Woodstock 40th anniversary; New York Times coverage; Ayn Rand; Nightmare in the Catskills

This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of "Woodstock." We are supposed to celebrate "peace," "love" and other stuff in honor of this anniversary. Debbie Schlussel has the real story:

I really don’t care that the “greatest names in rock of the day” performed there. So what? And who cares if Jimi Hendrix played there? Look what happened to him just over a year later. Dead of a drug overdose and too much alcohol. Typical of the Woodstock idiots. They, the rockers, and the hippies, yippies, and other numbskulls making up the boomer generation at this infest-o-fest brought us free love . . . and STDs and AIDs, single mothers and baby mamas, and a whole new hipness to out-of-wedlock births that has brought us crime waves, sensitive men a/k/a wimps, and a whole lot of other problems. Their sexual mores brought us sky-high divorce rates and a rate of out of wedlock mothers–40%–that rivals many Western democracies.

They are the liberals who voted for Barack Obama and not too long before him, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter. They are the ones who made today’s consideration of socialized medicine possible.

Apparently Debbie didn't get the MSM/DNC memo (or she got it but was able to ignore it like the rest of us should).

In 2007 [in the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting], I wrote in detail about the changing way we view news stories after the initial event. I chronicled how the MSM/DNC line develops, after which all of the MSM/DNC outlets learn to stick to their story:

Years from now, we will forget that we were in the dark for so many days or hours in the immediate aftermath of the killings at Virginia Tech. MSM/DNC becomes more polished the more time passes in the wake of any news item. As various parts of the MSM/DNC "get their story straight," the MSM/DNC line becomes standard and can be reduced to a few soundbites. That is why immediate coverage of any major story is interesting. We have the chance the catch the MSM/DNC off guard.

The same is true of Woodstock. On August 18, 1969, the New York Times published an editorial highly critical of the gathering entitled "Nightmare in the Catskills." By the next day, the Times had apparently received the MSM/DNC memo and changed their position. Today, the Times' original editorial has disappeared down the memory hole. Other MSM/DNC outlets fell into line quickly also.

The definitive piece on Woodstock was written by Ayn Rand four months later. She not only summarized the social implications of the gathering but she chronicled facts that have been lost to history. Debbie Schlussel has summarized the negative consequences created by the participants, consequences from which we suffer today. Those consequences were easily predictable for anyone who had read Rand's piece - "Apollo and Dionysus."

In particular, Rand chronicled the hardships created for neighboring farmers and small businessmen by the Woodstock event:

Richard C. Joyner, the operator of the local post office and general store on Route 17B "said that the youngsters at the festival had virtually taken over his property - camping on his lawn, making fires on his patio and using the backyard as a latrine

.

Clarence W. Townsend, who runs a 150-acre dairy farm . . . was shaken by the ordeal. "We had thousands of cars all over our fields," he said. "There were kids all over the place. They made a human cesspool of our property and drove through the cornfields. There's not a fence left on the place. They just tore them up and used them for firewood" . . .

"My pond is a swamp [said Royden Gabriele, another farmer]. I've got no fences and they used my field as a latrine. They picked corn and camped all over the place. They just landed wherever they could . . . We pulled 30 of them out of the hay mow smoking pot . . . If they come back next year I don't know what I'll do," Mr. Gabriele said. "If I can't sell, I'll just burn the place down."

The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 71 [Signet edition] (quoting New York Times, August 20, 1969)

As Rand wrote, "No love - or thought - was given to these victims by the unsanitary apostles of love." Ibid.

The apostles of love have been enabled for decades since that event (much in the way summarized by Eugene Lyons in the Red Decade (referring to the 1930's)). The enabling and coddling has led that generation to give us the unsustainable welfare state of today with no thought of the consequences. As revealed by a New York Times interview with participants the following week, the participants had no thought of consequences for their own basic needs at the festival:

Q: What about food?
A: We brought a bag of carrots. And some soda.
Q: Did you expect to be able to buy more there?
A: We never really thought about it.

[As quoted by Rand, p. 73.]

In the same way, these same people are now supporting Obamacare without thinking about what will happen when they are denied medical treatment under the system of rationing that may soon be enacted.

