China, Paper on How to Bring Down USA Power Grid: All a Big Misunderstanding?

It'd be nice if what's happening in China is all just a big misunderstanding. Something that a little chat over tea could straighten out.

That would be nice.

I'm old enough to remember the 'good old days' of the sixties, when idealistic kids kept hearing messages like this oldie:

"...Nothing to kill or die for.
And no religion, too.
Imagine all the people.
Living life in peace..."
"Imagine" (1971)

Groovy.

I'm not terribly nostalgic about the sixties - or the fifties. Or any period I've experienced. My memory's too good. They've all had their pleasant and unpleasant aspects, just like today.

Which brings me to a news item involving China. Bear in mind, this is in today's New York Times: Hardly a rabble-rousing ultra-conservative right wing hate monger like [fill in your choice of the newer crop of Information Age news services].

"Paper in China Sets Off Alarms in U.S."
The New York Times (March 20, 2010)

"It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.

"Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because 'Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.'

"When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had indeed published 'Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid' in an international journal called Safety Science last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential vulnerabilities.

" 'We usually say "attack" so you can see what would happen,' he said. 'My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.' And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang's work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.

"The difference between Mr. Wang's explanation and Mr. Wortzel's conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction...."

"...In an interview last week about the Wang paper and his testimony, Mr. Wortzel said that the intention of these particular researchers almost did not matter.

" 'My point is that now that vulnerability is out there all over China for anybody to take advantage of,' he said.

"But specialists in the field of network science, which explores the stability of networks like power grids and the Internet, said that was not the case.

" 'Neither the authors of this article, nor any other prior article, has had information on the identity of the power grid components represented as nodes of the network,' Reka Albert, a University of Pennsylvania physicist who has conducted similar studies, said in an e-mail interview. 'Thus no practical scenarios of an attack on the real power grid can be derived from such work.'

"The issue of Mr. Wang's paper aside, experts in computer security say there are genuine reasons for American officials to be wary of China, and they generally tend to dismiss disclaimers by China that it has neither the expertise nor the intention to carry out the kind of attacks that bombard American government and computer systems by the thousands every week...."

I think The New York Times deserves credit for standing by its convictions. Repeating part of one of those (too?) long excerpts:

"...It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction...."
(The New York Times) [emphasis mine]

There's nothing in that sentence that's inaccurate. There is "hostility between the United States and China", and it's quite true that "a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction."

But note the 'it takes two to tussle' point of view. If there is "hostility between the United States and China", there can't be one side causing the hostility - unless it's America. And in this case, I don't think even The New York Times could publish that and be taken seriously.

And then there's that wonderful phrase about "misunderstanding". In context, it's fairly easy to imagine that intolerant, racist, xenophobic America is likely to misunderstand the nice people who benevolently see to the welfare of the masses in China.

Or, not. I can't see into the minds of the NYT news editors, and so can't tell for sure what they 'really' meant.

This may mark me as a hide-bound intolerant 'poor, uneducated and easily led' radical right-wing conservative extremist: but on the whole I'd rather live in America, than in China. This is a country people are trying to break into. ("A Reporter Escapes the Taliban, Monks Escape China" (June 20, 2009))

Other related posts:

• "Google Pulling Out of China? I've Heard Worse News"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 14, 2010)
• "China. Hackers. Cyberattack. Again."
  (February 22, 2010)
• "Cyber Attacks Came From China - Again"
  (February 19, 2010)
• "'Everybody Knows' That Americans are Arrogant"
  (February 17, 2010)
• "News Stories You're Not Supposed to Know About"
  (December 31, 2009)
• "Haiyang Zhu Pleads Guilty in Decapitation of Xin Yang: Which Goes to Show Something"
  (December 22, 2009)
• "Empire State Building Goes Red and Gold for People's Republic Anniversary"
  (September 30, 2009)
• "China Shot 12: Don't Worry, They're 'Mobsters' "
  (July 19, 2009)
• "Cyber-Attacks 'No More Harmful than Spam' - So Far"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "Cyber-Attack Started July Fourth: Common Sense, Security, and the War on Terror"
  (July 10, 2009)
• "Uighur Riot? Revolt? Foreign Separatists? Depends on What You Read"
  (July 10, 2009)
• "A Reporter Escapes the Taliban, Monks Escape China"
  (June 20, 2009)
• "Tiananmen Square Commemoration in Hong Kong: No Tanks"
  (June 5, 2009)
• "Tiananmen Square 20th Anniversary: A Losing Battle for Traditional Information Gatekeepers"
  (June 3, 2009)
• "Chinese Anti-Carrier Missile: Cause for Concern"
  (March 31, 2009)
• "Cyberspy Network Hacked 103 Countries' Systems"
  (March 29, 2009)
• "Thai Police, Punctured Protesters, and Exploding Tear Gas from China"
  (October 13, 2008)

