Finally: New York Times Corrects Minorities-as-Front-Line “Cannon Fodder” Slur

Today the New York Times finally corrects a left-wing myth perpetrated in its pages as fact.

“An article on Feb. 9 about the military's recruitment of Hispanics referred incompletely to the belief of some critics that Hispanics in the Iraq war and blacks in the Vietnam War accounted for a disproportionate number of casualties. Statistics do not support the belief. Hispanics, who are about 14 percent of the population, accounted for about 11 percent of the military deaths in Iraq through Dec. 3, 2005. About 12.5 percent of the military dead in Vietnam were African-Americans, who made up about 13.5 percent of the general population during the war years.”

But that milquetoast correction doesn’t hint at the charged nature of what reporter Lizette Alvarez wrote in the Feb. 9 edition, which simply restated left-wing paranoia as fact:

“Critics also say that Latinos often wind up as cannon fodder on the casualty-prone front lines. African-Americans saw the same thing happen during the 1970's and 1980's, an accusation that still reverberates. Hispanics make up only 4.7 percent of the military's officer corps.”

Stephen Spruiell at National Review Online rejoices, kind of:

“You know what? I'm so glad the NYT eventually corrected this pernicious and widespread myth about military casualties, I'm not even mad the correction came two months after the original article. I do, however, agree with Mediacrity, that the NYT erred by placing this correction in the ‘For the Record’ column of its corrections page — ‘which is supposed to be allotted to minor stuff like getting an address wrong or omitting a middle initial.’ This error merited a full correction.”

For more New York Times bias, visit TimesWatch.