No living, eating or sanitary facilities were provided; . . . "Festival food supplies were almost immediately exhausted . . . and water coming from wells dug into the area stopped flowing or came up impure. A heavy rain Friday night turned the amphitheater into a quagmire and the concession area into a mudhole. . . Throngs of wet, sick and wounded hippies trekked to impromptu hospital tents suffering from colds, sore throats, broken bones, barbed-wire cuts and nail puncture wounds. Festival doctors called it a 'health emergency,' and 50 additional doctors were flown in from New York City to meet the crisis." [There will be no "50 additional doctors" flying to our rescue under Obamacare - Salt.]
According to the New York Times (August 18), when the rainstorm came "at least 80,000 young people sat or stood in front of the stage and shouted obscenities at the darkened skies [a precursor to the anti-Christianity that pervades today's culture? - Salt] as trash rolled down the muddy hillside with the runoff of the rain. Others took shelter in dripping tents, lean-tos, cars and trucks . . . Many boys and girls wandered through the storm nude, red mud clinging to their bodies."

Rand, pp. 69-70

Has it ever occurred to you that it is not an accident, but the psychological mechanism of projection that has made people of this kind choose to call their opponents "pigs?"

Rand, p. 75

Who will the leftists shout obscenities at when they cannot receive medical treatment under Obamacare? The thought of such a scene makes it tempting to support Obamacare - except for the fact that I will suffer also.

Drugs were used, sold, shared or given away during the entire festival. Eyewitnesses claim that 99 percent of the crowd smoked marijuana; but heroin, hashish, LSD and other stronger drugs were peddled openly. The nightmare convulsions of so-called "bad trips" were a common occurrence. One young man died, apparently from an overdose of heroin.

Rand, p. 70

There is much more to Rand's article, especially the discussion of the attitudes of the participants, and their expectations of happiness without work and life without thought.



These details (especially the destruction of neighboring property) have largely been ignored in today's MSM/DNC memorials to the event. So have the subsequent disputes among the organizers of the event (over money). That the event was organized by wealthy heirs who spent the next few years fighting over money does not fit the MSM/DNC theme of peace, love and utopia that we are all expected passively to accept. Woodstock has become another object of worship among the MSM/DNC. Leftists expect their history books to treat Woodstock much the same way that Christianity treats the "Sermon on the Mount." They fail to realize that as more of the leftist agenda becomes law, civilization will continue to collapse. With the end of civilization comes the end of higher learning, including the faithful recording of history (even propaganda). Propaganda itself depends on the existence of the civilization that the left seeks to destroy.

As the left becomes more politically successful, the gods of leftism will fade into the memory hole along with the rest of our knowledge. By passing Obamacare, cap-and-trade, the stimulus bill, etc., the left relegates itself (and the rest of us) to oblivion. Future generations will know little or nothing of Woodstock, the first African-American President, the first hispanic Supreme Court justice, the Vietnam protests and other landmarks of leftism. They will know only that the greatest civilization ever to exist somehow collapsed, leaving them to struggle on a daily basis for their very survival.
------------------------------------------
Visit counter added August 16, 2009

This was predictable; Vicki Iseman; John McCain; What is coming next?

It looks like we have been suckered again. The New York Times delays a lobbyist-scandal story until after McCain takes the lead (all the while endorsing McCain) and then slams McCain now that it is too late to nominate someone else.

I write this out of bitterness and sadness over this disaster that need not have happened. We had the opportunity to support people that the NY Times was not spoonfeeding to us - even after Thompson dropped out. But we took the bait and now the Times has dropped the hammer, just like the polls that suddenly did a 180 last week.

I don't blame the NY Times. We know what the NY Times is and what it does. We should be used to it. [We don't get mad at crocodiles when we swim in the swamp.] I also don't blame the Republicans that have abandoned McCain. That was predictable, having happened many times in Republican primaries over the past 60 years after moderates were foisted on the party by the establishment. I blame those of us who jumped on the McCain bandwagon when Thompson dropped out, thinking McCain was "electable" based on polls or on the fact that the NY Times hadn't torn him a new one yet. You have all but handed the White House to Obama and gift-wrapped Iraq to either (1) Iran or (2) Al Qaeda [or both].

