MSM Blunder: The U.N. Ain't No Holy Saint

In the news biz, corruption is the name of the game. If it bleeds, it leads is the first rule. As it goes, scandal's second. So in this week's New York Observer (a paper with great reporting that gets no respect!) is a great report by Niall Stanage, "U.N. Drama Unfolds, Times Runs Wire Copy."

Side note: while The Inquirer loves the rose-colored broadsheet (they have a great crossword), one has to wonder why the Observer buried their own story, about the Times burying a story, on page 10. Especially considering they ran a pointless piece on the pointless New York Attorney General candidate Jeanine Pirro on Page 1. Balderdash.

Anyhow, Stanage makes no bones about the fact that this one facet of the gripping tale of the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, which has just been concluded in a Manhattan Courtroom, has all the makings of a Le Carre thriller: "The story had everything: secret agents, political intrigue, personal betrayal and lots and lots of cash."

He's right, and he's right when he puts the Times on the hotseat (though, again, it doesn't come until late in the article while the paper of record is named in the headline, what gives?). Apparently, reports Stanage, the New York Sun watches the U.N. closely and the Times watches Bush closely.

Granted, Stanage's potshots at Judith Miller are wasted ink, but he makes an excellent point in the bigger picture. Turtle Bay is only across town from the Times' 43rd Street offices -- if anyone's responsible for keeping tabs on that tall, aqua-colored box of mirrors, its the Gray Lady.

The U.N. is often written off as bureaucratic and ineffective. Would more accountability shove the institution along?

Comments

[ag]

To these eyes, the observer's salmon-colored. And since it's about to go out of biz now that deniro pulled out it may as well be used to wrap some nice salmon.

What's the photo credit for that amazing picture of the UN?

[NYI Editor]

Salmon, touche'.

Deniro doesn't make or break. Expensive real estate means expensive real estate ads -- let's start a collective for a NYI takeover of the NYO.

[josephus]

Your first sentence, "In the news biz, corruption is the name of the game", is a misnomer. You might be inferring that the Times has been out of the news gathering game for a long time. We can hope.

With the NY Times Editorial Board, actually a collection of rodeo clowns, ideology controls the front page. The question that begs to be asked is "why has the Times given a pass to Kofi Annan".

The Times, complicit by their silence in the face of a 21 Billion Dollar UN Oil for Food scandle, is no different than the Vichy French who allied themselves with a terrorist while trashing their own country.
As the Vichy French were more interested in party survival than leadership, the Times is more interested in agenda than journalism.

Expecting the Times to feel shame for their lack of newspaper ethics is like expecting vultures to feel shame for eating carrion.

A mounting number of readers no longer trust a paper whose reporters and commentary continually prove as incompetent as they are disingenuous.

May they end up on the ash heap of history.