And click "China" in this blog's label cloud.

New York Times Prints Ersatz Letter, or All the News That's Fit to Fake

I'm not exactly a fan of The New York Times. More accurately, I regard it as a rather insular hometown paper, representing the views and interests of the town's better sort. Nothing wrong with that. But I think it's a mistake to regard a hometown paper as America's newspaper of record, even when the town is New York City.

That said, I think that today's SNAFU with a letter (not) sent by the mayor of Paris getting published was an embarrassing mistake: the sort of thing that could happen anywhere.

Incredible but Not True: The Mayor of Paris Takes an Interest in New York State Politics!

A letter, presumably from Bertrand Delanoë, Mayor of Paris, arrived at The New York Times this morning. It was in reaction to an article in The New York Times, and expressed some very definite opinions about Caroline Kennedy's efforts to take Hillary Clinton's Senate seat: providing that Clinton gets a position in the Obama administration:

"As mayor of Paris, I find Caroline Kennedy’s bid for the seat of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton both surprising and not very democratic, to say the least. What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton’s seat? We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling...."

My understanding is that the letter was written in English: a pretty good idea for anyone writing to an American newspaper. The Parisian mayor, though, is French. An employee of France-Amerique, a French language monthly based in New York City, was what the Associated Press called "skeptical."

" 'When we read the letter it just sounded very surprising, the choice of words sounded very surprising,' he [Editor-in-chief Jean-Cosme Delaloye] told The Associated Press. 'When we called Paris to verify the information ... they were very surprised.' " (Associated Press)

France-Amerique broke the story on its website, and The New York Times sprang into action. Someone at the paper called Paris, and discovered that the letter was bogus. Fake. Ersatz. A forgery. Not really from the mayor.

Credit Where Credit is Due: The New York Times, an Apology, and an Admission of Error

My hat's off to The New York Times: In addition to apologizing to the Parisian mayor, the paper published an apology to its readers, and an explanation, in an "Editor's Note."

The New York Times' "Editor's Note" concludes, "This letter, like most Letters to the Editor these days, arrived by email. It is Times procedure to verify the authenticity of every letter. In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë's office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

"We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.

"We are reviewing our procedures for verifying letters to avoid such an incident in the future."

Related post:

• "The New York Times, Insularity, and Assumptions"
  (October 21, 2008)

Forgery, news and oops:

• "NY Times published fake letter from Paris mayor"
  Associated Press (December 22, 2008)
• "Editors’ Note "
  The New York Times (December 22, 2008)
• "Kennedy, Seen From Paris"
  The New York Times (December 22, 2008)

Bush Approves Secret Orders! Warrantless Wiretaps! Liberties in Danger!

Or, not.

'Everybody knows,' in some circles at least, the CNN works for the Democratic party, and FOXNews is a tool of the Republicans. And, my guess is that quite a few people still believe that The New York Times publishes "all the news that's fit to print."

That slogan is true, in my opinion, if you recognize that The New York Times is more New York City's hometown paper, than America's newspaper of record. But I'm getting off-topic.

The New York Times Breaks Story Favorable to George W. Bush?!

"Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries" (The New York Times (November 9, 2008)) seems to be the headline that started this news story. Since 2004, "The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials."

Wow.

