The Washington Post: When he left Iraq on Monday after surrendering authority to an interim government, it was with a somber air of exhaustion. There was no farewell address to the Iraqi people, no celebratory airport sendoff. Not satisfied with simply describing Bremer as leaving "quietly" the LA Times (link broken) called him a coward: L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator for Iraq, left without even giving a final speech to the country — almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year. Even if it was true that he didn't say a word, does this strike anybody else as disgraceful terminology for a "news story"? (Remember though, this is the peper Dan Loney reads. Explains a lot.) Problem is, they are both lying. In a nationally televised speech that was reportedly applauded all across Iraq, Bremer did indeed make a farewell speech, as reported by countless newspapers (HERE'S ONE ) and Iraqi sources. Will the Time be issuing Bremer an aoplogy for calling him a coward on their front page any time soon?
The Times needs do only that which serves their interest. If the Times has a leftist bias, then they gain no value in publishing an apology. If the Times thinks they are more effective if they are seen as credible, then they only need to issue an apology if their earlier uncredible (but not incredible, thus immediately laughable) story is somewhat noticed as such. The more the Times values credibility, the lower the threshold that the earlier story is noticed to trigger an apology. The tone of your challenge seems to call upon the honor of the Times, but such a call does not seem to properly acknowledge what the Times is. The Times lost readership with the Schwarzenegger stories, and they do not want to lose more readership. They see how poor reporting affects their operations. If there is very little attention to the story, an apology might just draw attention to their reporting. The Times will do nothing; this story is not well enough publicized.
The LATimes, which called Bremer a coward on the front page, has issued a "correction" (not an apology) on the bottom of page D-13: http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/...1170785.story?coll=la-news-custom-corrections As for the reason that "it was on Iraqi TV but not publicized to Western media" well Holy Handgrenades, I thought they were over there covering IRAQ!!!!! What they mean to say is that nobody in the Baghdad Hilton Bar heard about it.
Interesting. Reporting of the news seems to have very limited modes now. Basically cattle calls to microphones of government officials or cattle calls to designated representatives of "beret-wearers" fighting the "good fight" against whatever evil government is being supported by the United States at that time. The mode they seem to miss out on here is the mode of replicating common Iraqi interactions of with sources of information. The closest they come to common Iraqis is the Che Guevara-wannabees wearing berets. If news organizations were the intelligence agencies of major governments, they'd be failing the interest of their governments; so they must be failing our interests. The irony is that these news organizations are probably better positioned for the job of "cultural intelligence" than intelligence agencies, but they don't bother.
Glenn Reynolds has the kicker today: The departure speech which the LA Times said Bremer was too ashamed of himself to make and then later said that maybe he DID make it but he was on Iraqi TV and so their reporters couldn't be expected to lnow about it - Was carried on CNN. http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cach.../lt.01.html+Paul+Bremer+farewell+speech&hl=en So all their reporter sitting around the Hilton Hotel Bar watching Al Jazeera looking for good "Bush is criminal" material for his daily rant had to do was ask the bartender to turn the channel.
If the LA Times had any Integrity Left, It Be All Gone Now Even the rap community is upset! http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0325081sabatino1.html Well, at least the apology made the fron page: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-me-tupac27mar27,0,2043351.story?page=2