The New York Times has some explaining to do
May 19, 2010 1:51 pm ET by Jamison Foser
This Associated Press report about the controversy surrounding Richard Blumenthal’s description of his military service raises some questions about the New York Times’ handling of the story:
The crisis erupted when The New York Times reported that Blumenthal had repeatedly distorted his military service. The story included quotations and a video of Blumenthal saying at a 2008 event that he had "served in Vietnam." The newspaper also said Blumenthal intimated more than once that he was a victim of the abuse heaped on Vietnam veterans upon their return home.
A longer version of the video posted by a Republican opponent also shows Blumenthal at the beginning of his speech correctly characterizing his service by saying that he "served in the military, during the Vietnam era."
So why didn’t the Times include Blumenthal “correctly characterizing his service” in its version of the video? That’s awfully misleading, isn’t it? Given that Republican Linda McMahon’s campaign has taken credit for feeding the Times the Blumenthal story, you have to wonder if it gave the Times the incomplete video, as well. Either way, the Times should explain why it chose to omit Blumenthal’s correct characterization of his service.
UPDATE: Greg Sargent gets a comment from the New York Times. But rather than explaining the Times’ decision to omit the part of the video in which Blumenthal accurate describes his service, NYT flak Diane McNulty sounds more like a political opponent of Blumenthal’s:
The New York Times in its reporting uncovered Mr. Blumenthal's long and well established pattern of misleading his constituents about his Vietnam War service, which he acknowledged in an interview with The Times. Mr. Blumenthal needs to be candid with his constituents about whether he went to Vietnam or not, since his official military records clearly indicate he did not.
The video doesn't change our story. Saying that he served "during Vietnam" doesn't indicate one way or the other whether he went to Vietnam.
Seriously: Would that first paragraph read any differently if it came from a spokesperson for one of Blumenthal’s potential Republican opponents rather than from the New York Times?
Sargent, meanwhile, spells things out for the Times:
[T]he fact that he got it right, if narrowly so, earlier in the speech raises at least the possibility that he didn't intend to mislead later on, even if it doesn't prove this one way or the other.
Even if you don't believe the longer video is exculpatory in any way, as The Times says, there's no conceivable reason for leaving out the fuller context and letting readers make the call for themselves. It seems obvious that when dealing with a story this explosive, you would want to err on the side of more context, rather than less.
The question I'd ask is - why did the NY Times feel it was SO urgent to run with this story WITHOUT doing that background research?
They should have looked at his speeches and public statements to see if this WAS a pattern or if he had simply misspoken rather than taking the word of his political opponent who found that soundbite after months of diligent, deliberate, in-depth researching of everything the man has ever said!
Given that his political opponent did the research, that opponent KNOWS that these were one-off incidents that do NOT reflect the typical comments he makes about his service to our nation, it is the OPPONENT that is LYING here - lying by omission.
This was in a NY Times article from the next day, the 18th, but buried on the second page.
If a Blumenthal aide found it and told the NY Times about it soon enough for the NY Times to publish it the next day, why didn't they find it BEFORE they published the first article?
Being honest once doesn't mean you get to lie once.
He's radioactive and is finished in politics. He needs to step aside today and let someone else run for the office.
Honestly, I don't need a Democrat who keeps retelling the lie about Viet Nam vets getting spit on.
You're lying.
Now, he DOES say some things that would have/could have misled people.
That's not a lie. YOUR assertion? That's a lie. You know it's not true, and you intend to mislead people. He accidentally misled people on a very few occasions, didn't intend to, and apologized for those times when people WERE misled.
He never lied. He misspoke! There's a difference, doofus.
A reporter in Connecticut called a bunch of other reporters in Connecticut, asking them if when they covered him, they EVER thought that he had actually served in Vietnam. About 10 of them said that he had ALWAYS been clear.
Why would someone who wanted to LIE about this kind of a thing tell the TRUTH over and over again and lie ONCE? That's just not a credible story. Someone who wants to lie tells LIES, not the truth repeatedly and the lie ONCE.
