The Times Sees "Censors" at Ground Zero

September 23rd, 2005 11:44 AM

Sigh. The day after Times Watch gave the paper an "attaboy" for delivering a somewhat balanced front-page story on the battle over a proposed left-wing museum at Ground Zero, comes a Friday editorial, "Freedom or Not?" It accuses those who don't want anti-American sentiments enshrined at the site of being "censors."

"The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will soon decide whether ground zero will continue to include an International Freedom Center, or whether families of some 9/11 victims will be able to censor those plans. Yesterday, the Freedom Center submitted a report that specified in greater detail how it would be run and what it hoped to present in the way of programming. This became necessary when Gov. George Pataki capitulated to a misguided outcry from critics who fear that the center's main task will be to present anti-American views of 9/11."

The Times huffs: "But since late June the Freedom Center has been caught up in a vitriolic protest called the Take Back the Memorial movement, whose leaders claim for themselves the right of deciding for the rest of us what we should know and think about 9/11."

Take Back the Memorial's blog points out: "Some in the media, namely the New York Times, continue to write off Take Back the Memorial as a 'small number' of 9/11 family members. That is simply not the case, as evidenced by those that now stand with us," including the 20,000-member Uniformed Firefighters Association and three local congressmen threatening hearings on the matter.

See TimesWatch for more New York Times bias.