Unfit News, Oct. 1999 - Nov. 2004

This webpage provides specific criticisms of New York Times articles. In several cases, the criticisms are represented as email messages to the New York Times Ombudsman/Public Editor -- Daniel Okrent throughout the period represented here. Okrent's consistently negligent and thoughtless handling of these concerns eventually prompted me to write about him rather than to him. The result was "New York Times Ombudsman -- A Dunce," which I forwarded to him along with a promise to join to it (at urielw.com) any response he cared to offer. See Exchange with New York Times Ombudsman for the original piece and the ensuing exchange.

The original articles referenced below are available from the New York Times archives (for a fee).

• On jailing reporters: "Balance" without insight (November 19, 2004)

• U.S. officials to be prosecuted for war crimes? Story omits crucial info. (May 21, 2004)

• Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal: Article ignores crucial questions (May 7, 2004)

• Error in front page headline removed, not acknowledged, on Times website (May 7, 2004)

• Education editor's criticism of public editor falls short (May 2, 2004)

• Editorial delivers baseless insults against Justice Antonin Scalia (April 13, 2004)

• Letters to the editor: Fresh, bright, stylish?! (April 10, 2004)

• Disclosure contradicts White House position? News article's assertion unexplained (April 10, 2004)

• Opinion columnists free to be wrong? (March 28, 2004)

• "Democrats See a Stealthy Drive by Drug Industry to Help Republicans," October 20, 2002, by Robin Toner

• "Methods Used for Marketing Arthritis Drug Are Under Fire," April 11, 2002, by Melody Petersen

• "Critics Charge Pension Bill Favors Highly Paid Workers," April 10, 2002, by Richard A. Oppel Jr.

• "Lawyers Said to Back Compensation Plan to Polish Image," January 14, 2002, by William Glaberson

• "Opposing the Ashcroft Nomination," January 23, 2001 Editorial

• "Unions Deny Stand Over Trade Policy Is Protectionism," April 24, 2000, by Steven Greenhouse

• "Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran," April 16, 2000, by James Risen

• "Microsoft Sees Big Growth in Thailand," February 26, 2000, by REUTERS

• "Shoddy Defense by Lawyers Puts Innocents on Death Row," February 5, 2000, by Dirk Johnson

• "Behavioral Drugs Focus of Debate in Colorado Schools," November 25, 1999, by Michael Janofsky

• "Appeals Court Rejects Damages Against ABC in Food Lion Case," October 21, 1999, by Felicity Barringer

• "Barnesandnoble.com Faces Suit by Amazon Over Patent," October 23, 1999, by Leslie Kaufman

U.S. officials to be prosecuted for war crimes? Story omits crucial info. (May 21, 2004)

Dear Mr. Okrent,

A news story today ("Justice Memos Explained How to Skip Prisoner Rights," May 21, 2004) describes a series of confidential legal memorandums written by the Justice Department in the months following the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks which explained how U.S. officials could avoid prosecution related to the abuse of prisoners in the Afghanistan war.

One memorandum anticipated the possibility that United States officials could be charged with war crimes, defined as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Addressed to William J. Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel, the memorandum presented different methods by which U.S. officials could be shielded:

• President Bush could argue that the Taliban government in Afghanistan was a "failed state" and therefore its soldiers were not entitled to protections accorded in the conventions.

• It could be asserted that the Taliban was a terrorist group.

• The president could just say that he was suspending the Geneva Conventions for a particular conflict.

Mr. Gonzales's memorandum also says that another benefit of declaring the conventions inapplicable would be that United States officials could not be prosecuted for war crimes in the future by prosecutors and independent counsels who might see the fighting in a different light.

The present revelation of these two-year-old memorandums leads immediately to the questions:

• Did President Bush follow the White House counsel's advice?

• If not, are U.S. officials subject to the jurisdiction of the Geneva Conventions, and thus vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes?

• Are they also vulnerable to prosecution (and execution) under the federal War Crimes Act?

• Would presidential declarations of the sort urged by the White House counsel necessarily be public?

• Who in the world, today, is entitled to prosecute U.S. officials for war crimes?

• Can the legal devices described be invoked anytime to retroactively immunize officials from prosecution for past abuses?

• If so, does this constitute an easy loophole for any government seeking immunity from prosecution for war crimes?

Of course, such questions gain particularly heightened relevance from the accumulating indications emerging these days that top officials of the U.S. government are implicated in the abuse of prisoners.

By neglecting these questions, the story omits crucial context about a major news story and leaves readers uninformed.

Sincerely,

Mr. Uriel Wittenberg

[Note that the above text includes excerpts from the news story in question.]

Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal: Article ignores crucial questions (May 7, 2004)

Dear Mr. Okrent,

The U.S. is in the midst of a national scandal. The abuse of Iraqi prisoners is not only a moral disaster, but a catastrophe for America's image which could produce hard, concrete losses for years to come. The prisoner abuse went on for months, but only in recent days has it abruptly become a major issue for top officials including the president. The reason it has become a major issue, of course, is that the abuse became public knowledge.

