I live in NYC so there's little chance that I'm going to stop reading the Times. It's too vital a source for things like the op-ed and letters pages, sports, travel, the metro section, the magazine, etc, etc. I like it for all the reasons that people like their local papers.

But I have to say, if I didn't need or want the Times for these things, I would stop buying it. The larger -- and obivous -- issue that this string of misfortune and stupidity raises is that of whether or not the Times remains trustworthy as source of unfettered news. Lately, it doesn't really seem like it. In my heart of hearts I still feel like they are making simple, hubristic mistakes and not out-and-out fudging facts by withholding stories or being willfully shoddy in their reporting and/or editing. I still think they are not quite bona fide propagandists, but the cynic in me is screaming otherwise. Besides, does it really matter, when we're talking about the kinds of things that we're talking about -- war, death, treasure, morality -- what the Times' intentions have been? Their actions DO amount to propaganda. I for one am tired of getting played.

One thing I find curious in this whole drama is the notion of the Times' readers. We have had to endure a lot of hand wringing about how the Times has failed its readers. Who are the Times' readers? It's such a benign word, "readers," and it automatically makes us think of ourselves, as if we were the devoted readers of a crime serial. Yes, I am a reader, as are many of the people who ride the subway to work every morning. But what we forget, as we see ourselves in the reader-mirror, is that the Times, the paper of record, is read by everyone! Diplomats, heads-of-state, apparatchiks, wonks, policy-makers, generals, CEOs -- that is, the establishment class of this and many other countries. Furthermore, for smaller papers, online reporters, bloggers and the like, the Times is a source! Many, many articles -- of reportage and faith -- are based on Times pieces. So when the Times lets down its readers it's quite simply letting down a large portion of the world!

The Times and the president, along with Republicans in general, are on a strange parallel path at the moment. It seems that for every three indignities the latter must suffer, the former must suffer one. Will it continue? I hope not. While I don't root for the president and his party, I continue to root for the Times, in spite of the fact that the old lady is pissing me off these past few years.

Making matters worse, and in spite of a triple-overtime win, the Knicks still suck. So ......

At the time of the run up to the Iraq war, one of the people who ran Saddam's nuclear WMD program before the first gulf war gave an interview to The Toronto Star. In that interview he indicated that the nuclear portion of the WMD program had been dismantled and he thought that it would take years maybe a decade for the Iraqi regime to reconstitute the nuclear portion of the program. He did indicate that the biological portion could be revived in a shorter timeframe. Point is that there was a lot of evidence that Saddam was not close to having a nuclear weapon. But this of course did not support the effort to go to war and was ignored.

We have learned that throughout the election of 2004 The New York Times (or at the very least, their reporter Judith Miller) remained mum concerning vital information in the Valerie Plame affair--sources that reveal that the leak had indeed come from the White House. Miller withheld this information from readers even as John Kerry was being smeared for being not as trustworthy as Bush. (So, apparently, did Matthew Cooper at Newsweek.)

Now it appears probable that the Times also sat on a story about unlawful wiretapping before the election. (If the story was gathered before the election, as Calame seems to suspect it was.) There are other possible explanations for why they withheld the story, yet I can't help suspecting that the rationale for their silence in these two cases mirrors their reason for refusing to publish a story on the president's back bulge during the first presidential debate: The paper did not want to appear to be doing anything that might influence the results of the election. (Somewhere along the way the Times' editors seem to have picked up the notion that, like the characters on Star Trek, they shouldn't let their actions influence human history.) So they just left their readership in ignorance.

At some point, ommitting information can become advocacy, too. In this respect, the Times has been as good a friend to the adminstration as Fox News.

In order to get a quick refresher on government conspiracies I recently re-viewed the movie Three Days of the Condor with Robert Redford as the analyst/citizen who stumbles across a secret illegal plot and Cliff Roberston as the CIA deputy director who tries to convince Redford to keep the secret.

Redford lures Robertson to meeting in front of the New York Times building and tells Robertson that he (Redford) has given all the information to the Times who will tell the story to the world. Robertson, after a moment's hesitation to scold Redford, closes the movie with the admonishment: "How do you know they'll print it?"

It was a nice reminder, especially in light of the current revelations of the Times not printing information they seemed to know. But I can't assume that fiction predicted truth in this wiretap case, because we really don't know how many of these little secrets the Times has neglected to publish over the decades. Liberal media indeed...

New York Times: Liberal Editorials, Conservative News

Washington Post: Conservative Editorials, Liberal News

I find it easier to disregard editorials than the headlines so I stick to the Post. But both papers have been Bush patsies.