(Events like these in a sense are lobbying the corporate media for coverage.
No dice as the NY Times is not bound to cover anything it so chooses. What
next for anti-war activists regarding this as there has been almost no
publixcity outside of smoe smaller alternative outlets like Democracy Now!
MG)
http://www.fair.
Activism Update
New York Times Explains Winter Soldier Blackout
Public editor responds to concerns raised by FAIR
4/8/08
New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt has offered a response to media
activists who wrote to the paper about its non-coverage of last month's
Winter Soldier hearings. Hoyt's explanation is that reporters at the
Times had "not been aware of the group or its meeting," but likely
wouldn't have covered it if they had been aware of the event.
The idea that the Times was unaware of Winter Soldier is remarkable; the
paper's D.C. reporters were repeatedly sent press releases about the
events, the same ones that other media outlets received that did manage
to cover the event, ranging from Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! to the
New York Times' corporate sibling the Boston Globe.
Hoyt's letter in full:
***
Dear Reader,
Thank you for writing about the Winter Soldier event in Maryland last
month and its lack of coverage by the Times.
My assistant checked with various editors at the Times to see if there
was any discussion about covering the Winter Soldier meeting. The editor
in the Washington bureau who oversees national security coverage said he
had not been aware of the group or its meeting. The Times normally has
three Pentagon reporters. The meeting fell within their area of coverage,
and one of them probably would have been assigned had editors chosen to
staff the event. But one is on book leave, one was traveling with the
secretary of defense, and one was in Iraq covering the war. The Times
also did not cover an announcement the following day by Vets for Freedom,
a group supporting the war and claiming more than 13 times the membership
of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the group which organized Winter
Soldier.
One group was emphasizing what it charged were war crimes, war
profiteering and war mismanagement. The other group was protesting what
it charged was the failure of the media to report more fully on signs of
progress in Iraq, such as rebuilt schools and infrastructure.
News organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in
independent reporting from Iraq tend to prefer their own on-scene
accounts of the war, rather than relying on charges and counter-charges
at home by organizations with strongly held political viewpoints about
the war. Sincerely, Clark Hoyt
****
The Times' D.C. bureau editor's claim to have not heard of the hearings
is remarkable, given that the AP newswire carried a story on the
hearings, and IVAW has confirmed to FAIR that the D.C. bureau had been
sent three separate rounds of different IVAW press releases. In addition,
at least 150 Times staffers were sent press releases about Winter Soldier
by the Institute for Public Accuracy, a group that encourages inclusion
of overlooked facts and progressive perspectives in media coverage. Given
that media organizations operating on a small fraction of the Times'
budget were aware of and able to find the resources to cover these
hearings, the Times' D.C. bureau's plea to ignorance about the hearings
is all the more disappointing.
Meanwhile, Hoyt's justification of the Times failure to cover Winter
Soldier on the grounds that they also did not cover "an announcement the
following day by Vets for Freedom, a group supporting the war and
claiming more than 13 times the membership of Iraq Veterans Against the
War, the group which organized Winter Soldier," draws a far-fetched
parallel between a group presenting eyewitness testimony about atrocities
in Iraq and a group releasing a press release about media bias. (As a
group that often puts out press releases about media bias that don't get
covered by the Times, the comparison strikes us as rather absurd.)
Further, the size of IVAW and Vets for Freedom are not directly
comparable, as IVAW is a group of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars, whereas anyone can sign up on the Vets for Freedom website, which
stipulates that "non-veterans can also be members of Vets for Freedom."
Hoyt's claim that "news organizations like the Times, with its own
substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq, tend to prefer
their own on-scene accounts of the war" is akin to asserting that
reporters on the police beat prefer to write about crimes they have seen
themselves rather than talking to eyewitnesses. Given that Times
reporters, like all Western journalists in Iraq, have great difficulty
travelling freely outside the Green Zone, it is hard to imagine that they
could provide a full and accurate picture of the war without interviewing
people who have participated in it. And of course the paper does often
interview U.S. military personnel about what they've seen, though when
they are whistleblowers trying to call attention to what they describe as
"the human consequences of failed policy," the Times suddenly has much
less interest in what they have to say.
The New York Times' decision to assign one of its two available
correspondents to tour with the Secretary of Defense instead of hearing
the first-hand accounts of the Winter Soldiers demonstrates a very
strange notion of "independent reporting."
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