Winter Soldier coverage has FAIR’s panties bunched

Winter Soldier didn’t turn out so well. The stories were weak and pedestrian. The testimony didn’t cause the national outrage that the prima donnas of the anti-war had hoped. The IVAW had convinced the other bands of merry protesters to suspend plans for their protests in Washington so as not to distract the media from their antics at the National Labor College – that move may have affected the turn out for the anti-war protest later that week.

Well, of course, it must be someone’s fault that Winter Soldier fizzled, right? Well, the Left has decided that it’s the New York Time’s fault. They’ve enlisted the leftist media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) to get to the bottom of why the Grey Lady didn’t bother to cover the Winter Soldier theater.

First of all let me tell you, I saw reporters and technicians from countless news organizations. I wasn’t allowed to film the media or I’d show you how the back of the conference was packed with media. I saw media from the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, NPR even Al Jazeera (they all had media passes with their organization printed on them). It looked like the New York Times was about the only media not represented.

But that’s not going to stop FAIR from “investigating”. They wrote a letter to NYT’s public editor asking for answers. Basically, the Times, in the personage of one Clark Hoyt, responded that they’d prefer their own reports from their paid staff than to rely on a pack of juvenile malcontents for their serious news.

I’m no fan of the New York Times, but given the history of their recent problems with paid staff, I don’t think I blame them for being a bit more cautious. But that only angered the folks at FAIR;

Hoyt’s claim that “news organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq, tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war” is akin to asserting that reporters on the police beat prefer to write about crimes they have seen themselves rather than talking to eyewitnesses. Given that Times reporters, like all Western journalists in Iraq, have great difficulty travelling freely outside the Green Zone, it is hard to imagine that they could provide a full and accurate picture of the war without interviewing people who have participated in it. And of course the paper does often interview U.S. military personnel about what they’ve seen, though when they are whistleblowers trying to call attention to what they describe as “the human consequences of failed policy,” the Times suddenly has much less interest in what they have to say.

Of course, to reach that conclusion, FAIR is assuming that the “whistleblowers” at Winter Soldier were rational people with no ulterior motives other than bringing the truth out. Although that may be the case for two people that I can name, I doubt the motives of the others, and they’ve not given me reason to doubt my initial impressions since. The New York Times may have decided that it wasn’t wise to stake the remnants of their reputation on a band of misfits who had already proven themselves to be unreliable sources.

My buddy Denis Keohane of Obiter Dictum had another take on it in an email exchange we had today;

I don’t think anyone could have foreseen that at the very time IVAW would hold their WSI, the Democrats would be engaged in a brutal nomination fight that could conceivably cost that party the next election. The MSM, including the NY Times, fears that and is trying to protect the Democrats chances for the fall. I strongly believe that is one reason why the WSI got virtually zero MSM coverage. If it was covered and got attention, someone may just ask Hillary or Barrack their view on it – and the organic material hits the oscillating device! Neither Democrat wants any association with the far left moonbats of IVAW or Code Pink, etc., but neither can either afford to alienate them since the far left can cripple any Democrat trying to get the nomination. Odd that it is the IVAW vets who are expendable to their side.

That probably makes sense, too. Probably more sense than the NYT’s explanation that no one in the Washington bureau knew about the event, and that all of their national security reporters were busy that day. It certainly makes more sense than FAIR implying that the New York Times is biased against the anti-war movement.

h/t to Michael for the tip

Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Media, Phony soldiers