But someone who misspeaks tells the truth over and over again and misspeaks ONCE in a substantive way, and accidentally misleads a very few people other times.
And in this case, the Connecticut Vietnam Veterans Memorial woman, who was used as a supporting source? She says that she was misquoted by the NY Times.
Their story has crumbled. Get over it. Get a clue.
I haven't posted here in a while, and I see you are still on the same raving, single-minded, biased, ignorant rants. You just won't let go of a point you THINK you are right about (and it looks like you aren't even close to being right). It's your OPINION he misspoke.
Whether the NY Times lied or Blumenthal lied pales in comparison to your blinded defense of Blumenthal.
As a Marine, we are instilled with something called Integrity. You don't lie or "misspeak" about where you served unless you have very little integrity. I have never been to Afghanistan, but I could say I proudly served in the War on Terror without saying where. I even have a medal to prove it. And if by my words (whether lies, misspeaking or by omission) I allow people to think I served in Afghanistan, I would have no integrity. Just like Blumenthal. Whether he lied outright or "misspoke," I don't see anywhere in the media where he went out of his way to correct peoples assumptions (based on his own words) that he served in Vietnam until it blew up in his face.
Ari Fleischer said it best about him. It was "slimey." And so are you for so blindly defending Blumenthal. It seems both of you have no integrity.
It's not like he said he served stateside at any point in the speech.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100519/us-blumenthal-vietnam/
But WHY did the NY Times NOT give us that info, that he ACCURATELY described his service in that same speech?
Since when is that the way the MSM should behave?
Attorney General Blumenthal DID misspeak, and as a result, some people surely got the wrong impression about his military career!
But if he goes down because people actually think that this ONE comment is representative of his overall comments about his service, then it surely IS the fault of the NY Times!
If he goes down AFTER the public is well-informed that this comment is an outlier, that it was cropped out of one speech after an exhaustive search by his political opponent, that he does NOT typically say things like this, that he was clear in a debate just a couple of months ago that he did NOT serve in-country during the Vietnam era... if after ALL that is clear and understood, he fails politically, then yeah, it's his fault.
But as it stands right now, it's almost impossible that the public will EVER be appropriately educated!
There's NO evidence he lied. NONE. Not any.
He misspoke.
Read THIS below, fool. Why would he tell multiple reporters on multiple occasions that he did NOT serve in Vietnam, then lie ONCE? That makes no sense. The ONLY thing that makes sense is that he was telling the truth ALL those times and he misspoke once. Lying once makes no sense.
The Times did not merely claim that Blumenthal was trafficking in falsehoods. The original story said that Blumenthal has been so consistently misleading that the idea of his service in Vietnam had become a widely accepted part of his public persona.
So I asked reporters, anchors and columnists to tell me (a) whether they could remember Blumenthal ever claiming to have served in Vietnam and (b) whether they had been under the impression for whatever reason, that Blumenthal had served in Vietnam. Here are the answers so far.
Mark Pazniokas of the Connecticut Mirror, who may have covered Blumenthal more often than anybody else, referred me to his quote in an NPR national story: "Every time he talked about his military record, he was quite clear that he had been a military reservist and never came close to suggesting he was in Vietnam."
Greg Hladky of the Hartford Advocate, formerly of the New Haven Register and Bridgeport Post, right up there with Paz in Blumenthal coverage: "Never personally heard [Blumenthal] say he was in Vietnam. I knew he had been the the Marine Corps Reserve, talked about that briefly during interview for a profile I did recently, and he never mentioned being in Nam."
Daniela Altimari of the Courant: "I have not been covering Blumenthal for very long, but I do know that last month, when I asked his campaign about his military service, they said very clearly that he served during the Vietnam era but did not serve in a combat arena."
Duby McDowell, former WFSB political reporter: "I have always been under the impression that he was in the marine reserves."
