NY Times Self-Censorship, AKA "the President's Press"

From Daily Kos; Good point on this mess: Fri Dec 16, 2005 at 05:47:44 PM PDT
Whether Bush's secret order to eavesdrop on Americans constitutes an impeachable offense is debatable. Whether the New York Times has betrayed the American people is not.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted. link

Let's get this straight. The NY Times has this story which, as it reports, has been confirmed by a dozen officials. It possibly had this information prior to the election. And when the White House asks pretty please can you not let the American people know we're destroying their civil rights, the NY Times says "sure"? Because, you know, Americans don't need to be informed as they go to the polls. Better to keep them ignorant and scared--and Republican.

The NY Times and the White House yank out the tired "national security" excuse for delaying the article's publication. But does disclosing the fact the government is spying on its citizens really tip off terrorists? Does the NY Times or the White House for that matter expect us to believe that terrorists actually have an perpetual expectation of privacy in this nation? Fuck no. The government can search our houses, our effects, our communications--but only after following those procedures established to protect one of our most fundamental rights: the right to privacy.

In a failed attempt to excuse its actions, the NY Times has released a statement:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/16/nytimes.statement/

Link To Story: http://www.dailykos.com/

Too bad it's just a 'premise', and not journalistic policy.

because frankly any self-respecting terrorist is already going to assume he'd better watch his step that things may be wired.

BUT the average political activist is going to think nothing of going about their daily lives.

The excuse is b.s.!

Like they don't teach this shit in Terrorist 101 or something.

What else do you know about the Bush administration that you and your reporters are sitting on?

What else haven't you disclosed? What else have you lied about? What else have you overlooked? What else have you distorted? What else have you pretended not to see?

All the truth that's fit to hide.

Don't worry about your reputation. You have none.

They sat on it until it was time to have the author's book published. It helps the reporter and if it is a best seller, the NYT can gloat about a best selling author. It's all about "SHOW ME THE MONEY". Damnit, this story should have come out a year ago. Screw the NY Times.:banghead:

I have a very simple question for you the editors as well as the current readers – why bother? You have disgraced yourselves time and again. Your “paper” is riddled with scandal and has been subverted by the government too many times to count. So, I ask again – why bother? If the "news" we have gotten from you is any measure of your integrity, then the tabloids vying for my attention at the convenience store have more to offer. Please do everyone a favor and go bankrupt – soon.

to serve the purposes of powerful interests, and it will surely not be the last. The Times had the story on the forthcoming Bay of Pigs invasion but suppressed the story at the behest of fellow Ivy Leaguers in the Central Intelligence Agency. The Times is also an unabashed whore for the real estate magnates, vindictively sacking Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Sidney Schanberg in the mid-'80s merely for pointing out the legendary greed of New York City's slumlords. (Schanberg is the writer whose personal experience is half the plot in The Killing Fields.)

As at least one of the above posters noted, it is now vital that we know the timeframe: did The Times have this story before the election? If the answer is "yes," The Times not only suppressed a story but destructively meddled in the electoral process, suppressing information that almost certainly would have led to Bush's ouster.

Given the termination of Schanberg and the savagely mercenary anything-for-profit policy it reveals, it is entirely reasonable to assume (as does another poster above) that The Times' motive for suppressing the story was entirely financial -- that pressure from the White House is merely a convenient cover for another blatant act of greed.

But there is another equally vital question: how many whistle-blowers were compromised by The Times' decision? And how many whistle-blowers were thus silenced, whether by being intimidated, being fired or by still darker means?

The GOP pulls the strings at the NYT.

New York City/New Jersey journalism, I profoundly doubt the instigator was the GOP per se. Instead I'd bet it was NYC real estate magnates (jealously enraged at having been pushed away from the trough) who prompted The Times to go after the story.

That these magnates are Republican of course goes without saying. Anyone that rich and greedy is ALWAYS Republican -- the fat-cats who pretend to be otherwise are merely deceiving the public.

The guy was connected to the man who bought the Dallas Cowboys. The story, "Home Grown Scandal" had some things in it about money the Saudis donated to the Bush kkklan. The rich banker the article spoke of, had given Poppy $100,000 when he ran for prez. and had given W a million dollars when junior needed money for one of his failing business adventures, while poppy was prez. The guy was connected to Enron and the utility business also. The story told about the Times reporter being put on to the story by the banker from Arkansas and it went on to talk about how the reporter really pumped the Whitewater story up in the Times and kept fanning the flame until the story grew into the witch hunt.

You might check out the Times stories from the first word about Whitewater and find the NYT reporter's name. I tried to locate the story in the Arkansas newspapers archives and didn't have any luck. I posted the story on the old FreeDem board, which was run by the DNC and when that board shut down near the end of 2001, the information there became inaccessible. I had bookmarked the newspaper story and later found that it had vanished. The Whitewater investigation led right back to the Bush bunch though, from the get go. As well as I recall Neil Bush was involved also. I do recall that the wealthy banker was mad at Clinton about Arkansas politics. I think the banker had financed the man running against Clinton in Arkansas.

