Signs of the Times

The mainstream media’s newspaper of record admitted late Saturday that one of its reporters fabricated part of a news story on Hurricane Katrina relief. Saying his paper “flunked” the test of basic journalistic fairness, New York Times public editor Byron Calame said Alessandra Stanley’s September 5 report claiming that the Fox News Channel’s Geraldo Rivera “nudged” an Air Force relief worker out of the way so he could film himself rescuing a Katrina victim had been made up out of whole cloth.

Stanley’s bogus report continues a pattern at the “Old Gray Lady” of making up the news. Two weeks ago, columnist Paul Krugman finally was forced to admit that he falsely claimed media recounts in Florida showed Al Gore winning the 2000 presidential election. In August, a Times profile of Hillary Clinton changed a quote first reported by NewsMax where Clinton said she was “adamantly opposed to illegal immigrants.” In the toned down and doctored up Times version, Clinton’s opposition was to “illegal immigration” rather than the immigrants themselves—making for a very different story.