report and write an investigative biography of Hillary Clinton with Jeff Gerth, who left the Washington bureau via buyout last month."

GFR

I still don't understand how GFR's expression of dismay at bad reporting by "Timesmen" can generate such a hostile response.

Everyone agrees: it's a bad book. Gerth is a bad reporter. The Times should do better. The media landscape has changed for the better, even if it hasn't changed that much.

So, why the GFR firing squad again?

What boggled my mind back in the 90s is that Gerth's ethical transgressions in the Whitewater stories would have gotten him fired immediately from the little urban weekly I wrote for...and he was working for the New York Fracking Times!!!

And not only that. The Times' editors and management allowed him to go on to do the same kind of dishonest, unethical "reporting" on Wen Ho Lee.

Gerth-style "journalism" works like this: Take tips from your sources, who just happen to be Republican operatives, and then don't bother to check them out before writing up (using an opaque style) a story that insinuates that your target did something bad without actually providing the evidence for it.

With apologies for my earlier tone, it's hard to imagine why we would "expect better" of these particular Timesmen. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Gerth and Van Natta are demented Clinton-haters. Their prior work has been appallingly bad. Liberals, progressives, centrists and Dems will never see the White House again until we explain, to the public, about the way the mainstream media as a whole has covered presidential politics for the past fifteen years. Gerth and Van Natta are among the very worst, and yet here we are, expressing surprise that they would write this way.

Why are they writing drivel about Clinton's sophomore year in college? Because that's what this cohort does! At this point, on what planet do we have to reside to still be expressing surprise at this? I'm sorry for my earlier rudeness, because I have admired (and do admire) Garance's willingness to fight on sexism issues in the ongoing coverage. But good grief! This is what this cohort has done to Big Dems for a good many years. And they're going to do it forever, until we name-call and debunk them enough to make them stop. Nothing else will have any effect--certainly not praising their brand-name.

Expressing surprise about this at this point is amazing. Inane negative trivia is their business--their only business. It would have been astonishing if this book had been different.

Again, I apologize for my earlier personal tone. But Garance, you really should explain further.

Garance says, "I do think the media and political climate has changed, thanks in part to the blogs, Media Matters, and the years of Bush administration lies"

Yes. Now the media and politicians are *openly* contemptuous of "liberal activists," "liberal thinktanks," and (liberal) bloggers, whereas before 2006, they were simply beneath notice.

As for The NYT, the problem is not how many serious journalistic errors they have made over the years. It's how few of those errors they have admitted.

Everyone agrees: it's a bad book. Gerth is a bad reporter. The Times should do better.

Nice try, but point 2 had not been expressed by Garance until the comment just above yours (and then only indirectly), and point 3 has not been expressed by Garance at all. Indeed, she continues to pretend that things are just dandy at the Times.

Garance, with apologies for linking to someone who uses a pseudonym, Digby has a good post on this.

How nice that reporters and editors have had private conversations with you regarding their embarrassment over Miller and her "reporting." But that fact is that if you look at what's been published, the ONLY thing you will fine is TONS of sympathy for poor Judy Miller and her brave, brave fight for the rights of reporters to shield their sources.s.

Bob, I'm glad you came back and tried to work constructively to, shall we say, bring Garance a little more up to speed on who some of these particular people are. On the repeated skew of the Versailles media, your work has been the gold standard that has educated the younger generation of bloggers, and it's important that you keep plugging.

Garance, if you had really been reading Somerby over the years, or at least catching up on his archives, you had no grounds to be surprised about the Times generally. Jeff Gerth and Judy Miller have simply set some of the lowest lows, but really -- it's not just those two, and Nagourney and Bumiller.

What about Kit Seelye, while she seems to be educable given a recent piece of hers, spent the entire 2000 campaign making up lies about Al Gore? What about Patrick Healy, whose inaugural Times piece last year was about calculating how many days Bill and Hillary slept together since they left the White House? What about Mark Leibovich, brought over from WaPo to repeat his 2004 snarky, deceitful smears of Dems drawn straight from RNC talking points? What about Michiko Kakutani (read Somerby's archives for that)? What about William Broad, writing a series of energy corporation-borne lies about global warming and Gore?

To sum up, how many more of these abominable characters do you need to see before you're not surprised at what the Times does, before you recognize that this is the kind of political coverage that Pinch and Bill Keller want the Times to deliver?

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." The Times' political coverage has stank of trout for the past dozen years, and you're surprised in 2007?

>

On certain subjects and under certain bylines -- in particular, the ones being discussed in this thread -- bad reporting by "Timesmen" is par for the course. Being dismayed by it is like being dismayed that water is wet.