As bloggers, we have become good at remembering what happened yesterday. Let's try to apply that same technique to primary voting in the future (if there is one).
--------------
Michelle Malkin posts more details.
---------------------------------------

VICKI ISEMAN

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn [New York Times]

Our war has one of the lowest fatality rates of any war ever, and, when they get so low that even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid temporarily give up the quagmire bleating, the [New York] Times invents bogus stories to suggest that the few veterans lucky enough to make it out of Iraq alive are ticking time-bombs ready to explode across every Main Street in the land.

Mark Steyn - 1-19-08

Previous - New York Times and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

New York Times on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Thanks to "Death by 1000 Papercuts" for alerting me to The People's Cube version of a hypothetical New York Times front page from the Warsaw ghetto uprising during World War II.


My question is, why didn't the New York Times actually use these headlines in 1943? We know that the Times writes today's stories that way - equating good with evil, blaming both sides, accusing those who defend themselves of overreacting, siding with U.S. enemies, etc. etc.

The accepted version of media history is that organizations such as the New York Times were patriotic during World War II and became "skeptical" of the government during Vietnam and Watergate. Establishment historians note the general supportive attitude of newspapers during WWII. The same historians note rising "skepticism" over the following two decades on the part of the media and attribute such skepticism to misconduct on the part of the American government.

In fact, the New York Times has been part of the fifth column since before World War II. But there was a very good reason that the Times (and others) did not oppose official U.S. interests during WWII. The New York Times' version of the ghetto uprising would have been just as bad as it is depicted on the above graphic had the uprising occurred two years earlier.

Prior to June 1941, Germany was allied with the Soviet Union. In June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and threatened the workers paradise so admired by the left. The New York Times turned against Germany not out of a sense of patriotism or a lack of "skepticism," but out of loyalty to the Soviet Union. The Times and other media outlets saw a threat to their real ally. The U.S. just happened to be on the same side - thus making the Times appear patriotic.

Had Germany and the Soviet Union remained allied during the entire war, the Times' coverage of the war would have been very different. The graphic above is a good example. Leftist historians would today refer to WWII as a boondogle, where America learned the "limits of imperialism." Today, we would constantly hear warnings about not getting into "another WWII."

There is no real difference between the NY Times of Walter Duranty's day and the New York Times of today. The war coverage seems different because today we don't have the Soviet Union on our side to keep our newspapers loyal.

Quote of the day - New York Times [2000 Florida recount]

A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

New York Times - November 12, 2001

Quote of the day - Barbara Oakley

Yes, in a perfect world, there would be no guns, no mental illness and no Cho Seung-Huis. But the world is very imperfect. Consider that Britain’s national experiment with gun-free living is proving to be a disaster, with violent and gun crime rates soaring.

Barbara Oakley, professor of engineering at Oakland University writing in the NY Times on April 19, 2007

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

During the Vietnam War, New York Times scion Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger told his father that if an American soldier ran into a North Vietnamese soldier, he would prefer for the American to get shot. "It's the other guy's country," he explained.

Now, as publisher of the Times, Pinch does all he can to help the enemy currently shooting at American soldiers.

Ann Coulter

Justice for the New York Times

There is some justice in this report. This is part of a general trend.

Previous - lies of 2005.

Quote of the day - Charles Johnson - Little Green Footballs

This is the [New York] Times’ time-honored modus operandi—publish a shockingly biased story leaving out important information, then a day or two later, a belated correction to give them cover.

Charles Johnson - Little Green Footballs - 11-3-06

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Their (New York Times') reaction to al-Zarqawi's death was to lower the U.S. flag at the Times building to half-staff. (Ha ha — just kidding! Everybody knows there aren't any American flags at The New York Times.)

Ann Coulter - July 12, 2006

Classics of Conservatism - Part XVII - Herman Dinsmore - All the News that Fits

Click here and here for previous editions of Classics of Conservatism.

This month's edition of "Classics of Conservatism" is topical, as it provides background into the history of bias at the New York Times. The blogswarm that now engulfs the Times and has MSM/DNC apologists scrambling to defend the indefensible relates only to the tip of the iceberg.

Herman Dinsmore was a Times employee for 34 years, including 9 years as international editor. In 1969, he drew on his years of experience to chronicle the Times' bias and misleading reporting on a number of issues.



Much of what we think we know of Vietnam is the result of years of NYT propaganda that has found its way into the history books because the historians naturally looked to the "paper of record" when compiling their stories. Dinsmore's book exposed the journalistic malpractice that contributes to that "history" and allows us to rethink this and other episodes.

