Now that Daniel Okrent, the public editor of The New York Times, has given us his opinion “The failure was not individual, but institutional,” Okrent maintains. “When I say the editors Los Angeles Times media columnist Tim Rutten writes<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> The Straight Up verdict, courtesy of our friend William Osborne, offers another take. Osborne’s comment in full:<\/P> Cynical? Some may think so, but we don’t. Skeptical? Absolutely.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now that Daniel Okrent, the public editor of The New York Times, has given us his opinion about the Times’ mea culpa, what’s the verdict? Okrent writes, “I think they got it right. Mostly.” He blames the paper in general for hyping its dead-wrong reports that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction during the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-bQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nabout the Times’ mea culpa<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, what’s
\nthe verdict? Okrent writes<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, “I
\nthink they got it right. Mostly.” He blames the paper in general for hyping its dead-wrong reports
\nthat Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction during the run-up to the war and for not
\nadequately correcting them, either by allowing the mistakes to stand or by failing to give equally
\nconspicuous play to the corrections.<\/P>
\n
\ngot it ‘mostly’ right in their note this week, the qualifier arises from their inadequate explanation of
\nthe journalistic imperatives and practices that led The Times down this unfortunate path.” He cites
\n“The Hunger for Scoops,” “Front-Page Syndrome” and “Hit-and-Run Journalism.”<\/P>
\n
\nof the NYT Editors’ Note<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>
\nthat “the Times’ explanation looks like a leaky lifeboat launched in the teeth of a gathering
\nstorm.”<\/P>
\n
\nOsborne’s analysis is so cogent and well expressed that it’s better than anything we’ve read on the
\nsubject: “They were surely aware of the falseness, but they were just counting on a victor’s justice
\nand a victor’s writing of history.” <\/P>
\n
\nThe NYT’s claim that they didn’t see the hype during the build up to the war is
\nso fatuous it boggles the mind. Every other country in the world saw the truth except,
\npresumably, America. So we’re supposed to think the newsroom of America’s best paper is
\nso completely unaware and incompetent? Isn’t that a newsroom filled with people from the best
\nuniversities? They were surely aware of the falseness, but they were just counting on a victor’s
\njustice and a victor’s writing of history. Now that the thing has turned into a debacle they have to
\ncreate a mea culpa in order to keep up the illusion of credibility. After all, the corporate interest
\nmust be maintained. This takes the sort of propagandistic juggling that indeed requires our very
\nbest journalists.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n