NYT Reporter: I Was Assaulted by Pakistani Agents

Dan Pearl was not beheaded by Paki special agents. This NYT stringer should watch her neck. I wonder if the NYT is holding back on this for a reason we can only guess, such as the Eason Jordan rule?

When will you liberals finally figure out that the Muslims want to kill you?

Pakistan is not a democracy..so this incident is nothing unusual.

Serves her right for trying to meet with a sworn enemy of America. When will the NYT finally admit their treason?

Glad to hear the Pakistani secret police are doing their jobs in silencing the Taliban and Al Queda propoganda arm AKA New York Times. Nice job guys, keep up the good work. Crack some more skulls at the NYT.

Doesn’t Al-queda realize that the Al Jazeera Times is on their side? they should be throwing a party in her honor, not hurting her.
The NYT supports the destruction of the USA, what gives?

Have these idiotic women ever heard of Daniel Pearl?
We ain’t in Kansas no more.

You conservative nutjobs have no clue about what the role of the media is.
I guess they should just sit back and be spoonfed whatever the government wants us to know. Then everything would be great. There wouldn’t be any more casualties in Iraq. Afghanistan would no doubt be at peace, and Pakistan would be loyal American allies if only the media would just quit writing stories to the contrary.
The New York Times should be applauded for having the intestinal fortitude to try to go beyond the government-issued pablum and find the truth.
Of course, the conservatives don’t believe in talking to anyone they disagree with. It short-circuits their little brains to encounter a differing point of view.

Try this: Stay the hell out of the war zones and you wont get hurt. Often reporters believe they are doing good things but are just following up on their own ideals and trying to support their own agenda. there is a massive anti american world growing. Think: Why is this so? So many people leave their own countries to go seek a better life, and find that better life in America. I have traveled most of the world adn find this to be true: Outside of Spain, Germany, England, and Canada, and Australia, Japan and New Zealand I also do not wish to leave out the Nordic countries, where would anyone really want to live? Government problems, corruption, religious oppression, poverty, closed mindedness?
Look before it is too late. Hitler would have owned Europe if it werent for america. the middle east is a dangerous place-if you go there, you take your chances. Do not expect your government to save you…you deserve what you get. One side thought, doesnt it seem a bit odd that the world is being drawn into a total conflict where Muslims are the bad guys and Everyone else is the good guy? With all of our technology, we could feed everyone, and have schools and peace but soemone is adding gas to the fire…why is that?

Liberalism is a mental disorder. The New York Times and the Anti-American culture they’ve developed within their shameful organization is proof. They are NOT on our side. I believe they are traitors hiding behind our sacred Constitution.

Trying to muster some sympathy here..
Uhhhgh…nope can’t do it. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer ‘news’ source. Lucky you still have your stupid head.

Without simple behavioral instructions, the New York Times sent her to the front line ill prepared. They are responsible for a misguided training that infused her with an above the law and country, attitude. She holds no allegiance except to the New York Times, what a schmuck.
Can you imagine brushing aside a State Trooper when he asks you for I.D.? Depending on his self control is where your fate would lie; you’d have to be out of your mind on drugs, arrogance, or stupidity, to ignore him. If cops knock on your door in Pakistan let them in and be nice. Otherwise they’re going to slap you around. This woman disrespected and challenged them, asking for their wrath, a masochist’s behavior. The secret police are among the intelligent ones, they have developing egos too.
The world is a real place, reap and sow, a lot different then the dreaming and scheming within the New York Times. She doesn’t belong on the front line trying to justify her hatred of Bush by endowing the enemy.
I spend many years travel in and out of Pakistan, and other third world countries, yes a few times I had late night knockings, along with months of torture and years of solitude in Syria, yet nobody ever slapped me in the face, or even punched me; the torture was controlled, handle-able. I didn’t give them reason to personally transfer hatred, so they could only do their job as enemy of U.S.A. The left is so filled with hatred and arrogance; an illness they must face.
The New York Times is responsible for sending her to the frontline without any protective armament, if you get my drift.

This is a grim milestone. A quagmire for the NY Times.

Some astonishingly ignorant responses here.
A western reporter in Pakistan risking her neck to discover what’s going on over there – a matter of no small importance to your security here in America – is casually vilified as helping our enemies?
Is this knee-jerk, bellicose, us versus them gospel really where conservatism is now?
Pathetic.

America gave the NYT free speech protections under the First Amendment, and the NYT has never forgiven them ever since.

Too many reporters now believe that they have been annointed to comment on our government and people while operating above the law, rather than just report the news. Goodness, I’ve just described the mindset of the NYT, The WP and the LA Times! What was I thinking?
P.L.P

maybe she was dating one or more of the officials? and it was a domestic dispute

Oh my goodness! We liberals just aren’t safe anywhere! They need gun control, that’s what they need.

Her previous reporting indicates she writes to only damage the U.S. It would be a useful journalistic enterprise, however, to determine who she was attempting to contact. I also wonder why no news article mentions that Gall is fluent in the languages of the area, worked in Moscow for a while…. So, how is the NYTimes stock doing lately?

She needs some cultural sensitivity training.

And we should care about reporters…why again? If it isn’t CNN pushing the terrorists for their footage of them killing an American, it is the New York Times, and what appears to be a direct line of communications with the terrorists, reporting all bad all the time about the military, this administration, and this country.
The reporters are so full of themselves it is sickening. I remember the news briefing on the day this war started. Some of those useless reporters crossed over to Iraq on their own and lost contact with whoever they were suppose to call. The first questions out of their mouths were about when the Military were going to waste their time looking for those poor reporters.
Yes this country has enemies it is the terrorists and the media, and the military shouldn’t lift a finger to defend any reporter.

