NYT Political Reporter Todd Purdum ignores Joe Wilson's whoppers and repeats his paper's pre-election conspiracy-mongering in a hodge-podge of a piece for the Sunday Week in Review. "The Message Mongers Rule Us, but Time Rules Them" is (mostly) about handing scandal and brings up the obligatory Libby-Wilson imbroglio, then segues not so smoothly into the paper's pre-election conspiracy-mongering:
"The message-control impulse is as strong today as it ever was, though it can take different forms. Few may know whether the Bush administration's decision to elevate the terror alert level for financial institutions in New York and Washington the weekend after the 2004 Democratic National Convention was pure coincidence, political plot or some mixture of the two. At best, it turned out to be based on intelligence that was not particularly fresh, and it prompted more than a little skepticism."
Purdum might be interested to know that after its initial accusations of politicization of the terror threat, his paper took a breath and looked into the threat more seriously, pointing out in a front-page story on September 5, 2004: "Old information is not necessarily bad information. It might just be a hint of a plot that in a somewhat revised form was close to being carried out." For more examples of New York Times bias, visit TimesWatch.
