Gibbon; Rome / U.S. parallels

"A law was thought necessary to discriminate the dress of comedians from that of Senators." Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol II, p. 495.

MSM Lie # 38 - New York Times and Air America

I have said very little about the Air America scandal thus far, as other bloggers have provided thorough coverage. The New York Times has dutifully ignored this story, as we expected it would. But now the New York Times has engaged in a lie to help downplay its significance. In what Michelle Malkin refers to as a "Dowdification", the Times edited and shortened damaging statements from an Al Franken radio interview:

The NYTimes reports:

"I don't know why he did it," Mr. Franken said, according to a transcript of the broadcast made by the Department of Investigation. "I don't know where the money went. I don't know if it was used for operations. I think he was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul."

Here's what Franken actually said (via audio at Brainster's Blog and transcript
at Brian Maloney, who busted this story wide open in the blogosphere the Times sneers at):

I don't know why they did it, and I don't know where the money went, I don't know if it was used for operations [softer, especially fast], which I imagine it was. I think he was robbing Peter to pay Paul.

H/T Michelle Malkin for the side-by-side comparison of the transcript and NYT "version."

The Times also misquoted Michelle Malkin and left out other key facts. H/T Brian Maloney.

I wrote earlier that the New York Times faced a difficult choice:

The New York Times is faced with an impossible dilemma (much like CBS in September, 2004). Either (1) continue to ignore the scandal and face further erosion of credibility and loss of relevance or (2) acknowledge the scandal (with its best leftist spin) and toss Air America to the wolves. MSM/DNC eventually was forced to chose ("forced to choose" ???) option #2 during Rathergate and the blogosphere grew in power and influence. So far in this scandal, MSM/DNC is choosing option #1.

The Times now appears to be drifting into the second option. It has officially acknowledged the scandal after 15 days, but has done so with an outright lie. If we can spread the word of the Times' latest perfidy, the Times will not get the benefit of having acknowledged the scandal. The scandal may drag the Times further down even after the Times (sort of) abandons its crusade to remain silent.

Click here for lies # 1-37 of 2005. The NYT is responsible also for ## 9, 11 and 35.