PrintNovember 14, 2007
The NY Times Attempted Smear of Rudy Giuliani
The New York Times' political agenda at work that has once again degraded its journalistic standing.
The off-and-on controversial publisher Judith Regan had a book deal with a News Corporation imprint (HarperCollins) to publish a book by O.J. Simpson. During a dispute with a lawyer for the publisher she was reported to have made anti-Semitic remarks. She was fired by HarperCollins. She is now suing for defamation. This is the story as reported by the Wall Street Journal and, since it is a minor story in the grand scheme of things, it appears in the second section of the newspaper (page B5).
The off-and-on controversial publisher Judith Regan had a book deal with a News Corporation imprint (HarperCollins) to publish a book by O.J. Simpson. During a dispute with a lawyer for the publisher she was reported to have made anti-Semitic remarks. She was fired by HarperCollins. She is now suing for defamation. This is the story as reported by the Wall Street Journal and, since it is a minor story in the grand scheme of things, it appears in the second section of the newspaper (page B5).
The New York Times gives FRONT-PAGE coverage to the lawsuit, and highlights her claims that a senior executive at News Corporation encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security chief in 2004. Kerik was closely associated with GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani. Regan claims that this pressure was applied on her by Fox in a bid to insulate Rudy (Fox's supposedly favored candidate) from bad publicity stemming from the investigation of Bernard Kerik. (see below)
The Times chose to give front page coverage to this story while burying, for example, the story of an American citizen and CIA agent who pleaded guilty to trying to access classified date on the terror group Hezbollah. This agent's sister and brother-in-law appear to be financial supporters of Hezbollah. The brother-in-law is on the lam, having been charged with tax evasion in his successful efforts to funnel millions of dollars from his "restaurant" business in Detroit to Hezbollah or, as the Times' anodyne language puts it, "to Lebanese citizens."
