NY Times Bases Entire Article Critical of Military on Unscientific Study

September 13th, 2007 9:17 PM

According to the Manhattan Borough President and the New York Civil Liberties Union, "military recruiters are frequently given free reign in New York City public schools and allowed into classes in violation of the school system’s regulations." That's basically the first paragraph of the article. The next few read as follows:

The report, based on surveys of nearly 1,000 students at 45 high schools citywide last spring, said the city’s Department of Education exercised almost no oversight over how much access recruiters had to students at high schools.

“There were recruiters who were in the classroom not to talk to students about reading, writing and arithmetic, but to talk to them about how to get a one-way ticket to Iraq and all the benefits you will accrue by that process,” Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, said at a news conference. “This is something that must be stopped. It’s outrageous, and it gives recruiters a captive audience.”

Nearly all the speakers at the news conference, including Mr. Stringer, said they were opposed to the war in Iraq.

The NYCLU goes on to criticize recruiters for "aggressive" recruiting in predominantly minority schools. In the same paragraph (the 8th in the story, by the way) we're informed of the something quite pertinent: The authors conceded that the report was not a scientific study.

Oh! In other words, it's an opinion piece by an anti-war group masquerading as a "study."