New York Times spins US Attorneys firing and voter fraud against liberals

[demobabe]

News bias analysis from Buzzflash: The New York Times: Carrying Republican Water

The story by Christopher Drew and Eric Lipton on the front page of Sunday's New York Times about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys begins this way:

"The first whiff of something suspicious came when a 15-year-old boy received a voter registration card in the mail. Soon a second one arrived. Then his 13-year-old neighbor got one too."

In paragraph two we are told that "local authorities traced the problems to ... a liberal group."

Then, in paragraph three, Republican leaders demanded an investigation and the Federal Prosecutor promised one.

And in paragraph four, Republicans frustrated when no one was charged, began to complain.

The story could have began this way:

"It began in 2000, when Florida Governor Jeb Bush mounted an extraordinary campaign to get rid of tens of thousands of minority voters who were likely to vote Democratic. The campaign was mounted as an attack on ‘voter fraud.' The program was so successful that it allowed his brother, George Bush, to come within a virtual tie in the election with Al Gore, and eventually win the presidency."

...

Paragraph four: When the federal prosecutor reasonably determined that there wasn't much to the hyped up story, he didn't file charges. Since this was a significant part of Republicans' election strategy, locally and nationally, they became virulently upset and began complaining about the prosecutor all the way up to the White House, eventually getting him fired.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/856

[Sadie4629]

1. Well . . .

I don't think 13-year olds should be getting voter registration cards. Just sayin'.

[demobabe]

2. Well... duh.

Yes, 13 year olds shouldn't be getting voter registration cards. BUT, if you do a little research into all of the voter fraud that went on during the election, you'll see a whole lot of interesting stuff that just so happens to favor Republicans.

But as this slanted New York Times story tells it, the Democrats were responsible for the fraud while the responsible Republicans complained about it, and gasp the leftist attorney didn't do anything about it, so we had to fire them.

Bullsh*t.

The New York Times is giving cover for the transgressions of the Republican party - this is NOT responsible journalism. The Times should be held accountable for this crap.

[SoCalDem]

4. and republicans have been known to plant these types of things

so they could "discover and report" them..

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. Did you actually read the article?

First of all, see my post below. Second of all:

Mr. Iglesias defended his handling of the vote-fraud and other investigations, saying his critics did not have access to the findings that guided his decisions. He says the attacks occurred because state Republican leaders felt betrayed, figuring “We helped the guy get the position, he owes us some kind of fealty.”

Mr. Iglesias said he had believed that his bosses shared his view that United States attorneys should stay above the fray. “I thought I was insulated from politics,” he said in an interview. “But now I find out that main Justice was up to its eyeballs in partisan political maneuvering.”

Since his ouster, Mr. Iglesias has received support from other federal prosecutors, who say the department failed to honor its obligation to ensure that decisions about prosecutions are free of political taint.

“People who understand the history and the mission of the United States attorney and Justice Department — they are uniformly appalled, horrified,” said Atlee W. Wampler III, chairman of a national organization of former United States attorneys and a prosecutor who served in the Carter and Reagan administrations. “That the tradition of the Justice Department could have been so warped by that kind of action — any American should be disturbed.”

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. The editorial...

...does a good job of chopping out all of the context from the article. The article makes clear that the liberal group wasn't responsible, and that there was no basis from the prosecution that Domenici, etc. were demanding, which would be easy to see if the article in question had actually been linked from that useless editorial:

That inquiry focused on the woman who had submitted the registration applications in the names of the teenagers and at least two dozen others. Mr. Iglesias said she had worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which had paid her and others in part based on how many applications they turned in.

He said that when the F.B.I. interviewed her, she did not make any clear admission of guilt. And under federal election law, Mr. Iglesisas said, prosecutors would have had to prove that the woman, who had been fired for other reasons, had falsified the applications with the intent of influencing the election. Mr. Iglesias said “it appeared she was just doing it for the money.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/washington/18attorneys.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&em&en=6a9627c6c88b7ea5&ex=1174363200

The picture painted by that article is one of rabidly partisan Republicans interfering with a calm, level-headed, competent prosecutor. The New York Times has enough bias and makes enough mistakes that there's no need to go manufacturing them where they don't exist.

[cali]

6. Yeah, but it's so much fun to demonize

the NYT as in league with bushco- despite abundant evidence to the contary over the last last 3 years.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. I'm fine with legitimate criticism of any news organisation.

The problem I have with this critique is that it's actually much worse than the article in terms of factual accuracy. The only way the author can make his point is by taking a couple of tiny snippets out of context, and then not even providing a link to the original article! As I said, with all of the legitimate complaints that can be made against the NYT (or just about any other news org for that matter) there's no need to go around manufacturing them.