NYT Crosses a Moral Line

The Authoritarian Media - WSJ.com

After the horrific shooting spree, the editorial board of New York Times offered a voice of reasoned circumspection: "In the aftermath of this unforgivable attack, it will be important to avoid drawing prejudicial conclusions . . .," the paper counseled.

Here's how the sentence continued: ". . . from the fact that Major Hasan is an American Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East."

The Tucson Safeway massacre prompted exactly the opposite reaction. What was once known as the paper of record egged on its readers to draw invidious conclusions that are not only prejudicial but contrary to fact. In doing so, the Times has crossed a moral line.

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In the column, Krugman blames the massacre on "eliminationist rhetoric," which he defines as "suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary." He rightly asserts that "there isn't any place" for such rhetoric. But he falsely asserts that it is "coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."

He provides exactly one example: Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, "urging constituents to be 'armed and dangerous.' " Such a statement does seem problematic, although in the absence of context, and given what former Times public editor Daniel Okrent has described as Krugman's "disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults"--an observation that surely applies to nonnumeric facts as well--we are disinclined to trust Krugman's interpretation of Bachmann's statement.