The book wasn't just written by Gerth, but also by Don Van Natta, who has previously won a Pulitzer for explanatory journalism...

Don Van Natta has been on two teams that won the Pulitzer, but GFR only mentioned one of them. Now why would that be?
It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Gerth was also on the unmentioned winning team?

Here are the details from Wikipedia about Van Natta's Pulitzers:

He was on a six-reporter team, led by Jeff Gerth, that won the 1999 Pulitzer in National Reporting for a series of stories about American corporations that sold satellite technology with defense uses to China. And in 2002, Van Natta was one of nine reporters to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, for his work on Al Qaeda in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Thanks Bob. Sorry if I flew off the handle there myself. Can you explain what specifically you want me to explain? I first wanted to write that it was shocking, not surprising, because I think that if you're using fair reporting as your evaluation frame, it is shocking. It's not that I naively think we've moved past Clinton-bashing or don't expect Gerth to write as Gerth, it's that I don't think we shoud ever get to the point where we don't consider certain kinds of nastiness shocking or surprising (even if they are predictable).

Or was that not your question?

GFR

strannix,

but these are Timesmen, of whom I would expect better, even in their private efforts.

I read this as: I expect better from people at the Times. Not as: I expect better from Gerth and Van Natta, who, after all are "Timesmen."

You can argue it either way, I suppose.

In any event, the original post rips their book. That means that GFR thinks that they're "bad" too, no?

The original post also rips hoary '90s-era cliches, etc. Maybe I jumped to a conclusion that she included the Times as among those who peddled those narratives in the 1990s. In which case, GFR would be attacking the Times: the exact thing she is accused of *not* doing in this thread.

Anyway, textual criticism is not my strong point. I tend to project.

From that Digby post:

More than a decade ago, Gene Lyons wrote the definitive work on Jeff Gerth and the NY Times'infantile willingness to believe even the most cracked stories about the Clintons, with his series of articles for Harper's that were later turned into the book "Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater" ...

More than a decade ago... Where the hell have you been in that time? Everyone here seems to be very well acquainted with the failings of Gerth, in particular, and the Times, in general. Except you.

Is this the best the Prospect can do?

Crust,

Since you didn't notice, I abandoned that idea a long, long time ago.

GFR

Maybe I jumped to a conclusion that she included the Times as among those who peddled those narratives in the 1990s.

I think Garance's follow-up comments have made it clear that she was not attacking the Times.

because I think that if you're using fair reporting as your evaluation frame, it is shocking

Garance, I would not have said that you are 'naive' prior to this comment, but I just don't know what else to make of this. The book is not written by "fair" reporters, so why on earth would that be your evaluation frame? Words truly have no meaning when a wholly predictable - practically preordained, even - event is "surprising".

"So, why the GFR firing squad again?"

Dunno 'bout the "again"...

Looks to me like GFR
has hopes of someday doing the "Ink-Stained Wretch" bit for the Great Grey Lady of Gotham...

Wild horses couldn't drag the slightest criticism of the NYTimes from GFR...

That's the way the "career game" is played, these days...

There's a lot of so-called "
Liberals" out there in Media Land who, for a by-line at the NYT, would have Weh Ho Lee 'disappeared' to Gitmo...

And for a slot on the Op-Ed page with MoDo, they'd flip the switch on Mr. Lee (or any one of us)...

strannix -- Exactly.

A couple of dictionary definitions:

Surprise -- An unexpected occurrence.

Predictable -- An outcome that can be foretold or expected.

It's predictable that Republicans, who routinely make up their own facts, would to try to make up their own definitions for words, but it's surprising when Garance thinks that that's an acceptable route out of the corner she seems to have boxed herself into.

Why the GFR-bashing? Because she's supposed to be an authority, and she's either making mistakes or showing ignorance (willful or no) that can't be let pass.

If Garance doesn't realize the depths to which the reputations of formerly unassailable bastions of objective, strongly-sourced reporting like the New York Times and Washington Post have sunk, then she should consider this her wake-up call. The days of the Pentagon Papers and Woodward and Bernstein are receding into the past. Much nearer in history lie Whitewater, impeachment, the 2000 and 2004 elections, and the Iraq War. The editorial pages of the Times and Post swing wildly between abject fawning on the Bush administration and grudging questioning of the most appalling excesses. The editors make questionable decisions on which stories are significant enough to merit front-page coverage, and which to bury deep inside the paper (if they are reported at all). Worshipping the "Timesmen" and Postmen shows an astounding ignorance of the recent history of those organizations. Maybe once, in the past, they merited such respect. Not today. Certainly not by us.

