The Gray Lady, at Waterloo
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It's the end of the line for the Gray Lady. It's just that simple. Now the only question is whether she will take the rest of the MSM down with her. Sad, actually, because she still has some staff who can produce brilliant work, such as its major story about Russia which it summarizes: "A new autocracy now governs Russia. Behind a facade of democracy lies a centralized authority that is not reluctant to swat down those who challenge it." It's finally started doing what we've been doing for years now right here on this blog. Better late than never! Hopefully, those with a clue will find work elsewhere, free of the NYT's crazed ideological pathology.
Here's the pathetic sequence on the McCain scandal that shows they're done for:
(1) The New York Times publishes an article about John McCain accusing him of an extramarital affair while in the course of a corrupt deal with a lobbyist.
(2) A furious backlash occurs among conservatives, many of whom don't even like McCain, and even those who support a Democrat, because the story has absolutely no factual basis whatsoever. The "corruption" angle is very old news, and the as for the tawdry sex angle both McCain and the woman deny the charge, and every source for it is anonymous and unsubstantiated. In followup reports, the Times deletes reference to the affair. The Times' reader forum is deluged with an avalanche thousands of outraged comments. Yet, in a purported Q&A with readers, it stands behind the story, admitting no error in the most arrogant and contemptuous manner you can imagine.
(3) The Times' Public Editor gets involved.
(a) He asks "Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if the Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair." She tells him: "That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed."
(b) Then he asks Bill Keller, the editor in chief, why all information about the affair was flimsy and anonymous. He tells him: "If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we'd have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members. But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career."
The Gray Lady can't even get her story straight. The News Editor says the affair was absolutely crucial, can't go to press without it. The Editor in Chief says the affair was almost meaningless, a sideline, a footnote, so the paper doesn't need real evidence to support it.
And these people dare to look down on the blogosphere!
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