New York Times’ woeful Public Editor/apologist Clark Hoyt ends his three-year term at the “paper of record” today with a column in which he tries to shape his own legacy as their (supposed) “readers’ representative.” There are, however, some 400,000 low and middle-income families across this nation, struggling to fight off, or emerge from, poverty who would might prefer to remember Hoyt by Tom Tomorrow’s recent immortalization instead:
Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel today notes that Hoyt’s farewell column reads as a dubious list of how the NYTimes, during his tenure, continued to show its propensity for serving as a mouthpiece for GOP oppo-research teams and dirty tricksters.
She also observes, as we did, that Hoyt succeeded in ignoring altogether — “to his significant discredit” — one of the most insidious and weasel-like failings of both the paper and Hoyt himself during his tenure: their dubious role as dupes and/or useful mouthpieces for the phony, yet terribly destructive, rightwing ACORN ‘Pimp’ Hoax scam”…
We heartily associate ourselves with Wheeler’s conclusion: “[I]t is a pity that a once-respectable journalist like Hoyt now clings to NYT’s credulous recycling of political hit jobs as proof of the paper’s balance.”
As the New York Times, after months of our detailed coverage, only ever managed to offer a partial and begrudging correction to their months-long misreportage — and even those corrections included blatant inaccuracies — we can only hope that Hoyt’s successor, whoever it will be, takes as his or her first order of business an investigation of the investigator by launching a legitimate look at the still-inaccurate historical account of the ACORN ‘Pimp’ Hoax as still posted for posterity on the web by the once-great “paper of record.”
New NYTimes Public Editor: Please start here. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Congratulations to Brad and all the other bloggers who ran with this story and stood up for the truth.
Crapola. Why continue with this boot-shining pretense? Do you really believe it? The New York Times was always a despicable fascist lie disseminator. A fascist in a liberal tweed suit.
Paper of refuse is more fitting. It serves birds and puppies far better than it serves the people of this nation.
Well said, Dan-In-PA
clark hoyt,
Don’t let the door hit ya on the ass on the way out!
Just like all of the so-called Main Stream Media.
If you’re a regular reporter, you can ask the tough questions for the most part but when you move into a position of higher authority you have to show “balance”. Look at Dave Gregory when he was in the white house press corps and what he is now. He has the Manhattan Institute written all over him. They should rename it the Bernays Institute and get it over with.
He’s gone? Yay!
Hoyt’s swan song was truly nausea-inducing self-serving tripe. I’m sorry I read it. But then I gave up on the NYT long ago to present anything resembling the truth regarding the important news of the day. The NYT has been a mouthpiece of the gov’t probably since its inception but has become absolutely blatantly and appallingly so in the last 10 years.