Darrell Issa vs. the new York Times

Interesting little dust up. The Times went after Issa pretty good last week:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/us/politics/15issa.html?pagewanted=all

Now, he's hitting back, alleging poor reporting among other things:

Is it odd that the San Diego paper didn't run the original Times article, or is it standard procedure to take a second look at it if it focuses on local people/issues?

 

There was a time when Issa wanted to investigate every sneeze that emanated from Barack Obama. The New Republic even confidently predicted that he would impeach Obama once he became the head of the oversight committee. Then Lizza's New Yorker piece hit. Issa was the absolute worst choice the GOP could have made for that position, because his past (and apparently present) is so filthy.

That being said, the "multimillion"/"multibillion" dollar mistake is a fairly big one. Far be it for me to take shots at Lichtblau, but when you write a 60-inch piece on a GOP Congressman for a news source with a known liberal slant, at least on the op-ed page, you better have the facts down dead solid cold. When people are only bitching about "tone" and "context," then you've won.

 

There are, apparently, just as insufficient a number of copy editors at the Times as everywhere else.

 

What about the San Diego paper's decision not to run it?

Smart move, or afraid to piss of a local poll?

 

I think it's more from the "why would we run a competitor's story about our local guy" line of thinking.

 

The U-T killed Randy Cunningham dead, so I'm not sure they're scared of Issa. Just as likely they're working on their own story about him.

The 'billion/million' thing is only a really big deal if the mistake occurs on first reference. If it's the fifteenth reference in the story in the 27th graf, it isn't anything but a typo.

 

I know it wasn't malicious. But it's a huge distinction and an easy thing to latch onto if you're the subject of the piece. You can't let that one get through the goalie, am I right?

 

Of course not.

But it would be an indication how hypersensitive to investigation Issa must be if his people pounce on a late reference to a figure correctly established in the first sentence of the story.

 

As a copy editor, I'm biased on this one, but when one letter is wrong in the fifth paragraph, I don't know that you can blast the copy desk for missing it. Small errors will get through unless we return to the days where four or five copy editors read every story before publication. As copy desks dwindle, we need more support from assigning editors and reporters.

With that said, many copy editors would have caught that error. It's also a nice reminder of the importance of copy editing.

 

If congressmen and politicians don't care about the difference between millions, billions and trillions of dollars, why should journalists?

 

The U-T has been sold to a venture capital firm and gutted since they took down Cunningham. It's not even remotely the same newspaper it was at that time. I don't think an assumption about its current mindset can be made based on pre-sale actions.

 

Thanks for the update. So, lots of possibilities as to why they held the NYT piece.