A Good Scoop

Smartertimes.com is usually devoted to finding fault with the New York Times. But once in a very great while the Times has a story so good that you just have to tip your hat, and today is one of those days. The article is by Erik Eckholm. It is a dispatch from Yuntang, China, that appears on the front page of today's newspaper, and it reports on an attack by Chinese police and paramilitary troops on unarmed farmers. What's impressive is not just that the Times has this story, which Smartertimes.com hasn't seen elsewhere, but the level of detail, the directness of the account, and the chilling depiction of the Communist regime that emerges from the article. "If the Communist regime knows we are meeting with the foreign press, they might level our village," one resident of Yuntang tells the Times.