Dinsmore also writes extensively about the Warren report and how the Times blindly accepted its conclusions despite its obvious flaws.

I cannot remember much of the book (and the other subjects it explores), as it has been more than 17 years since I read it. But I believe that simple "bias" is no longer enough to explain the decades of 5th column activities by the Times and the rest of the MSM/DNC.

In 1969, Dinsmore's book was only one isolated voice being drowned out by the MSM/DNC chorus. Today, it seems almost quaint and unexceptional, given all that we know about the NYT and the new media's power to expose it. But the real value of "All the News that Fits" is the confidence is gives us in our own observations as we uncover the true depths of New York Times' and MSM/DNC perfidy.
--------------------------------------------
update - photos from today's protest at the Times' office in Washington D.C. - H/T Michelle Malkin

New York Times, Bill Keller, Swift program, Axis Sally, protest July 10

I have very little to add to the uproar/blogswarm that has engulfed the New York Times since the Times' revelation of U.S. Secrets, including the SWIFT program. Ann Coulter has compared the Times to Axis Sally and other WWII traitors.

Michelle Malkin writes of a protest planned for July 10, 2006.

The blogswarm has forced the Times to backpeddle. The SWIFT program was secret before it was not secret. H/T Michelle Malkin.

For a detailed description of Axis Sally's activities, check out Sally's attacks on American morale and Sally's exaggerated predictions of American combat casaulties that earned her a 12 year prison sentence. As I wrote here:

If we can force a little history into the mainstream discussion and rescue the concept of "treason" from the memory hole, we won't have to stand by helplessly while taxpayer funded professors tell their audiences how to commit acts of terror.

The same is true for newspapers who provide intelligence to Al Qaeda.
------------------------------------------------
update - protest today outside the New York Times offices in Washington D.C.
H/T Michelle Malkin.

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

When is The New York Times going to get around to uncovering an al-Qaida secret program?

Ann CoulterJune 28, 2006

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

The New York Times ran a Tom Tomorrow cartoon sneering about Americans who believe with 'unwavering faith in an invisible omniscient deity who favors those born in the middle of the North American land mass.' This is how liberals conceive of America: an undifferentiated land mass in the middle of North America.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

During the entire time this talented, intelligent, magnificently conservative black man [Claude Allen] held high positions in the Bush administration, he was mentioned in only 11 articles in The New York Times. (A small part of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller dies every time the paper is forced to mention any black top officials in the Bush administration. It might remind people that the most highly placed black in the Clinton administration was his secretary, Betty Currie.)

But since Allen was accused of stealing from department stores a few weeks ago, the Times has mentioned him in seven articles — including a major front page article on Monday, coverage more appropriate to the first moon landing. This makes Allen the first black alleged thief whose photo has ever appeared in The New York Times.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.

Ann Coulter

MSM/DNC Lie #1 of 2006

The New York Times, which posted the most outright lies during 2005 of any MSM/DNC outlet, is off to a fast start with the first lie of 2006. It seems that the Times has been caught posting a photo of a WWII artillery shell next to a damaged house in Pakistan, as proof that the Americans launched a missile at civilians.

first lie of the year











American Thinker comments at length. Did the Times know that the photo was staged? Did they care? They care now that they have been caught. "Without the internet and blogosphere, probably they would have gotten away with it."

As the fictional character from my previous post stated . . . . . "we can't be sure of anything we do . . . anything we see."

Click here for the list of lies of 2005 and the winning totals broken down by media outlet.

MSM Lies of 2005 - what does it mean?

On January 14, 2005, I began compiling the list of MSM Lies of 2005. [I began this list even before I began using the name "MSM/DNC."]

I repost the list here [following some new analysis]. As I stated in a subsequent post, there are many forms of MSM/DNC bias. The lie is only one form of bias, but it is the easiest to expose. In this list, I did not include simple mistakes. I included only those examples where the MSM/DNC made a false statement that was easily disprovable and where the MSM/DNC failed to correct the lie or repeated the lie on an ongoing basis. I also included instances where the MSM/DNC simply removed all reference to the initial lie without acknowledging the initial falsehood.

While this list may not prove the existence of a "conspiracy" on the part of the MSM/DNC it does prove that we cannot trust what we read or see.

The best analogy I could think of comes from an episode of the old Star Trek television series, where the crew found themselves on a planet inhabited by creatures that could create "illusions" in the minds of their victims.



No matter how the humans tried to fight the alien creatures, they could not trust their own observations. The illusions were too powerful and too constant. The humans did not know if their own efforts were successful or not, because the aliens could create illusions that masked the results of the humans' attempts to liberate themselves. One of the Enterprise crew finally summarized the situation as follows:

"Their power of illusion is so great we can't be sure of anything we do . . . anything we see."

That is the point of this post. We cannot be sure of anything we see in the MSM/DNC. There are many battles to come, including the elections of 2006 and 2008 as well as continuing efforts in the War. In each of these encounters we must always remember that we cannot trust the MSM/DNC's version of events. We cannot get discouraged by apparent setbacks or polls. We must adopt views and opinions only after the greatest consideration without undue weight in favor of what we might have seen on television or in a newspaper.

I counted 54 lies during 2005 [not counting the ones I missed].

The MSM/DNC outlet with the most lies was the New York Times (including its columnists) with 9 major lies during 2005. AP finished second with 6. Honorable mention to the Washington Post (and its columnists) and the L.A. Times with 5 apiece. CNN and NBC (including MSNBC) tied for fourth place with a disappointing three lies apiece.

[Some of the outlets are not identified in the blurbs below, so you may have to read some of the actual posts for details.]

With that hindsight-aided commentary out of the way, here is the original post as it developed during 2005.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The MSM war on truth and America never ends. I have decided to begin cataloging MSM lies as they appear during the year. I will add each one to this post so that we will have them in one place for future reference. This post should make interesting reading by December.

1) January 14, 2005. Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist Matt Davies falsely writes that Conservative pundits are "lining up" to defend Armstrong Williams and the administration. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

2) January 17, 2005. Seymour Hersh uses numerous falsehoods to back up his claim that the U.S. is preparing to invade Iran. This one is a little unique in that I wish it were true. I hesitated to include this one also because Seymour Hersh may not qualify as "mainstream". The MSM does not hesitate to use him when it suits their purpose. Here are some experts from the DOD press release:

The post-election meeting he describes between the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not happen.

The only civilians in the chain-of-command are the President and the Secretary of Defense, despite Mr. Hersh’s confident assertion that the chain of command now includes two Department policy officials. His assertion is outrageous, and constitutionally specious.

Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist. Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists. This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.

Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings. At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders. Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

3) January 12, 2005. The allegedly anti-war soldier that committed suicide-by-police. The MSM portrayed a gunman in California as desperate to avoid a return to combat, while failing to mention that he had never seen combat, was not headed for combat and had a history of violence before ever entering the military under murky circumstances:

There's just one thing wrong with the sympathetic spin about the anti-war Marine. It's all dead wrong.

This much is true about Raya: The 19-year-old man did in fact serve with the Marines' 1st Intelligence Battalion's motor transport unit as a driver in Iraq.

But contrary to the impression left by initial media reports, Raya had never seen combat. And he was not headed back to Iraq. He had been transferred to a new unit scheduled for deployment to Okinawa. "During our investigation, we found he wasn't due to go back to Iraq, never faced combat situations and never even fired his gun," Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Woodman said.

Raya was high on cocaine at the time of the ambush, according to police reports. He was reportedly affiliated with the prison gang Nuestra Familia. Investigators found photos of Raya wearing gang colors and a shopping list in his bedroom safe that included body armor, assault rifles, and ammunition.

The drug use, the gang ties, etc. - all went unreported in the MSM in the MSM/DNC attempt to undermine the war effort.

4. January 26, 2005. Washington Post uses the term "centrist". The Washington Post describes several Senators that voted against Rice's confirmation as "centrist", including Tom Harkin, Mark Dayton and Carl Levin. Who wouldn't the Washington Post consider "centrist" [aside from Republicans, that is]? Who would the Washington Post refer to as "leftist"?

5. Late January/ Early February 2005 - Easongate. CNN executive Eason Jordan falsely claims that American soldiers are targeting journalists in Iraq. MSM/DNC refuses to cover the story until Jordan is forced to resign by the resulting blogosphere storm.

6. January 30, 2005 - L.A. Times prepares slanted story and headline in advance of the election. The headline had to be scrubbed from later editions due to the success of the elections, but the original version was rescued from the memory hole by S & C.

I include this item not because a headline was "slanted" [that happens every day], but because the slanted headline was prepared in advance of the actual events, thus making the headline a lie. Also, the L.A. Times' subsequent attempt to make the headline disappear down the memory hole consitutes another lie.

7. January 31, 2005 [This lie actually occured in 2004, but the story didn't break until January, 2005] - Bill Moyers misrepresents old testimony of James Watt. See also here and here.

8. February 10, 2005 - BBC reports a bogus story of a man who was jailed by the Israeli Army for refusing to shoot children. The only problem is, the story is false. BBC later retracted the story, but refused to back off claims that Israeli policy is to shoot children. Hat tip to LGF.

9. Ongoing lie dating back to 2003 and continuing probably throughout 2005 - "There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Without getting into the arguments over the justification for the war, this myth is simply false. American and coalition forces found enough WMD's to kill more people than the number that died on 9-11. The real question is, what happened to the WMD's that we didn't find and that were taken away while we were debating in the UN in 2002 and early 2003.

update - The New York Times admits (on 3/13/05) the existence of WMD's in Iraq at the time of the U.S. led invasion, but only for the purpose of attacking Bush over something else. Once NYT has finished attacking Bush, the WMD's disappear down the memory hole.

update - What has been found in Iraq.

10. February, 2005. PBS documentary falsely claims that Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) had something to do with the investigation that discredited Alfred Kinsey and the Rockefeller Foundation.

11. February, 2005. NYT columnist Maureen Dowd falsely claims to have been denied a White House press pass while Jeff Gannon received such a pass. Dowd failed to tell her readers that she was talking about two different types of passes. Dowd was denied a permanent pass while Gannon received a daily pass (the type that anyone can get).

12. February 25, 2005. Washington Post cartoonist Ted Rall falsely attributes comments on LGF to LGF itself.

13. March 6, 2005. AP uses a video of an unrelated car to bolster the claims of the Italian communist Sgrena regarding the shooting by American troops.

14. March 7, 2005. CNN falsely translated the words of Italian communist shooting "victim" (Sgrena) so as to misrepresent the speed that Sgrena's car was traveling when it approached the U.S. military checkpoint. CNN then removed the mistranslation from the story without acknowledging the "error" after Michelle Malkin noted the false translation.

15. March 13, 2005. The Philadelphia Inquirer, as if on cue from Ted Rall (see lie #12), has falsely attributed quotes from the comments at LGF to LGF itself.

16. March 19, 2005. The Minneapolis Star Tribune falsely claims that Little Green Footballs tried to deny any credit to Powerline for Powerline's role in exposing Rathergate.

17. Late March, 2005. Person(s) unknown created and circulated a fake memo purporting to show that the Republican Senate leadership would like to capitalize on Terri Schiavo's murder for political purposes in the next election. The MSM/DNC immediately condemned the Republicans but fell silent once the story started to implode. Update. Although a Republican lawyer now has stepped forward and taken credit for the memo, The Washington Post's original story attributing the memo to Republican "leaders" remains a lie.

18. March 28, 2005. CBS falsely reports that Terri Schiavo died and included in the story the claim that her husband was at her side at the time of death. While it was a mistake, rather than a lie, to print the obituary before Terri's murder is complete, the lie occurs because CBS includes a reference to Michael remaining at her bedside. CBS has no idea whether that will happen or not. Michael's faithfulness to his wife (and fitness to decide whether she lives or dies)continues to be at issue in the ongoing proceedings. CBS has obviously made up its mind and doesn't mind fudging an obituary to see that it happens. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck.

19. March 31, 2005. The New York Times acts in concert with Columbia University to cover up abuse by Arab professors of pro-Israel students.

20. April 1, 2005. The AP lied in stating that Sandy Berger destroyed only "copies" of crucial intelligence documents and that the originals remain in the government's possession. In fact, each of the three copies that Berger destroyed contained unique notes that now are gone forever. "Obviously he reviewed the notes on the five documents and destroyed the three that contained information damaging to the reputation of the Clinton administration."

21. April 11, 2005. AP published a story this morning that described Senate confirmation hearings that have not yet taken place. All such references then disappeared from the online version once AP was outed by Drudge and Lucianne. Maybe this story will earn AP another Pulitzer.

22. April 12, 2005. L.A. Times columnist invents a story about the Bush administration dispatching William Bennett to the Vatican to drum up support for the Iraqi invasion two years ago. In fact, no such thing occurred and William Bennett made no such trip. Click here, here and here.

23. Mid - April, 2005. A Boston Globe writer invents a story about a seal hunt in Canada (including graphic detail) and passes it off as actual news. Click here, here and here.

24. April 29, 2005. MSM/DNC refers to Bush' proposal for different indexing of SS benefits for upper income recipients as a "cut" in benefits. That is not mere spin, it is a lie. See Michelle Malkin and the Loudest Cricket for a summary of the liers.

25. April 30, 2005. The L.A. Times edited a Reuters report by omitting the speed of Guiliani Sgrena's car as it was fired upon by American soldiers. The omitted piece of information was crucial to the entire story.

26. May 3, 2005. The Detroit News falsely reported that a terrorist has been deported, even though the terrorist remains in the U.S. This story follows months of biased coverage and whitewashing of the terrorist threat and terrorist prosecutions in Detroit.

27. May 12, 2005. CBS falsely reports that Ken Starr opposes the Republican position on the filibuster rule. In fact, Starr was strongly critical of the Democrats' tactics and CBS falsely attributed that criticism to the Republicans.

28. May 12, 2005. Sacramento Bee columnist resigns after her habit of inventing characters is exposed.

29. May 14-15, 2005. Newsweek runs a false story that U.S. soldiers flushed the Koran in front of Islamic detainees. 15 people die in the "Newsweek riots." Newsweek lied - people died.

30. Mid-May, 2005. Linda Foley, President of the Newspaper Guild, falsely claimed that American soldiers are targeting journalists in Iraq. She made this claim even after Eason Jordan went down in flames on a similar claim earlier in 2005. She made this claim even though a terrorist training manual places a high priority on terrorist killing of journalists.

31. June 28, 2005. AP wrote in the past tense about a Bush televised address that had not yet been delivered. AP, of course included its usual spin. H/T Michelle Malkin and LGF.

32. July 1st, 2005. Molly Ivins falsely claims that Americans have killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam Hussein ever did. Ivins later retracts and apologizes after she is outed by an indignant blog stormlet.

33. July 9, 2005. AP inserted words into a Tony Blair quote that Blair never said, thus weakening the anti-terrorism message in the wake of the July 7th attacks. [My original post misnumbered the lie as #32.] AP "corrected" a day later, but the damage was done.

34. July 15. 2005. L.A. Times falsely asserts that the White House Supreme Court short list is composed only of "White Men." This false assertions is later airbrushed without acknowledgment in the online edition. [The original post is misnumbered as #33].

35. July 6, 2005. The New York Times misquotes a military officer in an effort to make Bush' policies look bad and undermine the war effort. The Times would continue to feel backlash throughout July.

36. July 16, 2005. Seattle Times misrepresents a Senate report in an effort to rescue Joseph Wilson's reputation and salvage some sort of case against Karl Rove.

37. August 3, 2005. L.A. Times refers to the Federalist Society as "somewhat secretive." This statement is a lie.

38. August 12, 2005. New York Times finally attempts to spin the Air America scandal, but in doing so they edit out an admission from an Al Franken radio interview and they put words in Michelle Malkin's mouth.

39. August 15, 2005. The Detroit News inflates the numbers of "Palestinians" living in the Detroit metro area so as to inflate Muslim political influence.

40. August 16, 2005. Various MSM/DNC outlets, including NBC news, refer to the Israelis giving Gaza "back" to the Palestinians. But the "Palestinians" never had Gaza in the first place. Israel took it from Egypt in 1967.

41. August 19, 2005. Paul Krugman of the New York Times repeats the Florida recount lie. Krugman would spend at least one more column trying to explain this column.

42. September, 2005. Michael Kinsley reveals that CNN has coached its guests to sound angry during discussions of Katrina.

43. September 4, 2005. A Washington Post book review falsely claims that the biography in question accused Charles Colson of "cashing in" on his ministry. In fact, the book makes no such claim.

