The lead news story in this morning's New York Times is about a congressional vote easing sanctions on food sales from America to Cuba. The article says that George W. Bush "condemned" the Senate vote , and the article quotes a Bush spokesman saying, "Governor Bush opposes changing the sanctions against Cuba until Fidel Castro or the Cuban government allow free elections, free speech and freedom for political prisoners."
This position seems to contradict what Mr. Bush said in Tuesday night's presidential debate, when he said, "I don't want to use food as a diplomatic weapon from this point forward. We shouldn't be using food. It hurts the farmers. It's not the right thing to do."
If Mr. Bush's spokesman is walking back the candidate's remarks from the debate, that is newsworthy. If the remarks from the debate still stand, then the spokesman's remarks don't accurately represent the candidate's views, and the Times is doing readers a disservice by presenting the spokesman's views as those of the candidate. And if Mr. Bush, by using the phrase "from this point forward," intends to defend existing American sanctions that use food "as a diplomatic weapon" but oppose any additional sanctions of that sort, well, then he's making a distinction so subtle that it's worth explaining in a news story. Anyway, the Times story this morning relies on the remarks of the spokesman without making any mention of Mr. Bush's comment in the debate.
Subway Series: The Times runs a front-page, above the-fold article about the Subway Series in baseball, along with five full pages of coverage inside the paper. In all of that, the only mention of how the average reader can get a ticket to one of the games appears to be some agate type that gives the phone numbers of the ballparks and of Ticketmaster. Does the Times, with its vast reportorial resources, not have a reporter to spare to call those numbers and find out when tickets go on sale and how many are available? Or to check with some of the city's ticket brokers and hotel concierges to find out what the free-market price is for seats?