A "Public Lives" profile in the national section of today's New York Times focuses on the White House drug tsar, General Barry McCaffrey. The Times reports that the general said drug treatment and mental health care should be covered by health insurance. "General McCaffrey was instrumental in persuading President Clinton to extend such parity in health coverage to nine million federal employees," the Times reports.
Apparently, the author of and editors of today's profile don't read the corrections box in the Times. On January 3, 2001, that box said, "A front-page article on Monday about increased insurance coverage for mental health care referred incorrectly to the nine million people who will benefit from changes in the program for federal employees. Almost three million are current employees; the others are dependents and retirees."
Today's profile manages to repeat the original error, taking no notice of the correction.
Late Again: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a new Fox television program called "Temptation Island." The article runs under the headline, "In Television's New Reality, Temptation Puts Vows to the Test." This story is old news to readers of the Wall Street Journal, which on January 3, 2001, published a similar article that ran under the headline, "This Reality Show Could Be Called: 'Who Wants to Be a Philanderer?' --- Fox Network's Latest TV Series Will Let Four Couples Test Fiber of Their Relationships."
One-Sided on Housing: A story on the front of the metro section of today's New York Times reports on Mayor Giuliani's plans to spend about 600 million more taxpayer dollars on subsidized housing over the next four years. A long Times article quoting a series of "housing advocates" manages to find not a single soul who raises the question of whether the city should even be in the business of subsidizing housing. Or whether the matter would be better left to the private sector. Or whether the money to be spent on the housing subsidies could instead be returned to citizens in the form of a tax cut. The Times hardly ever gives the mayor a free pass when he pushes conservative ideas like punishing criminals or making welfare recipients work. But when the mayor wants to spend more money on housing, the Times coverage is unrelentingly positive. The only criticism of the mayor in the article is that he hasn't spent more, sooner.