Details of a highly-effective policy, which probably saved hundreds of lives, carried out by the Bush administration. And in The New York Times, of all places. Actually, this "broad, secret authority" may have saved thousands of lives. Quite a few people didn't get out of New York City's World Trade Center in time: and there's no reason to assume that Al Qaeda isn't trying for a sequel.

Wait a minute. Terms like this aren't viewed the same way by all people:

• "...broad, secret authority..."
• "...a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States..."
• "...the Bush administration had already granted America's intelligence agencies sweeping power..."
• "...warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and electronic communications..." (not exactly 'warrantless' - I've discussed this before)

And, "CIA" was mentioned three times in two paragraphs.

At first glance, I saw the article as an out-of-character affirmation of the George W. Bush administration's no-nonsense approach to keeping Al Qaeda from killing more Americans.

But, I regard Al Qaeda as a bigger threat than the FBI, the CIA, and the Republican party put together. Not all people see the world that way. If I take my mind on a journey back to the coffee shop on campus, this article reveals a plot by the 'diabolical' Bush to steal our freedom and endanger the world with his militaristic and intolerant ways. Just like Richard Nixon.

Viewed that way, the article makes a lot more sense.

It Gets Weirder

The New York Times with a story that some guy in Minnesota could see as pro-Bush is just the beginning of the strangeness.

CNN Isn't Covering This?

The last I checked, a couple minutes ago, I couldn't find mention about Bush's secret orders (Rumsfeld's, really, but with White House approval). There was "Bush leaving office more unpopular than Nixon" (CNN (November 10, 2008)), though. I suppose that being able to boast that a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey got 76% of a sample to disapprove of George W. Bush may be more important than secret orders.

FOXNews IS Doing a Bush Expose?!

"Report: Secret Order Lets U.S. Strike Al Qaeda Anywhere" (FOXNews (November 10, 2008)). That does make sense, since FOXNews emphasizes how the order made it possible for the American military to stop Al Qaeda in places that would normally be safe havens. And, significantly, ignores the threat posed by Nixon-style wiretaps of our private telephones by the CIA.

Across the World, It's More Business As Usual

The Australian, BBC, and Reuters covered the story more routinely, although without The New York Times' relevant focus on the CIA and other threats to liberty and privacy.

Am I being unfair? Maybe. A little. Just a little.

But I think how this story was - and wasn't - covered is a good example of why it's a good idea to study the news: not just read it.

Related post:

• "Bush Administration Secret Orders Revealed: No Hiding Place for Al Qaeda"
  (November 10, 2008)

In the news:

• "Report: Secret Order Lets U.S. Strike Al Qaeda Anywhere"
  FOXNews (November 10, 2008)
• "Pentagon used secret authority to strike Qaeda: report"
  Reuters (November 10, 2008)
• "US 'in secret overseas strikes' "
  BBC (November 10, 2008)
• "George Bush ran secret overseas attacks"
  (November 11, 2008)
  (11th?! Remember the International Dateline. It probably was the 11th in Australia when "...Times reported yesterday..." was written.)
• "Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries"
  The New York Times (November 9, 2008)

The New York Times, Insularity, and Assumptions

"...I don't really care what The New York Times thinks...."
Cindy McCain, in an interview with Greta Van Susteren, from "On the Record," October 20, 2008.

This isn't a political post. It's about The New York Times, and why it's important to pay attention to the news: not just read it.

As my posts sometime do, this one got longer than I'd planned. This may help you find your way around:

• The New York Times: A Fine Old Family Business
• The New York Times and the News: You Can't Please Everybody
  
• Make a Few Little Mistakes... Embarrassments at The New York Times
  • Famine? What Famine?
  • Nazi, Schmazi, I'm Not Biased
  • We Can't Criticize Him, He's, Well, You Know
  • She Wrote WHAT?!
• 'All the News We Feel Like Printing'
• From the Pier-Bound Shores of Chelsea to the Austere Grandeur...

Back to Cindy McCain. I don't blame her for saying, "I don't really care what The New York Times thinks." Under the circumstances, that's a rather mild statement.