While Garance is a liberal in many respects, she suffers under the belief that we live in a highly meritocratic society. Students who go to Harvard are the best students, reporters who work at the New York Times are the best reporters. Basically "the system" is a good one and aside from gently nudging it in one direction or another it should basically be left to function as it is.

Still her apparent failure to be aware of Gerth's role in creating out of nothing the scandal which ultimately led to impeachment is quite shocking even given her basic belief system. She's fairly young, though not so young that it's an excuse. Especially given her fondness for Hillary Clinton she'd better disabuse herself of this notion that one can expect mainstream reporters to treat Democrats with a standard of fairness.

Since the 1990s, it has been obvious to anyone willing to see that the right republicans are seeking to change the way the government works and gain unprecendented partisan power and the mainstream press is collaborating with them. While Democratic office holders and "liberal" journalists keep minimizing this problem and stupidly dismissing accurate analysis as paranoia, it is very difficult to oppose this slow motion coup. The Times insane coverage of Whitewater, their pandering to Bush and bitter counter-factual assaults on Gore, their Pravda level War cheering for Iraq, and their refusal to cover Bush's arrogation of dictatorial power - AND YOU AFFECT SURPRISE WHEN THEY DISH OUT MORE OF THE SAME!!!

Here's the problem: Garance probably wants to work at the Times one day. There's nothing wrong with such an aspiration; the Times is at the top of the media pyramid in the US, for better or worse. But we simply can't expect Garance to endorse in public, even if she believes in private, fairly obvious propositions that might curtail her future career. I'm sure Garance has run her Times job interview through her head hundreds of times, and won't ever say anything except "boy, the Times is a great, great, great paper, that occasionally has a couple of bad apples but did I mention that I LOVE the Times and its editors?"

This kind of thing is killing liberals. We simply can't expect Garance, and those like her, to see her heroes as they really are, rather than as she wishes them to be.

I will second the recommendation above that everyone go back and read the archives of the Daily Howler, beginning in 1999. I used to be an "Al Gore ran a lousy campaign" guy until I started reading the Howler.

"Hillary's commitment to carefully selecting a persona that would suit her best is revealing partly because of the determined and calculating way that she went about it. She wanted to weigh every pro against every con, consider each possibility from every angle. Her letters...show...an almost scientific devotion to self-creation."

There's a strong chance someone has said this already, but when one considers the above passage, isn't it likely that it could be describing almost every ambitious person at any time? It's so absurdly vague that it is almost laughable.

The "liberal" press is one of our biggest problems as after 15 years of concerted republican assault on democracy, it continues to act surprised. The paranoid dirty hippies have been shown right over and over but you are still shocked, shocked I tell you that the Times is sliming Clintons or that Bush is installing a police state or ...

When did being a naive chump become a positive attribute for a journalist?

"He was on a six-reporter team, led by Jeff Gerth, that won the 1999 Pulitzer in National Reporting for a series of stories about American corporations that sold satellite technology with defense uses to China."

Crust, It's important to note that the Loral satellite story was *also* a bogus pseudo-scandal. Lars-Erik Nelson wrote the definitive (layman) piece on this in the New York Review of Books. IIRC, Loral sold satellites to China (which was legal and in fact encouraged), and then while trying to debug some problem with the satellites malfunctioning, they may have given the Chinese too much documentation about how the satellite was manufactured ("illegal technology transfer").

One of the fundamental problems with this era of politics, IMO, is that there has been no difference, as Dale Bumpers put it, between perjury about adultery and perjury about where I put the murder weapon.

A sort of zero-tolerance rigidity and smugness, "The law is the law", "what part of breaking the law don't you understand?", etc. can take hold when the mood is right. And a media figure with a hold on the public, combined with a prosecutor lacking in judgment and empathy, can transform *any* violation of any law or regulation, no matter how technical, trivial or innocent, into a reason to destroy someone's career or damage someone's reputation.

For not very political examples of this, Read Robert Kennedy's article in the Atlantic about Michael Skakel. Also Vincent Bugliosi's book "Outrage", about the OJ Simpson trial.

What Bob Somerby said.

" Yglesias mocks the book with appropriate vigor"

Huh?

I can't believe he gets paid for that.

5th grade classroom, ca. 1990:

Jason, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be fireman.

Heather, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a ballet dancer.

And Garance, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a writer for the New York Times!

why would you expect better from liberal writers. there are plenty of liberals who cannot stand Hillary and frankly do not care if the right makes fun of her.
Afterall, Hillary is basically a republican so, the liberal writers have every right to dismiss her and if the right does, well, they are just taking on one of their own.

Given all the focus on Edwards "haircuts" how can any sentient observer say the press climate has changed since the '90's?

m588k

m588k

m588k

"And yes, I know it's the Clintons we're talking about, so that nastiness should never come as a shock, but these are Timesmen, of whom I would expect better, even in their private efforts."

this is a joke, right? were you alive in the 90s, garance? and don't you know who jeff gerth is? sheesh ...

