New York Times headquarters
The
New York Times is out again this morning and the newspaper that so tarnished its reputation by drumming the march to war in Iraq 17 years ago
hasn't learned its lessons. The scorecard on the paper's offerings on Iran today is miserable:
- Zero reporting/skepticism about the actual facts of the attacks on tankers and other U.S. provocations.
- An "analysis" that makes it seem like "hardliners on both sides" want increased confrontation, even war.
- One passing reference to the fact that a decade ago "Israel was repeatedly talked down from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities." But zero reporting about the Israeli connection today.
- No reporting about the Donald Trump-Sheldon Adelson-John Bolton connection.
The one mild exception to the ineptitude in the
Times is an analysis of
the evidence by Eliot Higgins of bellingcat - who doesn't get to the point, that the evidence is only from one side and unconvincing, till the very end of a long article.
His key sentence - "Nothing presented as evidence proves that the object was placed there by the Iranians." - should have opened his article, not been buried 3 paragraphs from the end.
The milquetoast editorial that the
Times ran yesterday against escalation but approving of sanctions on Iran ("Dialogue between the Trump administration and Iranian government would be wise, though Iran may prove unwilling to talk") didn't even make it into the print edition.
The most remarkable exception to this pattern is the "
Readers' Comments" on the NYT editorial.
There were 473 of them before the Times closed the discussion, and we could not find a single one that is supportive of war or of U.S. efforts to continue pressure on Iran. So Bret Stephens gets to spur on a war in his
Times column, but the paper's readers are universally against the idea. Moreover, they hold the
Times responsible and see through the equivocations in the editorial. Several point out that the press was the handmaiden of the Iraq disaster.
Comment: Is a pattern developing here? See: