The New York Times has been pilloried this week by both MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and Fox News alike for its coverage of the Internal Revenue Service scandal, and the paper’s public editor thinks the critics have a point.
Times public editor Margaret Sullivan responded Friday morning to readers who wrote this week to complain that the newspaper has provided insufficient coverage of the latest development in the scandal, which centers around missing emails sent and received by former IRS official Lois Lerner.
One reader cited comments by “Morning Joe” regular Mark Halperin, who made an observation on the program Monday that was eagerly trumpeted on Fox News.
“I think with a different administration, one that was a Republican administration, this story would be a national obsession and, instead, it’s getting coverage here and a few other places, but it really deserves a lot more questions,” Halperin said.
The reader also mocked the placement of a story this week on the congressional investigation into the missing emails, echoing the outrage voiced by Joe Scarborough.
“This is why conservatives don’t trust national newspapers,” the “Morning Joe” namesake said Tuesday.
After allowing Times reporter David Joachim, who’s written a number of stories on the scandal, to defend the paper’s coverage, Sullivan threw the critics a bone.
“My take: The Times was somewhat late in beginning to cover the latest development about the lost emails,” she wrote. “My office had begun to field several days’ worth of reader protests on the lack of attention when the first story finally went online.”
But Sullivan also said that, “[d]espite the slow start and the quiet display of the subsequent stories,” the Times has “has given its readers insightful coverage of a situation heavily clouded by partisan politics.”
TPM reached out to the Times on Tuesday for comment on Scarborough’s criticism, but spokeswoman Eileen Murphy took a pass.
“We don’t typically comment on the placement of stories and we’re not going to comment on Joe Scarborough’s point of view on this,” she said in an email.
But this story is two years old–and what has been said from the IRS seems to hold together. Lerner probably had her political leanings, which is why she took the 5th, but is seems less like a plot than simple confusion over how to track the vast increase in 501 c 4 applications in 2010 and afterwards. The real problem is less about the IRS’s actions, or non-actions, but more about the about the 501 c 4 provision of the IRS code which has been abused increasingly by political groups to avoid scrutiny of their operations…
“This is why conservatives don’t trust national newspapers”
Um, conservatives don’t trust scientists or doctors or pretty much anybody who doesn’t confirm their worldview. Not that that will stop the NYT from bending over backwards to be “fair”.
Yes, even after the Times sat on the domestic surveillance story in the Fall of 2004, and thereby helped George W. Bush win re-election, conservatives are still convinced that the Times is nothing more than an attack dog for the Democratic party.
Basically, conservatives are not interested in any evidence that runs counter to their pre-conceptions. Which is a polite way of saying that they’re dumb.
Who gives a damn what Jethro Scarborough thinks. The Times, as they noted have given exactly the kind of coverage that this non-story deserves. It’s political and nothing more. What Scarborough and the rest of the sore losers on the right believe is nothing but sour grapes. They’re all still pissed that this President whupped their asses TWICE! Everything they say has to be viewed from that prospective. They’re now trying to paint Hillary as Mitt Rommney because they can see what’s coming. Another ass whuppin by another Dem!
says Halperin, instead of the pissant who-gives-a-flying phuck-nothing burger it is. Rs wants obsessions, they’re easy to exploit with enough air time, others want competence governance .