44. October 14, 2005. NBC's Today show stages a canoe stunt in which the reporterette pretends to be sitting in dangerous New Jersey floodwaters. In fact, her canoe was sitting on the ground in 4-6 inches of water.

45. October 16, 2005. ABC news falsely claims that weekend rioters in Toledo were white.

46. October 26, 2005. Warner Brothers movie "North Country" falsely claims to be a true story, yet claims to have been inspired by the Anita Hill affair, even though the events on which "North Country" are based took place 6 years prior to the Anita Hill affair.

47. October 26, 2005. USA Today alters a photo of Condoleezza Rice by adding demon eyes.

48. October 26, 2005. The New York Times published a small portion of a letter from deceased Corporal Jeffrey Starr, while omitting the remaining portions. The omitted portions supported the U.S. war effort. The Times sought to use the one small quoted portion as ammunition in its ongoing anti-war campaign.

49. October 29, 2005. The New York Times falsely represents Robert Novak to be a war hawk who sought to support the administration's war position and sought to obtain retribution against Joseph Wilson. Novak's anti-war position is well known.

50. November 11, 2005. MSNBC falsely claims that Bill O'Reilly advocates the terrorist destruction of San Francisco.

51. November 11, 2005. Chris Matthews misrepresents the administration's reasons for attacking Iraq and removing Hussein from power. The administration never claimed that Hussein planned 9/11, but Matthews and the MSM/DNC continue to use this strawman as a basis to snipe at the President.

52. November 19, 2005. Harper-Collins publishing house alters a photograph of an illustrator so as to satisfy anti-smoking PC concerns. The Columbia Tribune reported this on November 19th.

53. November 23, 2005. "Cartoonist" Walt Handelsman falsely claims that Bush and Cheney are smearing John Murtha's war record.

54. December 13, 2005. Various MSM/DNC outlets, including UPI and the San Francisco chronicle, falsely state that 30,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the American invasion. These outlets falsely attribute this statement to President Bush, who said nothing about civilians, but spoke of all Iraqi deaths, including military deaths. The Chronicle then changed its headline after the blogosphere pointed out the lie, but failed to note the change. UPI continued repeating the lie through December 30, 2005.

------------------------------------------------

MSM Lie # 49 - New York Times misrepresents Robert Novak's war views

Click here for the complete list of MSM lies of 2005.

In its continuing effort to achieve illegitimate mileage from the Libby indictment (what was that all about again?), the MSM/DNC has misrepresented Robert Novak's views on the war.

Novak's opposition to the war in Iraq is well known. Novak has become isolated from other conservatives because of these views. Yet the New York Times (registration required) refers to Robert Novak as a "conservative hawk" who sought to punish Joseph Wilson for Wilson's opposition to the war. In the Times' world of make-believe, Novak and the administration work together to silence critics of American foreign policy. NewsBusters has more details.

The Times needs to make Wilson into a martyr (in order to discredit our efforts at self-defense in the war on terror). It is easier for the Times to accomplish that goal if pro-war motives can be imputed to Novak. The Times has its story and it is sticking to it. The Times will not let truth get in the way.

MSM Lie # 48 - New York Times misrepresents Corporal Jeffrey Starr

I have carefully considered this item before including it on the list of lies of 2005.

As most of us [except for readers of the New York Times] know by now, The New York Times has been caught ommitting crucial portions of a letter written by a serviceman who was killed in Iraq. [H/T Michelle Malkin.] I usually try to include only false statements on this list [or doctored photos]. The Times' quotation was, in fact, accurate. But the deliberate omission of the majority of the letter created the opposite impression that the letter sought to convey. By quoting one sentence out of context, the Times misrepresented the meaning intended by the departed Corporal Starr. This practice is consistent with the Times' history.

The Times' misrepresentation is so blatant that inclusion in this list is justified. This list is intended for slam dunks, where there is no question as to the guilt of the MSM/DNC. In this case, the Times' guilt can be proven by simply comparing the quoted sentence with the entire document. One need not argue ideology or extraneous facts to prove bias in this case.

The Times' intent was to campaign against continued prosecution of the war. It is interesting to note that the Times and other MSM/DNC outlets allege that the public no longer supports the war. But they feel the need to wage a campaign of misrepresentation against the war anyway. If the public has already turned against the war, why does the Times bother to lie about the war and our soldiers?