America's 'newspaper of record' has taken some care to educate the American public about Cindy McCain's history of drug addiction, theft, and miscarriages ("Behind McCain, Outsider in Capital Wanting Back In" (October 17, 2008)). Under the best of circumstances, most people don't like that sort of thing being published. Again.

Cindy McCain's lawyer has asked why The New York Times hasn't been as active in pursuing Barack Obama's drug dealer. I don't think there's much question that the lawyer is biased. A lawyer in that position is supposed to be biased.

There may be a perfectly good reason why I haven't been able to find anything in The New York Times about Barack Obama's drug connection, apart from "Clinton Apologizes to Obama for Drug Comment" (December 13, 2007). After all: Obama wrote about the dealer in his book, "Dreams of My Father;" it was a long time ago; and nobody seems to care about it. Nobody important, anyway.

I brought up the Cindy McCain, drug addict / Obama, insulted candidate, matter because it serves as a pretty good introduction to New York City's hometown paper.

The New York Times: A Fine Old Family Business

I have read, and believe, that many people view The New York Times as America's newspaper of record. The Times unquestionably has a fine-looking front page, a history of supporting Pulitzer Prize winning reporters, and is published in New York City.

These factors give weight to its motto, "All the news that's fit to print."

The New York Times has a long history, too. It was founded in 1851. Back then, the town I grew up in was a crossing on the Red River of the North.

One family has owned The New York Times Company since 1896. It's active ownership, too: The last I heard, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., is still chairman. That family business has done pretty well over the decades. They own 18 newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe.

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The New York Times and the News: You Can't Please Everybody

A FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - neat, huh?) report shows, you can't please everybody. That FAIR report, and others, show that

• Conservatives think the NYT is too liberal
• Liberals think the paper is too conservative
• Activists think it misses the important point
  • (theirs, of course)

It's just as well that someone documented that, but I think it's fairly obvious. In any but the smallest and most homogeneous communities, a newspaper can't please everybody.

A Rasmussen poll, reported in July, 2007, gave some interesting numbers. In that poll, this is how Americans see The New York Times:

• 40%: Biased in favor of liberals
• 11%: Biased in favor of conservatives
• 20%: Reports news without bias

Public opinion polls are pretty good at showing what people believe, but not so hot for uncovering objective truth. In Egypt, for example, 43% of the people "know" that Israel blew up New York City's World Trade Center on 9/11. In Turkey, 36% think that the American government did it, and in Jordan, only 11% think it was Al Qaeda. They can't all be right.

The Rasmussen poll does show that Americans have a strong tendency to see The New York Times as liberal. I think there's a good reason for that.

The New York times is a newspaper that's been owned by one family for over a hundred years, and started out as New York City's hometown newspaper. To a great extent, it still is the Big Apple's hometown paper.

Now, a very short, and selective, look at The New York Times' blooper reel.

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Make a Few Little Mistakes... Embarrassments at The New York Times

Like any organization that is run by human beings, The New York Times has goofed now and then.

Famine? What Famine?

One of its Pulitzer Prize winning reporters, Walter Durante, wrote accounts of Stalin's forward-looking industrialization policies. They made the Soviet Union look so good, it's almost as if Mr. Durante was repeating what the Stalin administration wrote about itself. Which, it turns out, was pretty close to what he'd been doing.

That came out much later. In Durante's day, the fuss was mostly over how he missed a Ukrainian famine. Millions of people died, partly because of General Secretary Stalin's policies.

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Nazi, Schmazi, I'm Not Biased

Then there was the Nazi Holocaust in Germany. I know: Non-Jews, cripples, and Poles (many of whom were Jews) were killed, too. But let's get real: Adolph Hitler and company were none to happy about Jews breathing the same air as the Aryans. And, they took active measures to 'correct' the situation.

You wouldn't know about what was happening to Jews in Europe, reading The New York Times in the years leading up to that unilateral action¹ that liberated Auschwitz.

