NYT Silent on Party Affiliations of NJ Scandal

April 4th, 2007 1:15 PM

Here's another glaring example of the sin of omission.

The Paper of Record couldn't bring itself to identify the party affiliations of several New Jersey Democrats who were indicted for diddling and corrupting the pension funds of thousands of public employees. The New York Times appears to be attempting to limit political damage for its chosen party by scrubbing its dispatches of a key word/descriptor: Democrat. The NYT reports:

In 2005, New Jersey put either $551 million, $56 million or nothing into its pension fund for teachers. All three figures appeared in various state documents — though the state now says that the actual amount was zero. [...] New Jersey has been diverting billions of dollars from its pension fund for state and local workers into other government purposes over the last 15 years, using a variety of unorthodox transactions authorized by the Legislature and by governors from both political parties.

Ed Lasky at the American Thinker notes that New Jersey (a Democrat stronghold for decades) has had four Democrat governors and a Democrat-controlled legislature since 2002, placing the political blame for such a burgeoning scandal squarely on their shoulders. The only instance in which the term "Democrat" is used in the entire piece about the Democrat scandal is when identifying the party affiliation of Governor John Corzine (who has unreported ties to another scandal) deep within the article.

What you leave out is often as important, if not more important, than what you leave in. Editing 101.