More About The New York Times & Scamming

This from the Washington Post -

Of Media Mistakes and Explanations
By Howard KurtzWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, March 24, 2006; 8:51 AM

Stop the presses: The New York Times has been scammed again :

"An article in The Metro Section on March 8 profiled Donna Fenton, identifying her as a 37-year-old victim of Hurricane Katrina who had fled Biloxi, Miss., and who was frustrated in efforts to get federal aid as she and her children remained as emergency residents of a hotel in Queens.

"Yesterday, the New York police arrested Ms. Fenton, charging her with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Prosecutors in Brooklyn say she was not a Katrina victim, never lived in Biloxi and had improperly received thousands of dollars in government aid. Ms. Fenton has pleaded not guilty.

"For its profile, The Times did not conduct adequate interviews or public record checks to verify Ms. Fenton's account, including her claim that she had lived in Biloxi."

As Reagan said, trust but verify. This is particularly unfortunate since the Times admitted six days ago buying a bill of goods from a former Abu Ghraib prisoner who claimed to have been the hooded guy photographed on that box.

I mention this as a backhanded way of getting into a discussion about media transparency. The Times, in my view, has made great strides on that front since Bill Keller took over in the wake of the Jayson Blair debacle. I've generally found Keller candid and accessible (except when he made a decision that he could not detail why the paper held the domestic eavesdropping story for a year without compromising confidential sources).
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If you read on you will see the word overstretched again, however, it is used to speculate about a military draft. MSM News people interviewed for this article diffuse their own lazy, scamming ways by trying to work/massage in a "hot point" political discussion - This Is Rich!

Let us just say, in a paraphrase, that "the truth does not justify the means" at The New York Times.