NYT Pulls A Gannon on Downing Street

thinkprogress.org

NYT Pulls A Gannon on Downing Street

At [Thursday’s] press briefing, Scott McClellan made the assertion that if you opposed the Iraq War, well, you don’t really count. The President doesn’t care what you have to say. Apparently neither does the New York Times. The stalwart of the “liberal media” covered the Conyers hearings with the headline “Antiwar group says leaked British memo shows Bush misled public on his war plans.” The lede to the article makes a point of stressing the type of people behind these dubious hearings:

Opponents of the war in Iraq held an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to draw attention to a leaked British government document that they say proves their case that President Bush misled the public about his war plans in 2002 and distorted intelligence to support his policy.

It isn’t until later in the article that the NYT bothers to mention that the hearings were being chaired by no less than the ranking minority member on the House Judiciary Committee Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).


The paper goes on to say that “the hearing and other events…reflected antiwar sentiment re-energized” by the British memos and as well as plummeting support for the war in Iraq. Of course, they don’t bring up the fact that the current state of the war in Iraq is another possible explanation for the “re-energized” antiwar sentiment.

Funny enough, the article does point out how McClellan responded to inquiries about the hearing. But then they play his lapdog one more time: “Activists have accused mainstream news organizations of playing down the document’s significance, even as antiwar bloggers have seized upon it as evidence.” Silly activists.

One of the witnesses at the hearing was John Bonifaz. A constitutional lawyer, Bonifaz is the founder and general counsel for the National Voting Rights Institute. Furthermore, he used to work with the Center for Responsive Politics and his writings have been published in both the Yale Law and Policy Review as well as the Columbia Law Review. How did the NYT sum up all his accomplishments? “John Bonifaz, anti-war activist.”