A story in today's Times reports that these abuses were known to the Red Cross, and that over the last several months the organization regularly provided "very extensive and detailed" reports about the abuses to "senior United States officials in Iraq and in Washington." ("Red Cross Says That for Months It Complained of Iraq Prison Abuses to the U.S.")

The story also reports that the practice of the Red Cross "in rare cases like the situation at Abu Ghraib" is to make such information public if, after informing the responsible government, Red Cross officials believe the government is ignoring the problem.

This presents the obvious questions: Did Red Cross officials believe that the U.S. government was responding appropriately to their reports? If not, did it attempt to make the information public?

But the story fails readers by ignoring these questions.

The story hints at an answer by reporting that "other human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First, said this week that they had complained to the administration about reports of prisoner abuse and humiliation" and had taken "personal appeals to L. Paul Bremer III, head of the occupation authority in Iraq, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, but that their appeals often seemed to fall on deaf ears." (The Red Cross was the unique rights group having access to interview prisoners in Baghdad.)

Suppose the Red Cross, like other groups, felt that their reports of prisoner abuse "fell on deaf ears." (There would seem to have been good grounds for such a perception.) Did the Red Cross then pursue its practice of attempting to make the information public?

Unfortunately, the story reports the practice, but not whether it was pursued.

Other questions directly follow since, if the Red Cross did attempt to publicize the abuses, it evidently failed: Is it possible that the news media were approached with detailed, reliable reports of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans -- but that the media weren't interested because the Red Cross couldn't provide photos?

The administration and the military command are being rightly castigated for ignoring reports as early as January. Did the news media -- perhaps the Times itself -- also fail America?

Sincerely,

Mr. Uriel Wittenberg

Error in front page headline removed, not acknowledged, on Times website (May 7, 2004)

Dear Mr. Okrent,

"The paper that acknowledges its mistakes is going to retain the trust of readers longer than the one that tries to pretend they never happened," you wrote in your March 14 column. ("Setting the Record Straight (but Who Can Find the Record?).")

Today's print edition has the front-page headline, "Bush apologizes for Iraq abuse; backs Rumsfeld." This catches the eye, since Bush is a famously reluctant apologizer. But the story only has him saying he's "sorry" about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Americans, without expressing the acknowledgment of responsibility that an apology would involve. (That Bush is "sorry" about the abuses is hardly remarkable. Who isn't sorry about them?)

This incorrect headline has disappeared without a trace from the Times website (as of 3:00 PM). The story remains, but with the new headline, "Bush Sorry for Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners, but Backs Rumsfeld." There is no indication of the change on the webpage carrying the story (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/politics/07RUMS.html).

Your column defined a "rowback" as "a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error."

The website's news story essentially fits this definition (although the "previous story" is really a previous version of the same story).

While the word "apologize" does not appear in the article, it persists within the caption for the photo accompanying the story on the webpage above: "In an undated photo, prisoners in Baghdad are shown stripped and bound together. President Bush apologized Thursday for the abuse of Iraqis."

Sincerely,

Mr. Uriel Wittenberg

Education editor's criticism of public editor falls short (May 2, 2004)

Dear Mr. Okrent,

I notice that, as the Times's official critic, you have now attracted criticism yourself from a Times editor. Though your critic, education editor Suzanne Daley, appears to have good grounds for criticism, the one she offers misses the mark. I am thus inspired by her criticism to criticize you both.

Your March 14, 2004 column discussed the "rowback" device of newspapers, i.e., "a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error." ("Setting the Record Straight (but Who Can Find the Record?)," by Public Editor Daniel Okrent, March 14, 2004.)

The column cites, by way of an "especially vivid" example, a pair of news stories published a week apart in the Times regarding an alleged incident of anti-Semitism at one of New York City's elite private schools. In the column, you report an exchange you had with Ms. Daley in which she appears to defend the earlier story. You write:

"When I asked education editor Suzanne Daley why the story hadn't been postponed for a day or so while [the reporter] sought corroboration ..., she replied, 'Because we're a newspaper.'"

It is most strange that, although the only point of referring to the story in your column is its alleged error, neither your question of Ms. Daley nor her reply make direct reference to any error.

But your column does assert error (by speaking of the later news story as a rowback), and Ms. Daley must have seen this on reading your column after her discussion with you. So it is equally strange that her written objection to your column (which you quote in an April 9 entry in your web journal at the Times website) does not confirm, deny, or allude to your charge of error.

She does say she provided you with an additional justification for not delaying publication: "because the reporter said she had confirmed the story and the facts were not in doubt."

This comes close to denying that there was an error -- which would contradict your column's assertion. But your web journal merely reproduces Ms. Daley's objection without offering resolution.

My perverse curiosity led me from Ms. Daley's objection to the alleged rowback article. This only increased my confusion, since the "rowback" offers no evidence of the error your column alleges in the previous news story.

Your column had indicated that the earlier news story's error was to report a parent's charge "that Trinity students had hurled anti-Semitic imprecations at a Dalton player." Your column suggests these charges were false, stating that actually "the 'slurs' resembled the sort of harmless, if juvenile, byplay you expect to find in an Adam Sandler film."

