Some controversy over the New York Times publishing photographs of Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters in Iraq, presumably taken by someone who had gotten close enough to, in principle, kill them instead. Actually, I’m not sure if “controversy” is the word. Is it controversial these days to assert that the NYT sides with terrorists? It must have been so, at one point in the dim past, but now it’s more or less a truism. (Or at least a very resilient meme.)
Part of the objection this time seems to be to NYT Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally using the term “incredible courage” to describe a person whose job involves running around a war zone, attempting to take pictures of the war while it is happening. Fair enough. But mostly this is a prime example of the good-natured visceral attacks the NYT now receives on an almost-daily basis, and that have been going on long enough to become a sort of rhetorical five-finger exercise for righty bloggers. Beginning with a disagreement over the paper’s editorial direction, it only takes a hop and a skip to end up speculating along these lines:
If NYT editors had learned of the 9/11 plot beforehand, would they have warned the government? Or would they have set up videocameras to get the best possible shot of the first plane hitting the tower? An outrageous question? I think not. In light of this photograph, it seems like a perfectly sensible question.
It’s hard to know exactly how to respond to that, except to say that this is a question that seems quite a considerable distance away from “perfectly sensible.” However, in the blogs-versus-MSM narrative, the one thing that’s better than calling the Big Media dinosaurs a bunch of bought-out corporate mouthpieces is accusing them of high treason.
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