UPDATE:
Wow, guess what? The Seattle Times has now completely deleted their original story, "GOP rips Kerry over Iraq quote; he comes firing back," from their website. In another switch of their URL links, the original link is now pointing to a new story, "Kerry apologizes for "botched joke," says he meant no offense to troops." The archive link is now pointed to, "Some Democrats join GOP in calling for Kerry apology," and the original story printed in 220,000 papers circulated throughout Washington today, and the target of my charges of grotesque bias and liberal spin to excuse an outrageous statement by Senator John Kerry, is completely gone from the Seattle Times website.
It appears the copy I saved before it disappeared may be the only digital version of a front-page article circulated today.
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Maybe this is a common news website manipulation, maybe not.
This morning the Seattle Times printed a story, "GOP rips Kerry over Iraq quote; he comes firing back". The story was also available on the Times website, listed among the highlighted stories on their main page. This was the link to that story:
GOP rips Kerry over Iraq quote; he comes firing back
Now if you've hit the link you'll notice that there is a different story there now. I can assure you that this story has replaced the one there earlier that had the same link. Here is the link to the story that used to be the target of the link above. It is now available as an archived story:
GOP rips Kerry over Iraq quote; he comes firing back
Leave it to the Seattle Times to spin, distort and excuse a grotesque statement by John Kerry into something far different than what was actually said, but perhaps that is why they so quickly removed the story and replaced it? For those who continue to insist that there is no bias in the media, look no further than the first paragraph to see the Times attempt to divert attention from Kerry's remarks to anti-Bush spin.
"Frustration over the prolonged Iraq conflict exploded Tuesday as Republicans pounced on a remark by Sen. John Kerry a night earlier, and the Democrat slammed back at President Bush's "broken policy."
In the first sentence the Times places Kerry's repugnant comments, not even mentioned yet, into a context of the "frustration" over the "prolonged" Iraq conflict. The Times then finishes up that first sentence quoting Kerry's charge of Bush's "broken policy" in Iraq before even printing what Kerry said that has ignited the firestorm.
John Kerry's remarks, suggesting that those that don't take advantage of education will "get stuck in Iraq, was an assault on the intelligence of the men and women who volunteer to serve in the United States military. They were also the statements made by a person who returned his own medals more than three decades ago after alleging that all servicemen in Vietnam engaged in war crimes.
But instead on focusing on the remark, the Times jumps immediately into spin mode to help out Kerry and place his comments into a more excusable context.
Here is a message for the editors at the Times. Kerry was not attacking Bush with his comment. He was attacking the men and women serving in the military. He didn't correct his statement and only alleged that it was a botched joke hours after he had come under fire. Caught in his hatred of the military, he even refused to apologize for the statement, or even how the statement was perceived and tried to blame it all on some right-wing conspiracy. It is not a stretch to accept that he meant every word when you consider the disdain for the military that he has displayed since he wounded himself after 4 months in Vietnam, and when he started his own efforts to undermine that war and the men and women who were serve in our military.
At least it appears that the Times finally recognized the problem with their story and replaced it with one from the Associated Press. People who read the Times on-line will never know about the swap, but this post will give it some visibility.
The bigger question is why stories like this don't get nixed before they are printed and read by thousands of people?
Posted by mjcostello at November 01, 2006 10:11 AM | Email This