But this misrepresents the "rowback" article, which says:

Trinity disciplined two 10th-grade students this week.... [People] close to the students said they were put on probation, required to perform community service and prohibited from attending Trinity sporting events as spectators for the rest of the year.

"I know Trinity had a difficult situation, and that seems reasonable," said the student who was disciplined....

"The behavior of two Trinity students at the basketball game is unacceptable, and we've dealt with that behavior," [Trinity headmaster Henry C. Moses] said this week.

Obviously this is less than explicit, but it is indicative of some definite transgression. The article also quotes one of the two students who were disciplined, who represents his utterances and those of a friend as not anti-Semitic. But I can find no grounds for concluding that there were no anti-Semitic slurs, that the charges reported in the earlier story were false, or that the reporter was wrong to say the facts were not in doubt. So I can't see a rowback or an error here.

And I can't see why Ms. Daley defends her reporter and challenges your error in such an oblique manner.

Most puzzling of all is why you would devote precious column space to issues steeped in so much ambiguity, when you could be addressing clear-cut problems in the Times.

Sincerely,

Mr. Uriel Wittenberg

c.c. Education Editor Suzanne Daley

Editorial delivers baseless insults against Justice Antonin Scalia (April 13, 2004)

Dear Mr. Okrent,

I am forwarding the submission to the letters page below to you because it details how an NYT editorial unreasonably insults a Supreme Court justice, in defiance of accepted legal opinion.

Sincerely,

UW

----- Original Message -----

From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: Letters to the editor
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 1:42 PM
Subject: Justice Scalia's Apology

To the Editor:

Although your editorial ridicules Justice Antonin Scalia for failing to understand the First Amendment ("Justice Scalia's Apology," April 13, 2004), he is perfectly within his rights to offer speeches only on condition that they are not recorded [electronically].

This is the opinion of legal experts, reported in your own pages four days earlier (Legal Experts Express Concern About Erasure of Scalia Tapes, April 9, 2004).

As to your editorial's impertinent imputation that Justice Scalia is "camera shy," there are more reasonable explanations for his aversion to broadcast media: Perhaps he feels the American people should learn to evaluate the words of public figures, rather than relying on vocal pitch and facial expressions for their insights.

Uriel Wittenberg

Follow-up The following letter, echoing the Times's point of view, and reinforcing its false contention that Justice Scalia's actions defy the Constitution, appeared on the NYT letters page April 19: Scalia and the Press To the Editor: Re "Justice Scalia's Apology" (editorial, April 13): Although Justice Antonin Scalia has apologized for the forced erasure of a recent speech on two reporters' recorders, he still contends that he has a "First Amendment right" to bar audio-visual coverage of his public speeches by the electronic media. Is he so insecure about his remarks that he fears being quoted accurately? Is he making extreme assertions that he wishes to hide or disavow after the fact? Justice Scalia's grudging apology sends the chilling message that those in power are above the scrutiny of a free press. MICHAEL BLAINE Jefferson, N.Y., April 13, 2004

Letters to the editor: Fresh, bright, stylish?! (April 10, 2004)

Dear Mr. Okrent,

Letters Editor Thomas Feyer has explained (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/14READ.html) how selections are made from among the 1,000 or more submissions that "pour in to the letters office" every day:

We are looking for a national (and often international) conversation about the issues of the day ... as well as fresh, bright writing that stands out through its own charm.... [S]tylishness and wit will win my heart.... [C]oncerned, informed readers have the pride of place here....

This is an admirable policy, but the letters we see published can severely test our faith that it is being followed. Among today's, for example, is a one-liner from Fern Trevino calling our attention to Condoleezza Rice's "stark admission [in her testimony to the 9/11 commission] that the president perceived Al Qaeda as no more than a harmless pest." Ms. Trevino bases her observation on a metaphor used by Ms. Rice about "swatting flies."

Another one-liner comes from Chris Beleña, whose contribution teaches us that, for at least one reader, "Ms. Rice not only told the truth, but she also showed us that she is gracious and intelligent."

A multi-line letter from Ripley Howe criticizes Condoleezza Rice's inadequate "brainpower" by quoting her "I do not remember" response at the 9/11 commission hearings out of context.

One can imagine the horror of awaking every day to the task of reading fresh volumes of reader submissions; and the cynicism (if not hatred) that would ensue. This is a task that must be rotated among multiple editors. Otherwise, embitterment could drive the lone victim to share his misery far and wide.

Sincerely,

Uriel Wittenberg

Disclosure contradicts White House position? News article's assertion unexplained (April 10, 2004)

Dear Mr. Okrent,

A Times news report states:

The disclosure [of an August, 2001 briefing in which President Bush was warned of terrorist efforts to hijack airplanes within the United States] appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders." ("Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says," April 10, 2004.)

When a news report asserts an "apparent contradiction" of a position taken by the Administration, a reader might expect the report to offer some justification for the claim. But none is provided. Nowhere does the article provide reason to believe that the information in the briefing was not "historical."

