Daniel Pipes can’t understand why the Obama administration is liked by more Muslims than the Bush administration. Sure, it may (mostly) be better rhetoric these days but the little matter of starting countless wars in the Middle East may have something to do with the image problem: The New York Times ran a story today,…
Showing all posts tagged New York Times
Anonymity is (usually) the enemy of good journalism
At least somebody is awake at the New York Times. Thank you, Public Editor: The Times continues to hurt itself with readers by misusing anonymous sources. I have received complaints about recent articles in which unnamed sources were allowed to 1) accuse a real estate agent of racial discrimination, 2) provide a letter from a…
Now why would the Times want the world to know that America has no idea about Iran?
Who really benefits from this Sunday New York Times lead story (all from anonymous sources, of course)? Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according…
The “idealism” of Iraq and Afghanistan
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reminds his readers what the “war on terror” is all about: Unlike Afghanistan, the war in Iraq was, at its core, always driven more by idealism than realism.
How Beijing doesn’t trust its citizens to think for themselves online
The New York Times explains just one example of how China’s internet censorship regime works in reality: Jiaozuo, a city southwest of Beijing, deployed 35 Internet commentators and 120 police officers to defuse online attacks on the local police after a traffic dispute. By flooding chat rooms with pro-police comments, the team turned the tone…
The supposed paper of record recognises Arabs can also be peaceful
The New York Times issues a typically patronising article headline (and implies that usually, of course, Arabs are so violent): Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance.
Journalists shouldn’t be silenced by Singapore
An important essay by the New York Times’ Public Editor about the limits a Western news organisation should go to when appeasing dictatorships. I understand the dilemma but surely being able to write freely is paramount. And if one can’t write that, say, the leader of Singapore is an autocrat, then how much influence can…
Asylum seekers are all looking for a better life
The New York Times published a very helpful chart in 2007 that showed the mass movement of refugees around the world: Nearly 190 million people, around three percent of the world’s population, lived outside their country of birth in 2005. A look at the flow of peple around the globe.
Signs of life inside North Korea
After my book The Blogging Revolution was released, I was constantly asked why I hadn’t examined North Korea. I always said it was simply because the internet barely existed in the Communist nation. Now, via the New York Times, a glimpse: North Korea, one of the world’s most impenetrable nations, is facing a new threat:…
Google: we haven’t really shut-down our Chinese business
The New York Times praises Google’s decision to (finally) challenge China’s draconian censorship laws but Google’s David Drummond, the company’s chief legal officer, offers James Fallows at the Atlantic an insider’s view: It may not be quite obvious that this is not really a “shutdown” of either our operations in China or of our mainland…