I think I can understand The New York Times' publisher's decision to ignore the conversion of Jews into lampshades and gloves. He was Jewish, and may not have wanted to seem biased. There's a pretty good discussion of the NYT, Nazis, and lots of dead Jews, in "Buried by the Times - The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper (Laurel Leff, Cambridge University Press, Hardcover edition 2005, Paperback 2006).

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We Can't Criticize Him, He's, Well, You Know

Then there was the little matter of Jayson Blair, the reporter for The New York Times who got caught plagiarizing parts of his stories, and making up some of the rest. Reporters aren't supposed to do that, by the way. Even if they have titles like "In Military Wards, Questions and Fears From the Wounded."

If you check out that article, keep reading until you reach the last page. The New York Times added a correction, acknowledging "misrepresentations and plagiarism by Jayson Blair." I think The New York Times deserves credit for posting that correction, instead of removing the article from their website.

Mr. Blair was, eventually, fired. Some people claim that he wasn't fired sooner because he was black: and nobody wants to seem biased. Others claim that it simply takes that long to fire someone. I don't remember reading about anyone saying that he was fired because he's black, which is an interesting omission.

Mr. Blair's experience was, in a way, a lower-profile replay of Janet Cook's Pulitzer-Prize winning career at the Washington Post.

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She Wrote WHAT?!

Judith Miller left The New York Times because of what she reported. As nearly as I can figure it out, she made the New York Times support the Bush administration's involvement in Iraq. She did this by reporting on what the Bush administration (and quite a few other governments) thought was solid intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

Then, the coalition didn't find WMDs. The conclusion was obvious: since we don't see WMDs, there are no WMDs.


(from U.S. Army Quartermaster Center and School, used without permission)
'Okay, men: there are a dozen cargo containers buried out there. Go find them!'

Obvious to people whose frame of reference is Central Park, or maybe even Massachusetts, maybe. To me, not so much.

At any rate, Judith Miller had to quit because of what she'd written.

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'All the News We Feel Like Printing'

I think that would be a more accurate motto for The New York Times: But I believe that what they do print is, for the most part, news. Not wishful thinking or deliberate falsehoods.

I don't assume that about all 'news' services.

Iran's digitally-enhanced news about its missile test didn't come as a great surprise to me. The Iranian brass wanted a news report about a completely successful test-firing, and that's what they got. Never mind the missile sitting on its launcher.

The prize, though, goes to the Reuters free-lance photographer who submitted what may be the 21st century's worst example of journalistic photographic fakery to date. You probably remember it: The photo of Beirut burning, with that honeycomb effect in the smoke?

I'd be surprised to learn that The New York Times deliberately lied. For example, after irregularities in Jayson Blair's work were brought to their attention, the powers that be in The New York Times appear to have started a careful process of uncovering what actually happened: and eventually booted him off the staff.

On the other hand, I think that The New York Times and its publisher write about, and for, their own world: New York City, and all those places that aren't New York City.

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From the Pier-Bound Shores of Chelsea to the Austere Grandeur...

The New York Times, serving all the land: from the pier-bound shores of Chelsea to the austere grandeur of the United Nations Plaza; from the verdant wilds of Van Cortlandt Park to the cloud-capped towers of Broadway.

The Big Apple's a diverse and wonderful city, and is America's biggest city. But it isn't America.

I see The New York Times as a hometown paper with a long history and a dedication of bringing news of the world to its readers: people who live in the boroughs of New York City. I don't expect The New York Times to reflect my interests or views, any more than I read The Straits Times of Singapore to find out what's going on here in Minnesota, or to get a view of the world that takes Midwestern interests into account.

I think that there's reason to believe that The New York Times is run by what in the good old days would have been called 'the better sort' of New York's people. That means that a very select group of people decides what constitutes "All the news that's fit to print." [emphasis mine]

Reporting on the Haditha incident is a good case in point. The New York Times (and all other American papers what take the NYT's lead) decided to focus on facts that told the story of monstrous Marines murdering moppets.

Facts that didn't support the 'Haditha is Iraq's My Lai' story weren't emphasized. Which, I think, is quite understandable. If "everybody knew" that perceived American atrocities were what was important in this story, it would be very easy to ignore information that didn't support that angle.