Moreover, the article offers no indication of how this "disclosure" is any more damaging to the White House position than information appearing in the previous day's Times, which reports that the President's Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001 included a memorandum titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S." The same April 9 issue of the Times reports Condoleezza Rice's statement, in her testimony to the 9/11 Commission, that "this was a historical memo ... not based on new threat information."

Where is the contradiction?

Sincerely

Uriel Wittenberg

Opinion columnists free to be wrong? (March 28, 2004)

To the Editor:

Re: "The Privileges of Opinion, the Obligations of Fact," by Daniel Okrent, March 28:

Public Editor Daniel Okrent quotes an e-mail message from William Safire, apparently in connection with Safire's assertion in his column that there is a "smoking gun" linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein, declaring that "[a] belief or a conviction, no matter how illogical, crackbrained or infuriating, ... is not an assertion subject to editorial or legal correction."

But a reader naturally understands Safire's "smoking gun" statement to be an assertion about what is on the established public record (as opposed to, say, an internal vision). This surely is "subject to editorial or legal correction."

Mr. Uriel Wittenberg

"Democrats See a Stealthy Drive by Drug Industry to Help Republicans," October 20, 2002, by Robin Toner

• "Clearly misleading."

• "The pharmaceutical lobby has taken deceptive advertising to new heights."

• "Sham issue ads."

• "It's outrageous."

• "A drug industry front group is spending millions claiming [veteran Republican Representative Clay E.] Shaw lowered the cost of prescription drugs. Who do they think they're fooling?"

If the New York Times is writing for idiots, then reporting insults without elaboration is perfectly suitable. Otherwise, it is a pathetic dereliction.

"Methods Used for Marketing Arthritis Drug Are Under Fire," April 11, 2002, by Melody Petersen

The scheme is simple. Medicare reimburses doctors for drugs that they must themselves administer to elderly patients. Somehow, it seems, there can be a "spread" between the doctor's purchase price and the reimbursement amount. Inevitably, this is being exploited.

Of course, the intention of the Medicare system is that there be no spread. Physicians are not supposed to have financial incentives to administer expensive (or any) drugs, and their remuneration should come from fees for services, not drug sales.

The immediate question that demands explanation is how it can possibly be that the system permits spreads. The most self-evident reimbursement system in the world would have doctors submit claims to Medicare that state the price they paid. Then spreads would be impossible unless a doctor committed criminal fraud (which would rarely happen). It thus strikes the reader as an absurdity that, as the article has it, "the rheumatology field is now abuzz with discussion of the money to be made" from drugs.

This underlying question -- How could this happen in the first place? -- is nowhere addressed in the article. But readers are given the impression that doctors are indeed exploiting spreads, and are breaking no law by doing so.

Instead of explanations, relevance, insight, the reader is offered this acute reflection by an expert:

"We need to utilize these medicines based on their merits and not on their profit potential," said Dr. Arthur Weaver, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and past president of the American College of Rheumatology.

If doctors are breaking no law, what about drug companies?

A great portion of the article is devoted to the possibility that a particular drug company has been breaking the law. But, the article implies, it is not positive spreads that are illegal, nor even the engineering of positive spreads via false reports to the government. What is significant, it seems, is not that an opportunity to gain illicit money has been created or is being used, but that the drug company has been communicating this opportunity to doctors:

Centocor, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, has been providing doctors with marketing materials that describe how they can make extra money by prescribing a new drug, a practice that health care fraud experts say may be illegal.

This opening paragraph of the article establishes as fact that Centocor's marketing tells doctors how they can make money on drugs. But nowhere does the article describe the law that is potentially being violated, and nowhere does it explain why there is such legal uncertainty ("experts" say it "may be illegal") even though the fact is not in dispute.

The system of Medicare reimbursements is explained tangentially towards the end of the article. It seems reimbursements are based, instead of on the physician's purchase price, on an "average wholesale price" (averaged, the reader guesses, across prices that vary regionally) reported by drug companies to the government.

The article reports the childishly obvious means by which companies have engineered positive spreads:

Investigators have found that some companies have inflated the average prices reported to the government so that Medicare reimbursements are higher than what the companies most often charge.

"Centocor appears to be engaging in the same unlawful marketing of the spread" [as a different company that was previously convicted, according to a lawyer.]

Did Centocor also submit false price reports to the government? Surely that is illegal, isn't it? (If so, no indication is given.) How else can positive spreads occur? The article ignores these questions. Instead, it again emphasizes Centocor's marketing as the legally significant act.

The article strongly suggests that the law takes an utterly misguided approach to the prevention of the abuses that spreads invite. It seems the law seeks to prevent companies from conveying true facts about spreads to doctors. But all that such laws would accomplish would be to modify the companies' communications so as to make the message more subtle.

Obviously, the correct approach is to eliminate spreads. But in the bizarre world depicted in the article, this has not occurred to anyone.

The article concludes by noting that Medicare's payments for Centocor's new drug have "skyrocketed" to at least $141 million in 2001, from $48 million in 2000. But the Times has shed no light for citizens trying to understand the systemic deficiencies that also have led, and will doubtless continue to lead, to expensive and wasteful overuse of other drugs.

