One of the classic techniques the New York Times uses to distort the news is by manipulating one of the six key components of a news article: the "who," "what," "why," "when," "where" or "how" of the news. The technique is often employed to defend those who the paper likes and to assail those who they don't. Case in point: When the news was good, they were sure to identify President Clinton by name. When the news was bad, you couldn't find Clinton's name in the story.
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The day George W. Bush was elected president, the Times applied the same technique, but in the reverse. Credit for good news tends to go to "federal officials," "U.S. officials," or simply "Washington"; when the news is bad, all of a sudden, it's "Bush's plan."
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Last Friday, July 25, 2003, the lead story in our nation's newspapers concerned the release of the congressional report on the intelligence failures leading up to the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
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Here was the lead sentence in the top story in USA Today that day:
WASHINGTON – Nearly three years before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government had information that Osama bin Laden's associates had evaded security checkpoints at a New York airport during a dry run for a hijacking plot, a congressional report on U.S. intelligence lapses says.
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In other words, the most salient finding of the report, in the judgment of USA Today, was an intelligence failure that clearly occurred during President Clinton's watch. (Here, even USA Today managed to write the story without mentioning "President Clinton" or "Clinton administration."). The congressional report stopped short of concluding that U.S. intelligence agencies had advance knowledge of the attacks. Yet it suggested that more aggressive communication of information among the various law-enforcement agencies could have "greatly enhanced" the opportunity to disrupt the attacks.
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Compare that with how the story was covered by the "newspaper of record." By contrast, the New York Times wrote a lead sentence that not only failed to mention Clinton, but failed to refer to anything about the timeframe of the key intelligence failures – that they occurred well before Bush took office:
WASHINGTON, July 24 – A congressional report released today provided a scathing critique of the performance of the FBI and CIA before the September 2001 terrorist attacks and recommended several changes, including the creation of a cabinet-level national intelligence chief, that go beyond what the administration has proposed.
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Thus, not only did the Times fail to provide the context, it added its opinion that the report constituted a "scathing critique." Moreover, the same sentence ends with a flourish, suggesting that the Bush administration is not doing enough to improve national security. Not until page A13 does the Times mention that information known to our government two years ago could have lead to the disruption of the attacks. Then, the Times strikes:
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The report revives the political issue how well the FBI and CIA performed and whether the Bush administration has moved aggressively enough to the address the agencies' failings.
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How about "... aggressively enough to clean up the intelligence mess left by the Clinton administration"? Not surprisingly, in a 1,431-word story largely about failures that occurred during the Clinton administration, the word "Clinton" doesn't appear once. When the word "Bush" appeared, it was in reference to a perceived failure.
The story closed with a classic "kicker" chiding the Bush administration:
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But so far, the Bush administration has shown little interest in the panel's most hotly debated proposal, to create an intelligence chief to oversee a large number of intelligence agencies that now report to different cabinet officials.
Meanwhile, a companion article in the same edition reported that "The FBI may have missed its best chance to prevent the Sept. 11 plot when one of its informants developed close ties to two of the hijackers living in San Diego, yet never alerted the bureau to the impending attacks." The article later pointed out that this activity occurred during the summer of 2000. You had to figure out for yourself that this was months before Bush took office.
To bring home the point (i.e., that it's all Bush's fault), these "news" articles were accompanied by a front-page "news analysis" piece (i.e., a thinly disguised editorial) that continues the blame game exactly as the Democrats would have it played:
WASHINGTON, July 24 – The report today on intelligence failures may force the Bush administration to confront a vexing question that the White House thought it put to rest months ago: how best to prevent another terrorist attack.
The Times was quick to put the Bush administration on the defensive, and even suggested that the congressional report "could give political ammunition to [Bush's] rivals." The signal was clear: Expect the weekend political talk shows to focus on (not whether, but) how much this congressional report will harm Bush politically.
When can we expect to see a Times news analysis on how much our intelligence capabilities have improved since Bush took office? Or how much these improvements will benefit Bush's re-election bid? Or how much this "scathing" congressional report will weigh on the much-vaunted Clinton legacy? The questions are rhetorical – we all know the answers.
