May 25, 2010 2:10 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
One of the striking talking points that came out of The New York Times in the wake of its controversial
article last week about whether Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal
had, over the years, exaggerated his military service during the
Vietnam War era, was the insistence from the Times that the story was a deeply important one and one that needed to be covered. The Times, faced with stiff criticism
for its handling of the Blumenthal story, seemed to suggest it had a
moral obligation, not to mention a newsroom duty, to look closely at the
military service rhetoric from a New England politician running in a
statewide election.
A Times flack even appeared to lecture Blumenthal about how he needed to be straight with Nutmeg State voters.
But I'm having a tough time buying the Times' sudden devotion to the topic, considering that during the 2000 presidential campaign, the same Times staff went out of its way not to report on the web of detailed allegations that Republican George Bush had failed to fulfill his military obligation
while defending Texas air space as an Air National Guard pilot and that
the presidential candidate had routinely lied about that fact. For that
story, the Times team shrugged. But it's decided this spring to go all-in over Blumenthal? Seems strange.
Now,
I realize that it's been an entire decade since the 2000 campaign
played out and that most people don't recall what the coverage was like
-- and specifically have virtually no memory of how Bush's Air National
Guard story was covered. But I'm not overstating things when I say the Times' stubborn failure to cover the controversy really did mark one of the true cases of journalistic malpractice of that crucial campaign season.
The full scope of Bush's lack of Guard service was revealed on May 23, 2000, when The Boston Globe's
Walter Robinson reported a Page One piece detailing all the holes in
Bush's military service: "1-Year Gap in Bush's Guard Duty; No Record of
Airman at Drills in 1972-73."
After combing through 160 pages of
military documents and interviewing Bush's former commanders, Robinson
reported how Bush's flying career came to an abrupt and unexplained end
in the spring of 1972 when Bush asked to be transferred so that he could
work on a family friend's Senate campaign in Alabama. But Bush's
Alabama commander, Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, told the Globe that
Bush never showed up for duty. (A trained pilot, Bush asked to be
reassigned to an Alabama base that had no airplanes.) In 2000, a group
of veterans offered a $3,500 reward for anyone who could confirm Bush's
Alabama service -- and nobody from Bush's unit stepped forward.
What did the Times do with the Globe's startling A1 campaign scoop, suggesting Bush may have gone AWOL during his mandatory Guard service? The Times ignored it, with a passion. (And yes, this was the same Times news team that spent the 2000 campaign routinely casting aspersions on Al Gore's character and trustworthiness.)
Consider this: The Times' Frank Bruni tailed Bush obsessively on the campaign trail that year, filing more than 200 dispatches. But he never once referenced in print the Globe allegations. (Just try to imagine the Times' reaction if, during the 2000 campaign, the same Boston Globe had
reported on Page One that Gore's discharge papers from Vietnam showed
he rigged his wartime duty and orchestrated an early exit by simply
refusing to report for duty during the final two years of his
commitment.)
During 2000, the Guard story never landed on Page One of the agenda-setting New York Times.
In fact, the Guard story barely even made it inside the daily, while
key facets were boycotted. Here's how many times in 2000 the Times,
supposedly busy scouring the backgrounds of the candidates, reported
the fact that Bush was grounded by his Guard superiors in 1972 for
failing a mandatory physical: zero.
Just more than a week after The Boston Globe had raised serious questions about Bush's Guard service, the Times ran a May 31, 2000, story headlined
"Bush Questions Gore's Fitness for Commander in Chief." The article
noted that some were "questioning the nature of Mr. Bush's military
service in the Vietnam War," but did not provide any further detail
about the substance of the criticism. Instead, the Times simply
reported that "Mr. Bush did not serve overseas but instead served in
Houston in the Texas Air National Guard." The article made no mention
whatsoever of the thorny allegations swirling about Bush's lack of
military service.
On July 11, 2000, the Times' Nicholas Kristof wrote a biographical feature on
Bush's life during the Vietnam War: " Close to Home; Bush's Choice in
War: Devoid of Passion or Anxiety." The feature omitted any reference
to questions about Bush's absenteeism, getting grounded, failing to
take a physical, and walking away from the Guard for months at a time.
Kristof
actually spent most of 2000 carefully -- even aggressively -- avoiding
the issue of Bush's Guard service, which wasn't easy since, during that
campaign season, Kristof wrote nearly 50,000 words on Bush, the
equivalent of a 170-page book. Kristof functioned as the Times' in-house Bush biographer, and yet Kristof failed to report completely on the uncomfortable Guard issue, even after The Boston Globe pointed out all the holes in Bush's record.
But Kristof was hardly alone at the Times. It was a determined team effort to play dumb.
