Power Line - Insufficient tuned-in-ness: It's an epidemic

Power Line - Insufficient tuned-in-ness: It's an epidemic

The videos posted by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles at Big Government exposed ACORN housing officials around the country as eager to lend a hand. They wanted to help O'Keefe and Storm set up brothels in which minors from Central America would be set up as working girls. The New York Times did its damndest to ignore the story, until the political consequences of the videos made it almost impossible.
....
"Insufficient tuned-in-ness" is a new diagnosis of what's ailing the Times, but now that we've got it, I'm sure we'll find it handy in the future. It explains a lot, and not just at the Times.
....
JOHN adds: Scott makes the main points that need to be said about Hoyt's column. I would add that Hoyt couldn't resist taking a shot at O'Keefe and Giles, who committed the offense of embarrassing the newspaper he is paid to defend (if at all possible) against all comers. So he came up with this:

And the two were sloppy with facts. One Acorn employee who bragged about killing one of her former husbands said she knew she was being scammed and was playing along. The police said they found her ex-husbands alive.

But it was the ACORN employee, not O'Keefe and Giles, who was "sloppy with facts." They just recorded what she said, they didn't vouch for it. You can watch the video yourself and judge the claim that the ACORN worker was "playing along;" I think most observers would judge that she was a lunatic--but not one who had any objection to aiding and abetting prostitution, mortgage fraud, tax evasion, etc.

As he has in past columns, Hoyt assures his readers that the Times isn't a shill for liberal causes and politicians. But he confesses that the widespread perception of liberal bias is a problem for the paper, quoting a journalism expert to the effect that "[e]ven the suspicion of a bias is a problem all by itself." To say that the New York Times is suspected of liberal bias is like saying that Ted Bundy was suspected of being an unsuitable prom date.

PAUL adds: As Scott suggests, the "insufficient tuned-in-ness" Jill Abramson cops to is just another name for the liberal bias Hoyt says his paper is suspected of.