"Critics Charge Pension Bill Favors Highly Paid Workers," April 10, 2002, by Richard A. Oppel Jr.

The article reports that "a provision tucked into the House bill" would scale back requirements dating to a 1986 pension law under which, "to qualify for favorable tax status, pension plans must meet very specific tests for the balance between benefits for lower paid and higher paid workers." The requirements are intended, as the article points out, to ensure that highly paid executives do not get an unfair share of the tax benefits conferred on pension plans.

But there is no description of those specific requirements, no analysis, no examples. Instead, readers are treated to a kind of exotic tasting ceremony in which a succession of sweet and sour opinion morsels are presented in turn.

A pension law expert declares "This provision is an outrage" -- an attempt (in the paraphrasing of the Times) "to 'basically gut' current rules intended to ensure that companies offer roughly proportional retirement plans to highly paid and more moderately compensated workers."

On the other hand, Representative Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and one of the bill's chief sponsors, claims such criticism "way overstates" the effect of the provisions, and predicts the language would actually encourage small-business owners to offer retirement plans.

Portman's view is bolstered by the American Benefits Council -- a group which, the Times warns, "represents large employers": "I'd certainly be surprised to see the Treasury Department start to bless plans that anyone believes are unfair," says a spokesman.

Taken at face value, that would overturn the point of the article.

But a former Treasury official says badness is indeed in the offing: "This controversial proposal would weaken existing legal protections for workers.... It would allow corporations in some cases to exclude more employees from pension coverage and reduce the level of benefits for average- and lower-paid workers who remain covered."

The Times should be offering insight -- not a roster of alternative sources in whom to place blind trust.

"Lawyers Said to Back Compensation Plan to Polish Image," January 14, 2002, by William Glaberson

The proposal immediately raises the questions: how strong a case might victims have in their lawsuits? What is the extent of the airlines' negligence, and what might their liability be if not for the new legislation?

These questions are treated as non-existent by the article, as are the natural followups:

• Is there a public policy justification for new legislation that appears to effectively transfer money from Sept. 11 victims to airlines?

• Are there unexplored aspects of the airlines' negligence? Since the legislation will discourage lawsuits, will one of its effects be that these aspects continue to be unexplored?

The same questions apply with respect to other potential targets of negligence lawsuits, e.g. the government.

But these are serious questions, not nearly as amusing as the gossipy theme that dominates the article from start to finish. For the writer has latched onto an irresistible shocker: the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is actually supporting the legislation -- even though, as the article's opening words remind us, trial lawyers are "frequently called vultures or worse."

The article thus moors itself upon the juicy question of whether the lawyers' group is acting with the best interests of the victims at heart ("Impossible!", the article all but whispers in the reader's ear), or whether, counter-intuitively, its support for the legislation is a sly calculation based on self-interest, since unchecked Sept. 11 litigation might be "a public relations disaster" for trial lawyers.

The article contents itself to address this question via the familiar technique of clashing quotations which resolve nothing:

Some traditional allies of the lawyers -- and some lawyers themselves -- are asking whether what seems to be public service is really just public relations by a group that fears vilification if its members profit from the attacks.

Some critics have said the leaders of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the trade group for the plaintiffs' lawyers, has been so focused on polishing its membership's image that they have forsaken their role as aggressive advocates.

"They are playing a political game to preserve future political capital for future issues, so they are sacrificing the families," said Mitch Baumeister, a plaintiffs' lawyer in New York who represents more than 40 people who lost family members in the attacks.

Lee S. Kreindler, a plaintiffs' lawyer who specializes in airplane disaster suits, said the trial lawyers' leaders had let down the Sept. 11 victims.

"If they support the fund now, then I don't see how they can call themselves trial lawyers," Mr. Kreindler said.

Leaders of the lawyers' group said they were convinced that most awards would be fair. They added that they had consistently urged larger awards and were planning new efforts in coming days.

"Every shred of influence that we have is 100 percent directed to the best recovery for the victims," said Leo V. Boyle, a Boston lawyer who is president of the lawyers' association.

The leaders of the group say they are offended by suggestions that they are motivated by image concerns.

"The notion that we're not doing something today on behalf of the victims for some abstract future political benefit is utter fiction," Mr. Boyle said.

On Friday, [federal special master Kenneth R.] Feinberg, who was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, called a reporter to defend the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, known as ATLA. "Those who are critical of my system and ATLA are being terribly unfair to ATLA," he said. He added that the lawyers' leaders had "been extraordinarily helpful to me."

Mary Lynn Tate, a plaintiffs' lawyer in Virginia who has helped plan the association strategy in Washington, said the assertion that the group was trying to do anything other than help the victims was "just an outlandish misunderstanding."

Ms. Tate, a member of the group's executive committee, said the association leaders did not focus on image issues as they plotted strategy.

"The question," said Professor Bogus, a professor at the Roger Williams Law School in Bristol, R.I., "is whether, by agreeing to a no-fault, no-trial, no-accountability system to avoid being demonized, they have given up their critical role as champions of the civil justice system, victims and the public."

