- Leading hawks in Washington who back a military attack
on Iraq have turned their guns on the New York Times, charging that America's
most influential newspaper is deliberately distorting its news coverage
to undermine the case for war.
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- There have been rumblings of concern within the Bush
administration and rival sections of the press for some weeks, but the
dismay has broken into the open with some trenchant criticism this week
of alleged appeasement of Saddam Hussein.
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- The New York Times, reflecting the views of its predominantly
liberal, metropolitan readership and editorial staff, has long been hostile
to the Bush administration and to Mr Bush's presidential candidacy in 2000,
with its leaders and star columnists almost unanimously hostile - and frequently
scathing - about him and his circle.
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- But the charge is now more serious that the paper's news
columns have been turned into propaganda instruments of the anti-war party.
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- Comments sceptical about the use of military force by
once powerful Republicans such as Brent Scowcroft, who served the first
president Bush as national security adviser, have been highlighted with
front page treatment, even though Mr Scowcroft has been out of the public
eye for many years.
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- Last week the paper gave prominence to a report that
the Republican Party was splitting over Iraqi policy, partly based on a
highly selective interpretation of comments by Henry Kissinger, the former
secretary of state.
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- The New York Times seized on some of Dr Kissinger's caveats
to suggest he opposed an American attack, when in fact he had declared
there to be "an imperative for preemptive action" against Saddam
Hussein.
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- Other recent news stories have sounded the alarm that
a war could wreck the American economy, while a selection of interviews
with members of the public appeared skewed to suggest almost no Americans
support military action, which is sharply at odds with opinion poll data.
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- Another story reminded readers that Washington sided
with Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war, which would not have surprised many
readers as it was common knowledge at the time.
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- Charles Krauthammer, a hawkish commentator in the Washington
Post, thundered: "Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled
his correspondent in Cuba and declared, 'You furnish the pictures and I'll
furnish the war', has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front page to
editorialising about a coming American war."
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- By convention, American newspapers have opinionated editorial
pages while the news pages are supposed to be "objective", though
in practice most big city newspapers reflect a faint liberal bias.
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- Critics blame the editor, Howell Raines, a southern liberal
who took over a year ago after running the opinion pages and now seems
to be changing the whole paper's outlook.
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- The Bush administration loathes the paper, as was obvious
during the 2000 campaign when Mr Bush was caught on microphone referring
to a well-known New York Times reporter as "a major league asshole",
a slip which seemingly did him no harm with the public.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/
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