O’Reilly 1, New York Times 0
By Eric Lichtblau’s NYT story on Sandy Berger today contains the following insinuation:
Leading Republicans have accused him of stashing documents in his clothing intentionally, perhaps as a way of hiding information that could be considered damaging to the Clinton administration.
This is, of course, true. Leading Republicans, and their press-corps allies, have made this charge. Of course, as members of the 9/11 commission have repeatedly stated, Berger only took copies of documents, not originals, so his activities did not impede their investigation in any way. If you’re reporting an accusation like this, it seems like it might be worthwhile to point out that additional, uncontroversial and well-established facts regarding the incident make the accusation prima-facae implausible. But Lichtblau doesn’t seem to have the space to point this out in a 813 word story. He just lets the accusation hang there, unrefuted…. Compare The paper of record ™ handling of this issue to Bill O’Reilly. As Bob Somerby reports, this particular insinuation was too far beyond the pale for him to allow to go unchallenged:
O’Reilly did have some problems last night, especially in his “Talking Points Memo.” But if you watched him in two later segments, you saw him question basic elements of RNC spin about Berger. His first guest was National Review’s Byron York. When York seemed to imply that Berger was trying to steal all the copies of a “scathing report,” Mr. O brought down the hammer:
O’REILLY: OK, but hey, Mr. York, here’s the deal. The original report remains in the hands of the government. All Berger had access to was copies. So him taking copies out of that room doesn’t really matter because this government still has the original stuff. So he can’t divert attention from it. He can’t cover it up.
York, who was also basically fair, seemed to accept Bill’s statement.
When the New York Times is more comfortable letting pathological RNC spin flow without refutation than Bill O’Reilly, we’ve got a problem.