Clark Hoyt, The New York Times‘ public editor, criticized the newspaper over the weekend for taking too long to recognize the importance of the video sting that caught ACORN workers telling a right-wing activists posing as a pimp and prostitute how to deceive the government.
“It was an intriguing story: employees of a controversial outfit, long criticized by Republicans as corrupt, appearing to engage in outrageous, if not illegal, behavior,” Hoyt wrote. The Times, however, “stood still.”
Why? Some editors told Hoyt they didn’t know about the story — though the videos were getting lots of play on FOX News, YouTube and elsewhere.
“Nearly a week after the first video was posted, the Times took note of the controversy, under the headline, ‘Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe,'” Hoyt wrote — and “by stressing the politics, the article irritated more readers.”
Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”
That last bit’s sure to be unpopular — and the target of excoriation — in much of the blogosphere. At Neo Neo-Con, this was called “an excellent demonstration of their profound cluelessness and boundless contempt for the reading public.” And this from Michelle Malkin:
So, get this: The Times has now assigned an anonymous editor to “monitor opinion media” so the effete journalists don’t get caught flat-footed again. But they won’t identify the editor because they don’t him or her getting e-mails from the public (heaven forfend) and they don’t want him or her getting feedback, criticism, or tips from the blogosphere (the MSM must be shielded from the angry mob). Snort.
Imagine there’ll be plenty more where this came from…
