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SMALL_TIMES

                                       January 24, 2010

There was a small thing on the cover of the
_New York Times_ once, yet another funny
little thing... compared to something like
Judith Miller pimping the Iraq war, it was
too small to take notice of, so I made no
notes on the point...

But still it bugs me, so I'm going to
describe it to get it out of my system.


The reason I remember this so well,
actually, is it happened soon after I
made an incautious casual remark to a
friend, something like "As far as I can     Really I think the Times is a
tell _The New York Times_ is a CIA          complicated beast than that,
front"--                                    but that's what I happened to
                                            say that day.  (I was probably
                                            thinking about the Gary Webb
As it happens, this remark sounded          "Dark Alliance" review.)
too crazy for this particular
friend, and he called me on it...               CIA_FRONT

   So when I saw a story on the front page
   of the times, above the gatefold, that
   mentioned the CIA, I looked at it more
   closely than usual.

   The really remarkable thing about this
   story is that there was nothing remarkable
   about it: The CIA had released a report
   which the story paraphrased.  There didn't
   seem to be anything interesting about the
   report; There was no sense that this was
   part of some controversy; there was no
   attempt made to place this in any sort of
   context; there were certainly no comments
   from any independant CIA watchers or
   critics.


       Front page of the times.
       Above the fold.
       Dead center.                 You might guess "slow news day"
                                    but I don't think there's any
       What was that about?         day that's that slow.

                                       One does not want to
                                       underestimate the power
                                       of laziness to undermine
                                       journalism, but couldn't
                                       the author have thought
                                       of someone, anyone, to
                                       phone for a quote about
                                       what they thought about
                                       the report?

                                       Why wasn't the whole thing
                                       buried on page 27?


          Call me paranoid if you like,
          but it looks an awful lot like
          someone wanted to earn some
          brownie points...

          It certainly didn't look like
          someone was trying to sell
          newspapers.

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