Yes, this post is related to the topics typically treated in this forum only to the extent that trashing the New York Times is a sport in itself--but an item in this morning's business section pretty well raises journalistic incompetence to world-class competitive levels.
In a three-page investigative report on Congress's general failure over the last 25 years to do anything that might have softened the blow of currently high oil prices, the paper of record notes that one opportunity for reform was thwarted in 1990 when Senators Carl Levin and Jesse Helms teamed up to block legislation offering higher fuel efficiency standards. After three paragraphs describing the episode, the article proclaims, damningly: "Mr. Levin and Mr. Helms didn't return calls for comment."
Clearly, they are dodging journalists' hard-hitting questions because they are embarrassed about and have no defensible explanation for their obstructionist tactics. Or Jesse Helms died two days ago. Definitely one or the other.
[The online version appends a correction. The print version survives, as further evidence that the Times hasn't yet entirely mastered the death/life distinction.]
1 comment:
What's shocking to me is not that the reporter missed the news of Helms's death last week (as bad as that is), but that the journalist assumed that Mr. Helms was alive: clearly, the reasonable assumption was that he'd died eight years ago. Presumably in a "sheet-related" incident.
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