If you snoop around you might at least get the name of the Times reporter and if you snoop in and around Littlerock you might find out who the wealthy banker is. I do recall the banker backed the next Governor of Arkansas after Clinton, in some of his political activity. I do remember that the guy who wrote 'Home Grown Scandal' was a well known political reporter in Arkansas. There were some SHOCKING things in the story and I'd LOVE to find it again. The information that I saw in that story would be well worth digging to find...Trouble is I'm not that great at digging and at knowing where to dig. Even the Bin Laden family money connection with the Bush gang, was in that story. Maybe that is why it vanished.

Fool for scandal: How the 'Times' Got Whitewater Wrong

by Gene Lyons


snip>

The perception that Gerth most resents is the one most talked about in Arkansas: his reliance upon the hidden hand of Sheffield Nelson--Clinton's 1990 Republican gubernatorial opponent and a legendary political infighter. The Times reporter insists that Nelson did no more than give him Jim McDougal's phone number and later introduce him to former Judge David Hale, whose defense attorney is Nelson's associate. Nelson, the Republican nominee for governor again in 1994, tends to be coy about his role. But he has given other reporters a thirty-eight-page transcript of an early 1992 conversation between himself and McDougal, then embittered by what he saw as Clinton's abandonment.


Indeed, Jeff Gerth, Sheffield Nelson, and the New York Times go way back. As long ago as 1978, Gerth wrote a well-timed expose of Nelson's mortal foes Witt and Jack Stephens--the billionaire natural-gas moguls and investment bankers who ran Arkansas like a company store during the Orval Faubus era (1955-67). The Stephens brothers owned a small gas-distribution company in Fort Smith that was paying them at a better rate then other gas-royalty owners. But what made Gerth's piece significant was its timing: it appeared shortly before a Democratic primary in which the Stephenses' nephew, U.S. Representative Ray Thornton, was eliminated in a three-man race for the U.S. Senate. Gerth had promised local reporters he'd uncovered a scandal that would knock Thornton out of the race. Some observers think the Times article about the business dealings of Thornton's uncles did swing just enough votes in Fort Smith to keep him out of a runoff election won by Senator David Pryor.


A few more highlights from Sheffield Nelson's political biography may help underline his motives for helping reporters portray the Clintons in the worst possible light. Hired out of college as Witt Stephens's personal assistant, Nelson was later installed as CEO of Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Co. (Arkla), controlled by the Stephens family and the state's principal natural-gas utility. (It was his subsequent refusal to use Arkla pipelines to carry gas from other Stephens-owned companies to buyers east of the state that eventually provoked a lifelong blood feud of Shakespearean malevolence.) Until 1989 Nelson was a Democrat, impatiently biding his time until the end of the Clinton era. But when it became apparent that Clinton would run again in 1990, Nelson became a Republican and won the 1990 gubernatorial primary over an opponent funded by Stephens interests. Bill Clinton then proceeded to humiliate Nelson 58 percent to 42 percent in the general election.


Clinton owed his 1990 triumph in part to the fact that his Public Service Commission conducted an inquiry into a business deal involving Nelson and a friend of Nelson's named Jerry Jones. It seems that back when Nelson was CEO of Arkla, he'd overridden the objections of company geologists and sold the drilling rights to what turned into a mammoth gas field in western Arkansas to Arkoma, a company owned by Jones, whom Nelson had brought onto Arkla's board of directors. The price was $15 million. Jones found gas almost everywhere he drilled. Two years after Nelson's departure, Arkla paid Jones and his associates a reported $ 175 million to buy the same leases back as well as some other properties. Jerry Jones then proceeded to buy the Dallas Cowboys and win two Super Bowls. The election-year probe of the Arkla-Arkoma deal resulted in millions of dollars of refunds to rate payers, which wasn't necessarily the point. It also earned the President a permanent spot on Sheffield Nelson's enemies list. The result, it's no exaggeration to say, has been Whitewater. More...............

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/arkansas/whitewater/lyonsarticle.html

Jeff Gerth WAS, the NYT reporter I was thinking about I'm almost positive and I think that Gene Lyons was the man who wrote the article I was telling you about above. Just scanning the Frontline piece here, I see several of the elements of the story I'd been trying to locate. The name of the piece is a little different, but I believe it's the same story. I'm bookmarking it for a better look.

the bushit is so deep

hiding Bush's criminal domestic spy adventures for a year. Maybe Jay Rockefeller will tell us what he knows, now that the cat is out of the bag. I think the hiding of the story for over a year is a "hugh" story in itself. Oh what a tangled web they have woven, for years...

Every stinkin' day is a stinkin' new soap opera. * I'm so tired of their Schmidt!

That's why we have lost our democracy and really do live in a Fascist state.

:kick:

From the article:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny.<snip>

First, this ignores the fact that legal taps/searches with valid search warrants issued by a judges were ALREADY ONGOING. There has NEVER been a recorded instance post 9/11 where a judge has denied a request for a tap or a search warrant, when requested. THEY'RE GIVING THEM OUT LIKE CANDY! This Executive Order was just a NAKED POWER GRAB by an administration obsessed with secrecy and driven by a sociopathic hatred of the Judicial Branch of government...with maybe the sole exception of Bush vs Gore, of course.

Second, does the New York Fu#%in' Times really not think that domestic terrorists in the US aren't already thinking they're, just maybe, a teeny weeny bit UNDER SCRUTINY ALREADY?

Their mendacity leaves me breathless.