In late July, the Times got around to addressing Bush's wartime experience with an article headlined
"Governor Bush's Journey; After Yale, Bush Ambled Amiably Into His
Future." Certainly a piece focusing on Bush's post-Yale years in the
late '60s and early '70s would center its attention on the troubling
allegations raised by The Boston Globe, right? Wrong. It wasn't until 2,500 words into the article that the thorny issue was detailed. In total, the Times article
dedicated about 300 words to the entire controversy, giving readers the
sketchiest outlines of Bush's perplexing missing year from the Texas
Air National Guard. And that fleeting, buried reference represented the
bulk of the Times' coverage for most the entire campaign.
In a September 4 article on the campaign debate over military readiness, the Times referenced the fact that "Mr. Bush trained as a fighter pilot in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War." The Times politely omitted any mention of Bush's Guard controversy.
Twenty days later, the Times reported,
"An array of veterans, including senior officers who served under Mr.
Clinton and Mr. Gore, last week endorsed Mr. Bush, who served as a
fighter pilot in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War and
was, for the record, a lieutenant." Again, the article politely omitted
any mention of Bush's Guard controversy.
It wasn't until the eve of the election that the Times set aside an entire news article to examine some of the crucial questions raised by the Globe. The Times' conclusion in November 2000? See for yourself [emphasis added]:
Two
Democratic senators today called on Gov. George W. Bush to release his
full military record to resolve doubts raised by a newspaper about
whether he reported for required drills when he was in the Air National
Guard in 1972 and 1973.But a review of records by The New York Times indicated that some of those concerns may be unfounded. Documents reviewed by The Times showed that Mr. Bush served in at least 9 of the 17 months in question.
That's right, half a year after the Globe published its scoop, the Times finally
addressed the issue, announcing in the second paragraph that some
questions about Bush's Guard service were "unfounded." ("The Times got
spun," was how the Globe's Walter Robinson later described the Times' Guard reporting.)
Indeed, by the time Election Day rolled around, the Times had
failed to report that in 1972, the Texas Air National Guard grounded
Bush for failing to take a required physical exam and that neither Bush
nor his aides could point to a single person who saw Bush -- the
hard-to-miss son of a congressman and U.S. ambassador -- perform his
active duty requirements during the final 18 months of his service. (It
would be 45 months after the first Boston Globe report -- February 2004 -- before the Times finally spelled out to readers with any kind of specificity the facts regarding Bush's skipped physical exam.)
Bottom
line: In 2000, candidate Bush's military record during the Vietnam War
was very much in doubt, as was Bush's repeated explanation as to why,
after receiving $1 million worth of taxpayer-funded flight instruction,
he had essentially vanished from the Guard and failed to fly, show up
for monthly drills, or even take a mandatory physical. Yet back in 2000,The New York Times didn't seem to care much about that military-record story. And the Times newsroom seemed to make a decision not to
cover the controversy -- a controversy that, given the historically
close nature of the 2000 race, could have tipped the balance of the
vote.
So, yes, given that stark background, it's tough to make sense of the Times' recent dedication to pursuing the Blumenthal story.
1. Print a notice that they (the Times) failed in their coverage of the Bush lack of service and detail how they failed.
2.
Make a public statement that they will fully investigate future
instances of political figures falsely claiming military service.
3. Make a list of all current political figures that are falsely claiming military service and vow to investigate each one.
4. Write another story about Blumenthal.
Only after the Times has done the first three will they have any justification for continuing to write about Blumenthal.
If
the Times admits their mistakes, starts writing stories that tell all
the facts and not just part of the truth, and pursue stories no matter
the political fallout or pressure, then they can again be regarded as a
real newspaper. Today, they are looking more and more like a corporate
rag.
Boston Globe ACTUALLY did the research necessary to present a story
when they nailed Bush for clearly not fulfilling his National Guard
obligation.
The NY Times did NOT do the research necessary. If
they HAD actually had their research staff studying 20 years of media
archives, they would have discovered that over and over again,
Blumenthal accurately described his service history. They would have
found out that, contrary to their assertion that he had a pattern of
falsehoods about his service, he had a very clear pattern of honestly
portraying his service!
They couldn't have done the necessary
research. They CLEARLY went into this with a preconceived notion that
they had found a 'gotcha' moment. They found one example (later,
journalists found another potential example, but there are 2 versions of
what was said that day, and there's no transcript that I've found and
no audio from the event, and so it's possible that either one or both of
the print reporters got what was said wrong) of Blumenthal saying a
falsehood, and they LEAPT to the conclusion that he had a pattern of
that behavior because he had made other statements that could have been
misinterpreted. That's an unfair conclusion to have come to given the
available evidence.
The NY Times has shown "dedication" to
following the storyline THEY wanted to push without much regard for
their failings in the promotion and foundation of the story!