Overwatch

I'd like to begin another new feature, one I'll call Overwatch. Actually, it's nothing all that new. I've taken a look at our wonderful mainstream media (MSM) on occasion before.

In this feature from time to time, I'll simply spotlight instances where the MSM doesn't, shall we say, quite live up to its task of informing the public in an objective manner, or, doesn't inform them at all.

This item is taken from the September 19, 2005 issue of the Weekly Standard, its 10th Anniversary issue.

The Scrapbook column describes an August 31 New York Times op-ed by Francis Fukuyama, in which Fukuyuma did provide some criticism of the Bush Administration for its policy in Iraq. (Fukuyama is no flaming liberal, by the way.)

However, as the Scrapbook says...

But far more surprising was the Times's astonishing misrepresentation of Fukuyama's views. For the Times graced his op-ed with an incendiary "pull quote"--a quotation in larger type set off in a box in the middle of his article--that read in its entirety: "President Bush's strategy on Iraq is un-American."

Striking. Fukuyama, however, neither used the word un-American nor wrote anything that could be appropriately summarized that way.
...
The Times has yet to apologize to Fukuyama or to its readers. You might say that its strategy on editing is unprofessional.

How does that old saying go? With media like these, who needs enemies...