6.07.2009

NYT Doing Cheney's Bidding

(via Andrew Sullivan) The NYT ran a story yesterday essentially claiming that all the DOJ lawyers were in agreement that the brutal interrogation techniques were legal. The report was based on some leaked emails written by Dpty. AG Comey in an obvious effort to defend Cheney's position ... and the NYT uncritically bought it. Glenn Greenwald has a good summary on how the emails really show the opposite.
Already this morning, here is George Stephanopolous' Twitter reaction to the NYT story:

Any rational and minimally well-informed person who actually read the Comey emails would walk away with the exact opposite point -- what is "stunning" was how extreme was the pressure from the White House to issue these memos and how compliant DOJ lawyers were to White House dictates. But that's how our media works: anonymous government officials tell them what to say; they write it down uncritically; and it then becomes conventional wisdom regardless of how false it is.

3 comments:

Mike Smith said...

The headline is amusing. Why would the NYT have any stake in "doing Cheney's bidding" on this issue? I don't get it. What am I missing?
What is the motive for NYT on this?

Syd O said...

Can we be classified as a "failed state" yet?

Anonymous said...

To Mike Smith: I don't think he is arguing that the NYT is doing Cheney's bidding, but rather that their reporter failed to interview multiple sources and accepted what the source who insisted on anonymity said at face value. It's a case of laziness rather than cynicism.

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