MEDIA: Official boycott of New York Times - FINALLY!

AIM Launches First Ever “Boycott The New York Times” Campaign & Website

Quote:
Press Release October 8, 2008

WASHINGTON, October 8, 2008—Accuracy in Media announced today the launch of its new website, Boycott The New York Times (http://BoycottNYT.com). AIM, which has monitored The New York Times for nearly 40 years, is encouraging news consumers to boycott the most powerful media voice in America to protest its persistent leftist bias.

“The Times has, over the course of decades, blatantly distorted the news to advance an ideological agenda,” notes Don Feder, the editor of the Boycott The New York Times website. “The Times’ persistent bias is reflected in its double standard in coverage of liberals and conservatives, its misreporting of election news, the hidden assumptions that underlie news stories and in the palpable imbalance in commentary. While The Times is notorious for editorials thinly disguised as ‘news coverage,’ during a presidential election, its fangs really come out.”

Feder added, “When a company manufactures dangerously defective products, despite repeated warnings, consumer advocates have both a right and a duty to organize a boycott. The Times is manufacturing a product (‘news coverage’), which is both defective and dangerous. By boycotting The New York Times, we are refusing to do business with a company that is undermining our values, our society and our nation.”

AIM’s Boycott The New York Times campaign includes the BoycottNYT.com website, articles and commentary, and a petition whose signers pledge to boycott The Times – both print and online editions – as well as New York Times advertisers.

In the past, media watchdog groups have monitored and protested The Times’ bias. This is the first organized boycott of The New York Times.

About Don Feder:

Don Feder is the editor of Boycott The New York Times. For 19 years, Feder was a Boston Herald editorial writer and political columnist. His column was nationally syndicated by Creator’s Syndicate, and his writings have appeared in USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Weekly Standard, Readers Digest and Human Events. Feder has appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity and Colmes,” “Politically Incorrect,” “The 700 Club,” “Focus On The Family with Dr. James Dobson” and “Fox & Friends.” His columns have been read on the air by Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura and Michael Savage.

About Accuracy in Media:

Accuracy in Media is a citizens’ media watchdog organization whose mission is to promote fairness, balance, and accuracy in news reporting. Founded in 1969, AIM is the oldest non-profit press watchdog group in America. For more information, please visit www.aim.org.


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SOURCE

Reasons to Boycott the New York Times

By Bethany Stotts October 9, 2008

Over the last few weeks, various media outlets have repeated the mantra that the McCain campaign desires to talk about anything but the economy, avoids the issue, or doesn’t give “specifics.” Today’s New York Times article provides the most transparent example of misleading, if not false, reporting to date. It also gives Americans another reason to Boycott the New York Times, an initiative that Accuracy in Media is spearheading.

“As the financial crisis continued to engulf the nation, Senator John McCain devoted most of two campaign appearances to lusty attacks on Senator Barack Obama and gave less attention, and offered very few specifics, to the economic woes of American voters.”

What “few specifics” did the presidential candidate give about the economy? The article gives the reader a clue:

“In both appearances Wednesday…McCain’s stump speech followed the same pattern: In broad, quick strokes, he reiterated the economic proposal he raised at his debate with Obama on Wednesday night—a “home ownership resurgence plan,” in which the government would buy mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage services and replace them with what he called “manageable” mortgages.

After that, he raced through promises of jobs, tax cuts, lower prices, better health care, a spending freeze and a balanced federal budget by the end of his first term. With that done, McCain then launched into the core of his speech, a lengthy, full-throated and crowd-pleasing criticism of Obama’s record, character and judgment.”

Apparently jobs, balanced budgets, tax cuts, and mortgage relief don’t count as specific policies to help an ailing economy.

“McCain has never been comfortable talking about the economy, and in these final weeks of his nearly two-year, second-time quest of the presidency, with polls showing him losing increasing ground to Obama, McCain and his advisers have made the calculation that negative attacks will move at least some voters.”

The author, Elisabeth Bumiller, later writes that “Much of McCain’s addresses on the economy are delivered to voters through the prism of his attacks on Obama” and points to how his speeches connect Obama to the “narrative of bad mortgages that had been backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Would news reporters be willing to write that Obama delivers his lectures “through the prism of his attacks on” Bush and McCain? Not likely. Yet, Obama has repeatedly attributed the economic crisis to the deregulation and mismanagement of the “last eight years.” Obama said during the Tuesday debate:

“And I believe this is a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years, strongly promoted by President Bush and supported by Senator McCain, that essentially said that we should strip away regulations, consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down on all of us. It hasn't worked out that way, and so now we've got to take some decisive action.”

And again:

“And so while it's true that nobody's completely innocent here, we have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history. And Senator McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets.”

And again:

“That is a fundamental difference that I have with Senator McCain. He believes in deregulation in every circumstance. That's what we've been going through for the last eight years. It hasn't worked. And we need fundamental change.”

But Bumiller doesn’t take time to discuss that.

She does, however, take time to highlight that Sarah Palin and McCain speak to “conservative and almost all-white crowds that come to see McCain and Palin.” She also points outs the County Chairman’s use of “Barack Hussein Obama.”

According to one diversity and racial ethics specialist (also a former reporter), injecting off-point racial demographics into a story is a sign of poor journalism.

The story was reprinted for the International Herald Tribune (the “global edition” of the Times) and promoted on the MSNBC “First Read” page.