Mr. Boyle, the trial lawyers' president, said he had been offended by the suggestion that his group had been worrying about the image of lawyers in a time of crisis.

Ms. Tate, who helped plan the strategy, said: "We live with whatever our public image is every day. So that couldn't be a factor."

(Ms. Tate's exceptionally illogical final quotation aptly concludes the article.)

Absorbed as it is in this fruitless gossip about motives, the article is itself appallingly negligent in its glancing, indirect and badly incomplete description of the proposed legislation that is at the heart of the issue.

"Opposing the Ashcroft Nomination," January 23, 2001 Editorial

To the Editor:

"Opposing the Ashcroft Nomination" (editorial, Jan. 23) says John Ashcroft, President Bush's choice for attorney general, is a "man of sincere conviction and personal rectitude." But it goes on to observe that in blocking the nomination of Judge Ronnie White to the federal bench, Mr. Ashcroft "advanced the fabricated charge that Judge White was ‘pro-criminal' and had ‘a tremendous bent toward criminal activity.' "

It is difficult to understand how one can reconcile the advancement of fabricated charges for political gain with personal rectitude. In truth, Mr. Ashcroft's fabricated and demagogic attacks on Judge White show that he lacks the requisite moral integrity.

ROBERT S. FISCHLER
Short Hills, N.J., Jan. 23, 2001 [published on the Letters page January 26, 2001]

"Unions Deny Stand Over Trade Policy Is Protectionism," April 24, 2000, by Steven Greenhouse

• Freer trade can benefit some Americans while harming others. It means an increase in imports (reducing sales of some American-produced goods) as well as exports (increasing sales of some other American-produced goods).

• Businesses positioned to benefit from trade liberalization will promote it, while those positioned to lose will oppose it.

• The American labor movement generally is understandably suspicious of trade liberalization, since labor in many foreign countries is drastically cheaper than U.S. labor. This clearly makes it harder to compete against imports, and it tends to encourage enterprises, American or other, to locate production, or to relocate it, outside the U.S.

• Economists can be found to support any given position, so unless they are in broad agreement, it doesn't much matter what conclusion one or the other has reached on some particular question.

Against this background, the Times offers readers this new article on labor's opposition to liberalization, this one featuring a special angle: is labor's opposition nothing more than a return to "protectionism"? Throughout the article, this possibility is incessantly played off against the supposed alternative, that labor opposes liberalization "only because [it fails] to protect the rights of foreign workers."

Given this choice of viewpoints, the credulous reader easily makes up his mind. Since U.S. labor is obviously not going to agitate out of genuine concern over the rights of foreign workers, its pretext is insincere and all it's really worried about is its own interests. Therefore trade liberalization is the proper policy route for the U.S. to pursue.

Sensible readers, on the other hand, groping for insight, are likely to ponder the article's unexamined assumptions, and wonder in what sense the two supposedly alternative views conflict. Is "protectionism" necessarily unjustified? Can U.S. labor avoid the taint of "protectionism" only by being unconcerned with its own interests? Is "protectionism" purely a matter of motives?

The genuine questions that should be explored are:

• What is labor's position based upon? U.S. economic interests or morality?

• If it's economics, why do foreign workers' rights matter?

• If it's morality, then on what basis are current liberalization proposals morally objectionable? What kinds of labor abuses would likely be behind the additional imports that liberalization would bring? How widespread would they be?

The article sheds no light on these questions. Instead, it presents a mindless series of pro and con declarations by various parties on whether the bad word, "protectionism," applies to labor's opposition to liberalization.

Absent a meaningful definition of "protectionism," what the article seems to mean by the term has to do with the internal thought processes of the labor movement: are they primarily looking out for themselves (bad), or do they genuinely care about their overseas counterparts (good)? But it is plainly foolish, and contemptible for a serious newspaper, to dwell on what internal motives might lie behind a public policy proposal. What matters is whether the proposal is well-founded. Any policy proposal must argue at least implicitly that it promotes the public good in some sense.

Whether addressing a question that is foolish or undefined, the article commits the further sin of being abysmally repetitive:

The American labor movement ... is trying to fend off charges ... that it has re-embraced protectionism.

Many critics assert that labor's across-the-board fight against trade expansion measures ... represents a crass effort to protect American jobs by preventing imports from increasing.

Insisting that they have jettisoned their past protectionism, union officials say they oppose these trade initiatives only because they fail to protect the rights of foreign workers.

"Labor's been both obstructionist and protectionist," said Representative David Dreier....

One senior administration official said that "the indiscriminate nature of labor's opposition to trade exposes a protectionist grain within the labor movement."

But labor leaders insist that they are neither protectionist nor reflexively opposed to increased imports ...

Nowadays, union leaders assert that they are open to trade expansion measures so long as those measures include core worker protections ....

They deny that these concerns are protectionist....

To be sure, one reason the unions are worried about lax labor standards overseas is that they make it attractive for multinational companies to move operations to low-wage production sites....

Clinton administration officials say the agreement is designed to spur American exports, not an exodus of American factories to China....

