At 5:59 EST on Friday, FAIR was suddenly interested in what The New York Times did Tuesday and sent out an action alert entitled "NYT Smears Peace Movement, Again." If it all seems familiar, it should. Last week, in real time, the smear (labeled as such) was called out in joint-posts written by Wally, Cedric and C.I. (C.I. is not participating in the writing of this feature). See: "NYT Slimes the peace movement (Cedric & Wally)'), "New York Times lies again!" and "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" -- all of which went up Tuesday evening.
No need for our truth squad-ers to wait until Friday evening.
Wednesday's "Iraq snapshot" included this:
And finally, in media news, Jeff Zeleny and the New York Times have smeared the peace movement with a big-old-fat lie. Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama (and 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful) delivered a speech to the VFW where he declared, "The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. When men and women who die in service to this country are laid to rest, there must be no protests near the funerals. Its' wrong and it needs to stop." Obama was referring to the 'vangical fringe that is the gay hating Fred Phelps crowd. The extreme right wing set. As Cedric's "New York Times lies again!" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT PEACE MOVEMENT!" noted yesterday, somehow New York Times' Jeff Zeleny heard that and decided Obama was talking about the peace movement: "He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: 'It needs to stop'." The print version of the story ran in this morning's paper on A11 and does not contain the error/lie; however, the story is still up online at the paper's website and has not been corrected. How many times is the Times going to smear the peace movement during this illegal war?
FAIR notes, "In an August 21 New York Times story about Democratic presidential candidate Barrack Obama's talk to a veterans group the day before, reporter Jeff Zeleny attributed to Obama a dig at the anti-war movement that the Democratic candidate did not make." Readers of the alert may not be aware that the print version never contained the erroneous paragraph. (FAIR may not be aware, in fact.)
FAIR asks that its people contact the ombudsperson of the paper and ask for an explanation.
They requested that at 5:59 p.m. EST Friday. We weren't waiting around like FAIR. Friday, at 11:34 a.m. EST, this site contacted the DC editorial staff via e-mail:
On August 21, 2007, The New York Times website published Jeff Zeleny's "Obama Tells Veterans Iraq Plan Is Failing" online. The article has a glaring error:
He also said it was wrong for anti-war activists to protest at military funerals, declaring: "It needs to stop."
Barack Obama was speaking of the Fred Phelps groups (right-wing) who protest gays and lesbians by picketing military funerals. His speech does not mention "anti-war activists." Apparently the paper grasped the error since they didn't include the passage in the August 22nd print article by Zeleny on the same speech. When does the website intend to correct the online article?
Thank you,
Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
There was no response to the e-mail and we didn't assume there would be after learning that at least seventy-three complaints had gone into The New York Times last week from community members about the error. (There may have been more. 73 community members elected to e-mail that they had complained as early as Tuesday night and that there had been no response nor had the paper corrected the error online.)
For the record, the paper has still not corrected the error in their online article. Those contacting the paper (via letter, phone or e-mail) should be advised (and FAIR should have told people this) that the problem is with an online article. The problem is not with a printed article. Whether the ombudsperson covers online matters or not, we're not sure. We knew the DC editorial staff was responsible so we contacted them. We'd also suggest the site's webmaster.
But, and this is important because the paper's already chuckling about FAIR's outraged e-mailers who are angry about a story that ran in the paper, the story only ran online. Do not, as some have already written, type: "I just opened my paper and this Obama story . . ." It was passed on to C.I. that those e-mails have provided much laughter.