Which is why it's important to study the news, not just read it. I read articles in The New York Times. I also read articles from Reuters, the San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, AlJazeerah, FOXNews, the Fargo Forum, and any other news service I can find that's providing information I'm looking for.

But I don't assume that any one of my sources is either omniscient, or utterly unbiased. I try to understand what they believe, or wish, is so about the world, what they think is most interesting: and how likely each is to make something up, if facts don't support their position.

Cynical? No, I don't think so. Everybody, including me, has a place from which they see the world. That's the way the world is, and it's a good thing: This would be a boring place if we were all identical.

Trouble comes when a person - or a news service - has a parochial point of view, and doesn't realize it.

Previous post on this topic:

• "Haditha, Iraq; My Lai, Vietnam: This Isn't the Good Old Days"
  (July 13, 2008)

In the news:

• "Lawyer for Cindy McCain Asks Why New York Times Isn't Looking for Barack Obama's Drug Dealer"
  TransWorldNews (October 21, 2008)
• "Cindy McCain 'On the Record' on the N.Y. Times, Gov. Sarah Palin, Sexism and More"
  FOXNews (October 20, 2008)
• "Behind McCain, Outsider in Capital Wanting Back In"
  The New York Times (October 17, 2008)
• "Clinton Apologizes to Obama for Drug Comment"
  The New York Times (December 13, 2007)
• "New York Times, Washington Post, and Local Newspapers Seen as Having Liberal Bias"
  Rasmussen Report (July 15, 2007)

Background:

• "Media Outlet / Personality: New York Times"
  FAIR Archives (Undated)
  (FAIR is a Progressive organization, solidly unbiased in favor of Progressive ideals: but their research is interesting.)

---

¹If America was 'going it alone' and acting 'unilaterally' when a coalition of over two dozen other nations invaded Iraq, then America's involvement in World War II was 'unilateral,' too.

---

Additional information (October 22, 2008):
A CNN interviewer 'misquoted' the National Review, claiming that a NR article characterized Sarah Palin as "stupid."

More at: "Sarah Palin is 'incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above' "

Top Newspaper's Journalists Praised: Blackout Imposed on Praise

The news media blackout of General Sanchez' criticism of the news media got more interesting for me today. I discovered that that a major and (so far) well-respected newspaper employs two of the four journalists praised by the retired general. Normally, I'd think that being singled out like that would be an occasion for some well-bred bragging.

Thanks to The QandO Blog / Free Markets, Free People, a blog I ran across during research. QandO's October 13 post made me aware of a transcript of General Sanchez' remarks last week. QandO's Friday post began with these paragraphs:

"The New York Times reports that LTG Ricardo S. Sanchez, one of the former commander's in Iraq, faults the Bush administration handling of the war as 'incompetent' and 'warned that the United States was "living a nightmare with no end in sight."'

"Question: does this come as a suprise to anyone? Is there anyone left out there that is claiming this war has been competently fought since the beginning? In fact, as I recall, Petraeus, et. al., have been saying that we almost lost it in 2006."

The QandO Bolg goes on to discuss, among other things, how The New York Times and other mainstream, traditional, media, pounced on Sanchez' disapproval of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq: and utterly ignored Sanchez' massive indictment of mainstream media's pursuit of an agenda at the expense of American soldiers' lives.

Not that General Sanchez thinks poorly of all journalists. He named four that he thinks are doing a good job:

• John Burns
  (probably the one who works on The New York Times and won two Pulitzer Prizes, not the John Burns who works on Modesty Blaise and Judge Dredd)
• Sig Christensen
  (San Antonio Express News)
• Joe Galloway
  (McClatchy Newspapers columnist)
• Thom Shanker
  (The New York Times)

Notice that two of the four journalists on General Sanchez' 'approved' list work for the New York Times. And one of those won two Pulitzer Prizes.

I would expect The New York Times, at least, to jump at this chance to point out how superior their stable of journalists was, at least in the eyes of the famous and now-perceptive General Sanchez.