Doug Dalena: "I covered Blumenthal a bit at the Stamford Advocate, and I went to at least one Veterans' Day event where he was the guest, and I don't recall him ever making that claim. In addition, in researching a lot of old clips back in late 2007/early 2008 when we thought he 'might' run for governor, I don't remember coming away with the impression that he had served in Vietnam or had claimed to. I remember sitting at the Alpert debate and hearing him clearly make the distinction that he served during the Vietnam War, but not in Vietnam."
Dennis House of WFSB: "As I reported ...on Eyewitness News I do not recall Richard Blumenthal ever saying to me that he served in Vietnam. Our computer archives date back to 1994, and my search of them also found no indication Blumenthal ever made that claim in front of an Eyewitness News camera. I should point out, not every sound bite is transcribed, so it is possible what a person said to us is not listed in the computer ...In conclusion, I do not recall Blumenthal ever saying he served in Vietnam and our archives do not indicate he ever said it to us. However we can't be 100% sure."
Ted Mann of the New London Day: "I checked our archive and discovered I've never quoted him saying that, and neither has anyone else at our paper since it started keeping its archives digitally a decade ago. Personally, I've never been under the impression he served in Vietnam."
David Owens, Hartford Courant, "I heard him say he was a Vietnam-era vet, but never say or suggest he was in Vietnam.I was surprised by that video. It's kind of funny that the anonymous commenters are bashing us in the press for not revealing this before. There was nothing to reveal."
Kevin Rennie, Hartford Courant columnist: [Hasn't heard Blumenthal say he served in Vietnam] "I haven't been at many public events with Blumenthal. I was aware that he'd been a Marine. Given his age, I may have assumed that he had been in Vietnam. I have some vague recollection of wondering about this now and then when a public figure's service or avoidance of service in Vietnam erupted. It's only an impression prompted by your question, but I think I wondered at those times why he wasn't jumping into the controversy since he usually found that sort of thing irresistible. I was struck by Blumenthal's insertion of his service in a unit in New Haven during the March televised debate. It seemed like he was checking off a box of one of the things he intended to say in the debate, no matter what the questions. It was jarring, and I thought he might be trying to inoculate himself against the low murmurs that I'd heard some time before. "
What am I missing here in your concern about the NYT research and reporting?
And this from GENE LYONS (7/5/06): The New York Times arrogant? Goodness, yes. Condescending, too. During the decade the newspaper devoted to its farcical coverage of the Whitewater hoax, feeding out of Kenneth Starr's soft little hand like a Shetland pony, I experienced that condescension firsthand. Even confronted with dispositive documentary evidence that its Whitewater stories were bunk, its basic response never varied: We're The New York Times and you're not.
But left wing? Well, the Times, along with The Washington Post, led the 2000 "war on Gore" that basically gave Bush the presidency. Then-columnist and now executive editor Bill Keller actually quoted his 3-year-old daughter's opinion that the Democratic nominee was a stiff.
After 9/11, the Times, along with the rest of the newspaper consortium, buried its finding that had all the legal votes in Florida been counted in 2000, Al Gore would have been president.
Lest we forget, it was reporter Judith Miller's series of leaked, single-source "exclusives" touting Saddam Hussein's imaginary nuclear weapons accompanied by TV appearances by Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney carefully coordinated with Times publication dates that helped stampede the nation to war. Columnist Keller thought invading Iraq was a terrific idea.
So Blumenthal's culpability notwithstanding, The Times has little credibility. What a tragic collapse of journalistic integrity.
The man ACCIDENTALLY misrepresented himself at ONE event.
On numerous other occasions, he did NOT mispresent himself as someone who went to Vietnam, but rather as someone who served during the Vietnam era. Many reporters and local media back up that portrayal!
There is NO doubt that he misrepresented himself on that one occasion when he said that he served "in Vietnam". It happened because he misspoke though. It's just not credible to claim that someone would repeatedly tell the truth over and over again, and then suddenly LIE about it one time to one group.