I've long been surprised at the unwillingness of most Democrats (except Somerby and DeLong) to confront the Times and the Post head on. There's something very fishy going on there, and it has to trace back to Sulzberger and Graham, who are the guys in charge.

Yes, these are first rate newspapers overall, and that's why consistently bad political writing requires an explanation. If a tabloid paper in Waco did things like they do, no one would bother their heads about it.

I don't think that the present national media are corrigible, and until we have new national media, America will be a sick nation. It would cost a couple hundred million to start a new national newspaper, but Soros or any one of several others could do it. There's be plenty of first rate, experienced journalists willing to sign on, to say nothing of up and coming new people. He could start by buying up McClatchie, which already has a good foundation.

What everyone posting on this discussion seems to miss is that the news media no longer is reporting "news". The so-called "media" (both print and broadcast)is reporting OPINION. The classic example is Cris Matthews. His personal deep hatred (no other word is possible)of Hillary so biases his reporting that any rational analysis is impossible. The advent of the by-line changed the concept of news to opinion and we now are inundated with sloppy coverage.

these are Timesmen, of whom I would expect better,

why? didn't whitewater lead seamlessly into WMD into the current iran scare-o-rama? is it a surprise all the good reporting these days comes from McClatchy and the WaPo? are you living in the seventies or something?

oh, but they fired the fact-free michael gordon, didn't they? didn't they?

"And yes, I know it's the Clintons we're talking about, so that nastiness should never come as a shock, but these are Timesmen, of whom I would expect better, even in their private efforts. "

Garance:

So you need to correct this to 'one Timesman' (Van Natta). I also think you really you need to read 'Fools for Scandal,' and look at the way both Howell Raines and Bill Keller handled their jobs before defending much about the Times anymore.

Keller basically paid to protect Gerth. And now Gerth is gone. Gerth is scum. 'Other reporters' have just 'expressed doubts' about him. Lyons and Conason have meticulously shown him to be mendacious and selective. He has an agenda, and the Times has defended it. I think you are indeed being naive.

I don't know enough about Van Natta to comment, but at this point I trust Bob over you on him as well.

"She weighed every pro...every con""...Hell, isn't that what people in public office are supposed to do. You can always tell when Repugs are worried...they bring out their trash machines in the form of hack writers. Hillary hasn't done anything that all politicians do...but she's vilified at every turn.

There is such a thing as making distinctions folks. The Times is a good deal more complex in its behavior than the comments above would indicate. Their editorial page has been uniformly and blisteringly critical of Bush, especially recently. Anyone who claims the contrary simply stopped reading them years ago. Their political coverage of the Clintons has been universally rotten, and their coverage of Dems in general has been pretty poor.

The Washington Post, by contrast, is a right wing rag and hopeless.

marc, i don't think anyone's taking issue with the Times editorial page here, or defending the WaPo's loony editorials. we're talking about reporting. right now the WaPo has better reporting than the times. so does the WSJ and McClatchy.

Thank god for this post (or more accurately, comments), it has probably done more to educate DC media liberals about the state of MSM-Dem coverage than a month of Howler posts. If they read the suggested links.

Which is scary, yes, but baby steps, baby steps...

I keep checking back here to see what Garance has to say about her apparent conflict of interest, i.e., being obviously reluctant to criticize the Times when she probably wants to work for them some day. In fact, I note that after the issue came up, she stopped posting in the comments.

Garance, I enjoy reading your stuff, but you need to address this issue. Until you do, we simply can't take seriously your comments regarding the state of Times reporting.

I would like to hear your response, because this problem extends well beyond you to other liberal journalist types.

m781k

m160k

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think GFR, in her few above comments, is pretending that she knew about Gerth all along when she wrote her main post.

Does anyone believe her? Anyone?

Please search Katherine Seelye, Ceci Connelly, Jeff Gerth, Don Van Natta, Judith Miller etal on
The Daily Howler
Also research Gene Lyons Fools for Scandal among other works on the crap that the American print media has become. Don't believe everything that you think.

LOL! "Timesmen"! HAHAHAHA! Jeff Gerth! She expects more from him!!! HAHAHAHA! Was Garance completely high during the entire Clinton Administration?

KISS KISS KISS, said Garance to the Timesmen.

Stop writing about media issues Garance. You're clueless and it shows.

I just want to disagree with the commenter above who suggested that the Wapo is worse than the Times.

I really believe that they are roughly equal in their shittiness.

The only thing that might inch the Times ahead of the post is that they have Paul Krugman.