The lead, front-page news article in this morning's New York Times is about missile defense. "By all accounts, the Bush administration's approach is fundamentally different from that of the Clinton administration, which designed a more limited system," the Times reports. "The Clinton administration's system involved the deployment of 100 interceptors and the construction of a battle-management radar on Shemya island in the Alaskan Aleutians. The goal was to persuade the Russians to amend the ABM treaty, not to replace it."
This is an example of historical revisionism. The Clinton administration's missile system didn't involve the "deployment" or "construction" of anything. It involved a lot of talk and testing and delaying and consulting with Europeans and sending Nelson Strowbridge Talbott III to go stroke the Russians. The result is that after eight years of Mr. Clinton's presidency America is still vulnerable to penetration by enemy missiles.
The New York Times actually reported along the way on the Clinton administration's delays in the deployment and construction of missile defense, so it's mystifying to see the paper now asserting that the Clinton system involved the "deployment" and "construction" of anything other than rhetoric.
Out of Control on Rent Control: The lead news article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that the Republican mayor of New York was "disappointed" that a city board approved a 4 percent annual increase in rents of privately owned rent-stabilized apartments. The increase was too large, according to the mayor. Missing from the article is a quote from anyone wondering why, in what is generally a free-market economy, the government is setting the prices for privately owned housing. It's as if anyone with a view that is more free-market than Mayor Giuliani's is beyond the boundaries of the policy debate, as far as the Times is concerned. If the pattern holds, the Times "Big City" columnist will waddle in in the next week or two with a column pointing out the absurdity of this situation. But why should free-market views be relegated to a token columnist? Why not actually let a free-market view be expressed by a source in a news article?
Abdel Who? A dispatch from Cairo in the international section of today's New York Times includes a reference to a "Mr. Abdel Maguid." Mr. Abdel Maguid's first name and title never appear in the article. That leaves readers wondering who he is.
Usual Suspect: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on product placements in a new ABC reality show. One person quoted bemoaning the network's practices -- the only person quoted bemoaning the network's practices, in fact -- is identified as "the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, a public advocacy group that deals with a range of issues from nutrition to commercialization." A more direct description of the Center for Science in the Public Interest appeared in an article in the March 21, 2001, "Dining In, Dining Out" section of the New York Times. That article identified the center as "usual suspects," "food police" and "movie popcorn equals death."