He spoke in a statewide debate this past March, and explicitly said that he did NOT serve in Vietnam. How can you IGNORE these facts and jump to the conclusion you did?
And there's plenty of evidence that he did NOT want to deceive them.
Like when he said, in a debate a couple of months ago, "Although I did not serve in Vietnam, I have seen firsthand the effects of military action, and no one wants it to be the first resort, nor do we want to mortgage the country's future with a deficit that is ballooning out of control."
If he lied, if he had the intent to deceive, as you claim he has, why on god's green earth would have had publicly said that he did NOT serve in Vietnam in a public debate this past March?
He misspoke. It's clear.
And had the NY Times done the appropriate research and factchecking BEFORE they ran with this story (what was so urgent here, anyway, that they couldn't do their own research and watch the whole speech, for cripes sake), they wouldn't have pushed the story the way they did.
But was it a lie, or did he simply misspeak?
There's NO evidence it was anything other than him misspeaking!
The NY Times had ONE example of him saying he served "in Vietnam".
Put up or shut up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/13/connecticut-senate-2010-e_n_530932.html#comments
I put up, now for once you need to shut up, or admit you ARE WRONG. It was NOT a one time event as you claimed. The man himself said so.
I have acknowledged that REPEATEDLY on every thread before this one that has covered this topic, you dishonest hack!
You are the one who is wrong and will never admit it. I haven't been wrong yet.
He misrepresented where he had served ONCE, and once only, by saying that he had served "in Vietnam". Other times, he has phrased things in such a way that, although fully true, they might have misled people into believing that he served in Vietnam.
Those are the "few" occasions he spoke of.
There was only ONE time when what he said could have been a LIE! That is the time where he said that he served "in Vietnam". The other times are NOT lies. They might have misled people, but they aren't LIES. He said stuff about being aware of how difficult it was for servicemen returning from Vietnam. Some people assumed that he was ONE of those servicemen, but as I explained on another thread, ALL soldiers were potentially subject to disrespect - returning soldiers wore uniforms just like stateside soldiers to a civilian's eyes!
There's video, for god's sake. More than one, of him saying "when I came back from Viet Nam" or similar.
He talks about being spat on, which is purely urban myth. Viet Nam vets were not spat on, except by the VFW who tried to exclude them from their organization.
Do we really need another corporatist Blue Dog like Blumenthal? Did we learn nothing from our experience with Chris Dodd?
Are you REALLY that stupid that you think that a video can tell you if he simply misspoke or if he was lying?
Do you REALLY not understand the difference between a falsehood and a lie? A LIE has intent behind it, as I have already explained multiple times, troll.
He does NOT talk about being spat on. That's a LIE.
He does talk about servicemen being disrespected, and he says it in a way that easily could have misled people into thinking that he TOO was a returning soldier from Vietnam. But that same statement could ALSO mean that he simply felt empathy for them, as well as explaining that ALL servicemen were potential targets for abuse. Civilians against the war didn't ASK soldiers if they had just gotten back from Vietnam or if they'd served stateside before they started throwing epithats at them, you know.
You don't have a leg to stand on here.
MMFA and I have been right about this FROM THE START.
But the simple truth is, you're not.
Blumenthal:
It's you without the leg to stand on.
Embarrassing.
No he didn't, that's a lie.
No he didn't, that's a lie.
(source: Follow Up NYT Article )
And as for "MMFA and I"...nobody you are arguing with, as usual, is contradicting what MMFA has said. They are simply saying you are wrong, to which you have now replied with multiple personal attacks and desperate attempts to belittle your perceived attacker. Hell, for all your whining about personal attacks you led off the attacks this time by responding to a post that said "sorry but I've seen video" by calling the poster a liar and then a "doofus".
You need to take a break, wipe the spittle off your monitor, and calm down. You only make yourself look the fool and if you really think everyone thinks of you as part of MMFA in any way except a continually irritating presence in the comment threads...well, I hate to break your bubble but it just ain't so.