The New York Times didn't. In common with the rest of the old-school news media, The New York Times decided that General Sanchez's indictment of news media didn't fall under the newspaper's definition of "All the News That’s Fit to Print."

The Military Reporters and Editors / The Official Association of Military Journalists has a transcript of General Sanchez's remarks.

Here's an excerpt. The original is in all caps. To make it more readable, I converted it to cap/lowercase. Other than that, this paragraph is unchanged. I recommend reading the entire transcript. General Sanchez discusses quite a bit in addition to what appears in this paragraph.

"Today, I will attempt to do two things - First I will give you my assessment of the military and press relationship and then I will provide you some thoughts on the current state of our war effort. As all of you know I have a wide range of relationships and experiences with our nations military writers and editors. There are some in your ranks who I consider to be the epitome of journalistic professionalism - Joe Galloway, Thom Shanker, Sig Christensen, and John Burns immediately come to mind. They exemplify what America should demand of our journalists - tough reporting that relies upon integrity, objectivity and fairness to give accurate and thorough accounts that strenghten our freedom of the press and in turn our democracy. On the other hand, unfortunately, I have issued ultimatums to some of you for unscrupulous reporting that was solely focused on supporting your agenda and preconceived notions of what our military had done. I also refused to talk to the European Stars and Stripes for the last two years of my command in Germany for their extreme bias and single minded focus on Abu Gharaib."

Finally, it's nice to hear from others in the blogosphere. The author of American Interests.blog was kind enough to leave a couple of comments recently, one of them in reference to General Sanchez and the news media.

Another post on General Sanchez, Iraq-as-nightmare, and journalistic behavior: "'All the News We Want to Print:' Iraq War Reality Check Missed"

General Petraeus, General Betray Us, and Enlightened Self-Interest

Propaganda is generally accepted as a part of warfare. The enemy is routinely defamed.

The war on terror offers new angles on this traditional aspect of warfare, since different sides of the conflict are sometimes in the same country.

I'm not sure where The New York Times stands in this conflict.

On the one hand, enlightened self-interest, and proximity to one of the major targets in the jihad against the west, would suggest that The Times would support the side in this conflict that would permit its editors to live.

I'm sure that someone at The Times remembers the alternatively-free conditions imposed on Afghanis, during the Taliban's administration of that country.

Al Qaeda, and other Islamic organizations dedicated to stamping out the last millennium or so of changes in the social, legal, and political order, would probably not be quite as tolerant of the newspaper's editorial and advertising policies: at least, not as they are practiced.

The latest major incident involving The New York Times was the "General Betray Us" advertisement in September's paper.

I'm not so concerned about the price break MoveOn.org got. They should have been charged $142,083 for placing the ad on a specific day. Instead, they got the $64,575 'standby' rate, which means the paper picks the day an ad runs. Apparently Rudy Giuliani got the same price break. It looks to me like sloppy bookkeeping, or maybe a courtesy extended to special customers.

What is impressive about the "General Betray Us" ad is that it violated an internal Times policy against accepting advertising that made personal attacks.

As CNN's "Political Ticker" blog put it, "Clark Hoyt, who analyzes the paper's coverage as the 'readers' representative,' wrote, 'I think the ad violated The Times's own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to.'"

And, more to the point, Hoyt wrote, again quoting the CNN blog, "... the paper's standards on an 'an internal advertising acceptability manual' that he quoted as saying, 'We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.'"

World-class foul-up?

Political shenanigans?

Propaganda?

I really don't know.

But I do know that, based on what fanatical Islamic groups have done in the past, if the fanatics win, The Times will change its editorial and advertising policy, or be destroyed.

For their sake, I hope that the people running The Times have been paying attention to what's at stake.

I've got fairly well-defined opinions about the MoveOn ad the paper that printed it, and the general who is trying to keep religious nut cases from killing them.

• "General Petraeus, General Betrayus, and Tolerance (September 11, 2007)"
• "American Senate Almost Makes Bold Statement About General Betrayus (September 20, 2007).")

Related posts, on censorship, propaganda, and freedom of speech.