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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (14261 previous messages)

almarst2002 - 11:16am Oct 3, 2003 EST (# 14262 of 14270)

New York Times archives reveal a history of racist fabrication - http://www.fair.org/extra/0309/nyt-africa.html

When New York Times reporters such as Lloyd Garrison in the 1960s and Joseph Lelyveld in the 1980s filed news stories from Africa, editors at the Times routinely fabricated scenes and manufactured quotes for their articles. In some instances, the foreign editor colluded with the reporter to manufacture scenes that they believed would conform to the racist stereotypical biases that U.S. readers had come to expect in reports from Africa.

When I brought these examples of racist journalistic concoctions to the attention of New York Times editors more than 10 years ago, I was virtually ignored. That's why recent assertions by Times editors that reporter Jayson Blair's concoctions and fabrications reflected a "low point" in the newspaper's 152-year history (5/11/03) were disingenuous. A much lower point had been reached in the 1960s, when the newspaper began covering Africa consistently, as I discovered when I dug up documents from the Times' archives in 1992.

almarst2002 - 11:18am Oct 3, 2003 EST (# 14263 of 14270)

Another Falsehood on Iraq Goes Unchallenged - http://www.fair.org/activism/powell-inspectors.html

On a weekend when the Bush administration's pre-war intelligence on Iraq was a major topic on the Sunday talkshows, Secretary of State Colin Powell re-circulated a false story about United Nations weapons inspectors being kicked out of Iraq in 1998. Some major media outlets let Powell's comments pass without comment or correction.

On ABC's This Week (9/27/03), Powell explained that the Clinton administration "conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out."

The actual history is much different. On December 15, 1998, the head of the U.N. weapons inspection team in Iraq, Richard Butler, released a report accusing Iraq of not fully cooperating with inspections. The next day, Butler withdrew his inspectors from Iraq, in anticipation of a U.S.-British bombing campaign that began that evening. Neither George Stephanopoulos nor George Will, who conducted ABC's interview, corrected Powell's false assertion.

In reporting on the interview, the New York Times merely repeated Powell's charge (9/29/03): "Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a television appearance today, noted that the Iraqi leader threw weapons inspectors out in 1998, making it more difficult for intelligence agencies to get hard information." The Los Angeles Times (9/29/03), meanwhile, paraphrased Powell's words to make them more factually accurate, prefacing his quote with the statement that "U.N. weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998 and did not return until late last year." The quote immediately follows, giving readers the misimpression that Powell accurately conveyed this background.

As the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq have become a public controversy, it is reasonable to expect journalists to point out continuing misinformation on Iraq by senior Bush administration officials. If New York Times editors were interested in correcting the record, all they would have to do is re-print a correction they ran over three years ago (2/2/00): "A front-page article yesterday... on Iraq misstated the circumstances under which international weapons inspectors left that country before American and British air strikes in December 1998. While Iraq had ceased cooperating with the inspectors, it did not expel them. The United Nations withdrew them before the air strikes began."

ACTION: Please contact ABC's This Week and the New York Times and encourage them to correct Powell's false statements.

CONTACT: ABC's This Week thisweek@abc.com

New York Times nytnews@nytimes.com Toll free comment line: 1-888-NYT-NEWS

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.

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