James P. Hoffa, the Teamsters' president, said labor's opposition to the China deal is in no way protectionist....

Many labor leaders share the view that trade liberalization measures help business, but not workers. But administration officials and business leaders take issue with that view ....

Some trade experts argue that the labor movement remains, at heart, protectionist but has grown more sophisticated in its language and tactics....

Union leaders say that in resisting trade bills that do not include workers' rights, they are being no more protectionist than corporate lobbyists ....

Mark Levinson, the union's chief economist, said his union opposes the bill not for protectionist reasons, but because it lacks worker protections ....

This is not news. It does not inform. This article is either a piece of pro-business liberalization propaganda, or it represents a malignant decision to corrupt news quality for the sake of reducing news production costs.

"Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran," April 16, 2000, by James Risen

For observers concerned over the direction of U.S. democracy, what is of transcendent interest here is the C.I.A.'s assumption, at the time, that the promotion of U.S. interests justified the manipulation of the American news media. Unfortunately, the article does not address this crucial aspect adequately.

First, the article doesn't mention whether the purpose of the attempted news manipulation was to influence the U.S. electorate or the Iranian people. The former would imply the significant standpoint, on the part of the agency, that "national interests" can warrant the subversion of democratic principles within the U.S. as well as abroad.

The article introduces the topic of C.I.A. efforts to manipulate the U.S. news media by stating that the agency's hopes "were largely disappointed." But as the article goes on to show, news coverage was significantly distorted in a manner consistent with the C.I.A.'s efforts. If there was "disappointment," it seems only to reflect the immodest scale of the agency's expectations. These included, in the words of the C.I.A. document, "placing material so that the American publisher was unwitting as to its source."

As the article reports:

Western correspondents in Iran and Washington never reported that some of the unrest had been stage-managed by C.I.A. agents posing as Communists. And they gave little emphasis to accurate contemporaneous reports in Iranian newspapers and on the Moscow radio asserting that Western powers were secretly arranging the shah's return to power.

[...]

After the coup succeeded, [the Times] did in one article briefly refer to Iranian press reports of American involvement, and [it] also published an article from Moscow reporting Soviet charges that the United States was behind the coup. But neither the Times nor other American news organizations appear to have examined such charges seriously.

While this makes it clear that substantial news distortion took place, the article provides no explanations or context to account for it. Some passages are ambiguous and puzzling:

The Iran desk of the State Department, the document says, was able to place a C.I.A. study in Newsweek, ‘using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist.' The article was one of several planted press reports that, when reprinted in Tehran, fed the ‘war of nerves' against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.

The term "planted press report" suggests some element of subterfuge or impropriety, but one cannot see how that is involved here. Was the C.I.A. report deliberately misleading? Was the source of the report not identified?

A 500-word passage in the article is based on an interview with Kennett Love, the Times reporter in Tehran during the coup. The passage seems to imply criticism of the Times' reporting, but it too is ambiguous, confusing, and bereft of essential context.

The passage has Mr. Love being told some months after the coup, by his boss at the Times, of "evidence of American involvement in the coup." One would be inclined to think this would be more than "fit to print," yet the boss never wrote of the matter (he died in 1974), and Mr. Love himself abandoned the notion of reporting the story, after a single attempt to interest the foreign editor (also deceased now) produced no response. This failure to pursue a highly significant and newsworthy story is left unexplained.

The passage also makes much of the fact that Mr. Love reported the shah's decrees dismissing the prime minister without mentioning how he had seen them. (In fact he had been taken to see them by a C.I.A. officer working undercover as the embassy's press officer.) The article does not explain what is remarkable about this omission (a requirement of the ground rules Mr. Love had agreed to in advance).

"Microsoft Sees Big Growth in Thailand," February 26, 2000, by REUTERS

The headline, and the first 75% of the article, have nothing to do with the real story here. Is this because the real story reflects poorly on Microsoft's ethics?

The final 25% of the article describes how Microsoft altered an accurate entry in its Encarta Encyclopedia to appease protestors who found it objectionable and who were interfering with a software sales campaign. This was an unambiguous sacrifice of the integrity and truthfulness of the encyclopedia for the sake of revenues.

It is ironic that a story about corruption at Microsoft appears to reflect corruption of the news media itself.

The original version of the encyclopedia entry for Bangkok had referred to that city's commercial sex industry, one of the largest and most visible in the world. In response to Thai protestors who considered it an insult to their nation, Microsoft excised all mention of the sex industry. It also programmed the encyclopedia update mechanism on its website to delete references to the sex industry. As the managing director of Microsoft (Thailand) Ltd. unabashedly told Reuters, "When you install it and ask for an update from the Web, it ...will remove the whole thing and put in something more about culture."

"Shoddy Defense by Lawyers Puts Innocents on Death Row," February 5, 2000, by Dirk Johnson

The article opens: "As Illinois examines what went wrong with a justice system that sent 13 innocent men to death row ..."

Were any of the 13 actually executed? The article is silent.

The article continues: "The mistakes go far beyond the 13," without noting whether there is any known instance ever in U.S. history of a person being exonerated after being executed.

