Likelihood of Success

Joe Gandelman on the Times‘s ham-fisted MoveOn / Petraeus play:

What’s mind-boggling is that in this highly politicized, polarized, people-looking-for-a-rant atmosphere someone at the Times could approve such language without anticipating that it would trigger howls of protest — not just from Republicans, conservatives and the White House but from all Americans who also decry and condemn any kind of political hate speech — such as administration’s and some Republicans’ attempt to brand war critics as enablers of terrorism and/or haters of American troops. That’s as equally inaccurate as “General Betray Us.”

The Times just didn’t run an ad at a discount; it helped perpetuate the seemingly inexorable trend towards lowering the bar for mass-media carried political hate speech.

The Times has suffered a series of bungles and image-shattering scandals the past few years. This won’t help it — and as Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal begins to beef up its news coverage, the Times might do well to look over its shoulder and exercise the kind of care [its “public editor”] Hoyt recommends.

Somewhere, Rupert Murdoch must be smiling.

This was the last thing the Times needed, but above all it was not a slip up in any substantive sense — merely in the sense that it revealed what critics (including me) have long believed to be true: If the New York Times was ever a fair broker, it certainly is not one now.