The nation’s premier newspaper, the New York Times, is under attack from the government and many of its partisan adherents because of a report about the government’s use of bank records to track terrorists and terrorist organizations.
All of this is following a predictable pattern, although the vitriol of those attacking the Times, as Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports, is at a high level. Predictable to a lesser degree though still not very surprising is the report from the Boston Globe that a lot of this information has already been in the public domain — and the source has been the federal government itself. One wonders, then, why the attack on the Times has been so virulent.
The Times is a convenient target; a lot of people don’t like the Times anyway and would certainly be willing to believe that it has compromised national security. But the Bush strategy here may be like that of a baseball team manager arguing the call of the umpire; he knows he won’t get the call changed but hopes to intimidate the ump into giving him the next one. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
(Posted June 28, 2006)
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Tags: Boston Globe, Howard Kurtz