The article thus fails to address the most immediate, obvious, direct issue. Yes, mistakes have been made. But have they all been corrected in time or not?

The article states: "A Chicago Tribune examination of death penalty cases found that 33 defendants sentenced to die were represented by a lawyer who has been disbarred or suspended."

The article neglects to redress the obvious omission: 33 out of how many defendants in total? The complementary statistic is necessary to assess this information.

The line also suggests that the lawyers may have been practicing illegitimately. If the disbarments or suspensions only occurred after the cases, the line could resolve this ambiguity by use of the word "subsequently."

The article's conclusion also leaves readers short-changed, with a quotation from Elisabeth Semel, head of an American Bar Association project that focuses on legal representation for people facing the death penalty:

" ‘It's like a match between Mike Tyson and Martin Short,' she said, ‘and the referee -- the judge -- is on Tyson's payroll.' "

The article has already belabored the disparity in resources and experience between prosecutors and defense lawyers, and the quotation adds nothing to this point. But the quotation does reveal another major omission of the article. If indeed death penalty cases have been heard by biased judges, the article neglects to make any mention of the fact.

"Behavioral Drugs Focus of Debate in Colorado Schools," November 25, 1999, by Michael Janofsky

The article reports a resolution passed by the Colorado Board of Education to "discourage" teachers from "recommending" to parents that children be put on drugs commonly prescribed for attention deficit and hyperactive disorders. In the same innocuous vein, the resolution is characterized as "urging" teachers to refrain from "encouraging" the use of such drugs.

It is only in the fifth paragraph that the article first refers, tangentially, to the practice of requiring children to take prescription drugs as a precondition of returning to class. Patti Johnson, the school board member who proposed the resolution, is said to have "conceded" that only a small number of Colorado teachers ever made such demands. Further on, not very consistently, the article reports Ms. Johnson's assertion that she has received "numerous complaints" from parents claiming a teacher insisted that their child go on Ritalin or another drug before returning to class.

So the Colorado resolution is not about "discourag[ing] teachers from recommending behavioral drugs," but about preventing them from ordering parents to put their children on drugs.

Beyond the article's curious preference for euphemisms over accuracy, you seem to have missed the boat on the genuine story behind the use of behavioral drugs by more than 2.5 million children in the U.S. Hidden within the article's hazy suggestions lies the story that should be explored and reported:

• Forced drugging continues in jurisdictions other than Colorado.

• Orders to drug children come not from qualified medical personnel but from teachers.

• These orders can be snap responses to undiagnosed problems. The article mentions a case of a teacher telling parents to get a Ritalin prescription for a girl later diagnosed with hypoglycemia who needed to change her diet.

• Some health professionals are convinced there is a direct link between such drugs and violent acts. Examples cited are Eric Harris, one of the teenage shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., and other young killers found to be taking Ritalin and other drugs.

• How much money is 2.5 million prescriptions worth?

Ms. Johnson, speaking of the Colorado resolution, states: "What it does do is stop teachers from giving parents an ultimatum: ‘Put your kid on a drug or we're not going to teach them.' That can't happen any more. It's wrong."

Dr. Peter R. Breggin, director of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, a nonprofit research organization in Bethesda, Md., says: "It's a tremendous mistake to subdue the behavior of children instead of tending to their needs.... We're drugging them into submission rather than identifying and meeting the genuine needs of the family, the school and the community. It's wrong in principle."

You report that Colorado's "unusual set of circumstances" was a factor in the passage of the resolution. Colorado's is one of the few boards of education that is elected, and there was an outcry by Colorado voters against psychotropic prescription drugs following the Columbine shooting, when Eric Harris was found to have been taking an anti-depressant.

Of states that do not have Colorado's unique circumstances, you say only: "No other states are considering a measure similar to the one in Colorado." One wonders at what point government-mandated child abuse is considered newsworthy.

"Appeals Court Rejects Damages Against ABC in Food Lion Case," October 21, 1999, by Felicity Barringer

The story involves a lawsuit against ABC by the Food Lion supermarket chain, following a 1992 broadcast of the program "Primetime Live" in which disgusting and unsafe food-handling practices at Food Lion were depicted.

The suit addressed only ABC's news gathering techniques, rather than the truth of the news program. You report that an Appeals Court viewed this as an "end-run" around the First Amendment and ruled in favor of ABC. But you also quote the Court's dissenting opinion to the effect that ABC reporters "baited" Food Lion employees "to say and do things that they knew would undermine Food Lion's standing food-handling practices," and you have a Food Lion representative stating that the ABC videotape was "staged," implying that actual food-handling practices were misrepresented.

The report offers no means of reconciling these opposite views. Readers cannot form an intelligent view of the story.

"Barnesandnoble.com Faces Suit by Amazon Over Patent," October 23, 1999, by Leslie Kaufman

Really, couldn't the story offer just a hint about the legal issues involved in the case? Was software code stolen? Is it possible to copyright something basic like the obvious idea of storing profiles so customers don't have to re-enter them each time they visit a site?

I look for a little insight when I read the Times. This story doesn't provide it.