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Originally Posted by RangerDick
In part I base my opinion on the premise that the NYT is an extremely left-biased newspaper (as an example- the Abu Ghraib front page streak) and would love to put the screws to Bush on this issue just as much as you and roachboy would. Whether or not we all agree on the Times having a left leaning bias, I think at the very least it's fair to say they are extremely critical of the Bush administration. Now, Why aren't they publishing these "stories"? This was the topic of host's OP. Unless any of us has a direct line to the editing room at the NYT, all any of us can do is offer our opinion on this. I'd submit that if there was any meat behind these cries for impeachment, the Times would publish them. Or am I not understanding your question?
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I find it ironic that you knock people for logical errors in their premises, yet base your response on questionable premises yourself.
You continue to state that the NYTimes is left-biased and that your evidence is that they printed some stories critical of the administration. Yet, when they fail to report other items, you view this as an indication that there is no basis for the story.
Yet, in none of this do you explain why the following is not the case, other than your preconceived notions of the bias of the NYTimes:
When the prison scandals became national news, and even to an extent an international relations crisis, every news outlet in the United States was reporting on the events--including FOX news, which I'm hoping you are not going to claim is left-biased. After reviewing a number of those articles, I'm left wondering how you can even claim them as evidence of any political standpoint; they don't criticize the government or US actions, and the ones I looked at weren't even submitted by domestic journalists. Most were a paragraph or two long.
Nonetheless, the point is that they were reporting on an event the rest of the world was interested in. If anything, the paper has an interest in publishing items the world would most likely read. To the extent you believe Bush's administration to be the object of left-wing animosity both domestically and abroad, it seems likely a more pragmatic decision on the paper's part than a political statement to publish what those readers are most likely to read.
You then interpret the refusal of the NYT to print these series of events as a lack of evidence of the accusations. I fail to understand how you can argue both propositions simultaneously:
either the paper is so biased that it prints articles slandering the administration
OR
the paper only prints articles that have basis in fact
Which is it?
In order for your suggestion that their is no "meat" behind the accusations host is bringing to attention to work, and that this explains the lack of reporting on the issues by the NYT, would beg the question of whether there was :meat" behind all the articles you posted. If "meat" behind the stories is your criteria, that is...
The more likely, and less conspiracy based assessment in my view, is that the paper does not print highly political articles because it wants to maintain a semblence of non-biased reporting. It's precisely in response to its readership that it is in fact politically biased that the NYT muzzles its own reporting. In this regard, you do yourself a disservice as your unfounded accusations deter the major news outlets from investigative journalim when the results are likely to disrupt or problematize the status quo.
Coupled with the paper's pecuniary interest in reaffirming the status quo, from a corporate standpoint, the result is a lack of demand from both the system and the subjects within the system for critical journalism.