Karl Rove must’ve had a hand in this — I question the timing!

I went into a snakepit to do a report…
I got BIT
Didn’t they understand I was their friend??
DUH????

Spare me the ‘know your enemy’ bullshit. The NYT has a track record of treason and pathetic journalistic standards.
The Pakistani agency responsible for this should be commended

I agree with Terry. What a fantastic statement. What we would do without the media enterpretting world events for us? I mean, we don’t have the intellegence to think for ourselves, we need the media to think for us. Thank you NYT and ABC for feeding me your slant of the news. It’s Wonderful!!!

freedom of the press should remain exactly that. You are free to express your view’s. However
our press has endangered troops becuase they cant seem to keep their collective mouths shut when its nessasary or honor
agreements they’d made to get a story. Also rather than reporting facts theyd rather be partisian and trash those who dont agree.
The taliban has their own press to get their story out, they dont need any help. I supposed she thought shed make points feeding the voyours a look at the psycopaths that want to kill us. kinda like interviewing a serial killer in his home.The NYT’s has a reputation as a liberals platform.
I’m not surprised those idiots would send a a reporter into that.
Looks like they found someone stupid enough to do it.

When you are in a foreign country and government agents bust down your door, let them have what they want and don’t try and stop them. If you fight against the government in a country without a bill of rights, you get smacked. For that matter, even here if you resist police, you get smacked.
STUPID STUPID reporter… Cry me a river.

How is it the party line when you look at this person’s professional history? This whole idea that the boogie man (GOP) is going to bust down your door at 1am, raid your fridge and steal your Ipod is insane. Do you really see soldiers burning their mothers’ homes down when you think party lines?
Some of you people need to get a grip.
This woman is helping to spread propaganda. When Al Queda comes out and says point blank that they can manipulate the media better than any political party, after they have proven it, do you still look at this women with such rose colored glasses?
The last thing anyone needs is a militant bible thumping party in the whitehose or a bunch of communists bent on appeasement.
I fail to see how so many people in office who come from such similar backgrounds can have such descenting opinions, not on such a scale.
Pointing fingers at one another as the ship goes down.

Mr. Dukas,
You wrote:
“I spend many years travel in and out of Pakistan, and other third world countries, yes a few times I had late night knockings, along with months of torture and years of solitude in Syria, yet nobody ever slapped me in the face, or even punched me; the torture was controlled, handle-able.”
Please add a few details to your story about being a captive of the Syrians. I googled your name, yet was unable to find any mention of your alledged ordeal. Were you water-boarded, subjected to loud music, had your genitals attached to an electrical device, threatened by dogs, etcetera?
If a NYT journalist had written about your predicament in Syria, I probably wouldn’t have believed it, though.

What the Paki security agents realize(d) is that liberal journalists are not there to report on happenings. They are there to report on something, anything that can make the US and by proxy Pakistan look like the bad guys. Having said this I never codone attacking a female.

So all of you who think the New York Times shouldn’t be trying to report the news in Pakistan – do you think Fox News should be there reporting?
The wider question is how you expect to learn what the enemy is doing if you don’t have journalists on the ground reporting it?

“So all of you who think the New York Times shouldn’t be trying to report the news in Pakistan.”
The NYTaliban has NEVER fairly reported on news in the middle east.
Reporting assumes that one is open-minded, reporting on what one sees. What is happening. Oblivious to one’s own political standing.
This is NOT the case with the NYTaliban, they dictate the story, then fit the story into their own political agenda, and shove it down our throats. That is NOT reporting, it’s propaganda – pure and simple. There is no TRUTH in the NYTaliban, only lies they spread.
Since when does meeting secretly with the enemy qualify as reporting, or even newsworthy. It’s TREASON plain and simple.

The people critical of the NYT suggest — contrary to the tradition of the US — that less information is better than more information. Judging by their uninformed comments they really mean this and live by their own values.

I was wondering, how much research has ‘the media’ done on the governments role in the 1st WTC bombing (yes the one during Clinton’s administration that your beloved media has forgotten about…)
I mean, it’s the media spreading the idea of Bush’s involvement in 9/11, why don’t they do the spread false allegations about Clinton’s pre-knowledge of the first WTC bombing? hmmm… party-line I believe…

– that less information is better than more information–
The NYTaliban gives us NO information Hank. They only give the Taliban valuable information about top secret plans aimed at hindering their own terrorist organization. Thank you for playing.

==> Judging by their uninformed comments they really mean this and live by their own values.
Are you calling us ignorant? Wow, name-calling is very mature. Sorry though man, my mother taught me better than to call people names.
The media, and you my friend, are only able to see what you wanna see.

OMG!!! Call out the National Guard of the Taliban and AlQueda to protect these poor unfortunate reporters along with coming to the defense and honor NY TiddlyWinks Times….and by the way they need to fix their burqa’s too……

Somehow, this story is strikingly familiar with another story. About a girl that was in a frat-house she shouldn’t have been in. She said one thing happened, when in fact, nothing happened.
No sympathy from me for this little girl. Whether something happened or not, nobody cares about your patheic self when their are real soldiers out there sacrificing their lives for YOUR security.
Wake up to the real world darling.

Hey hankthemole “stole” my line.
Yep, the NYTaliban AND the Pakistani Gov’t “don’t need no stinkin’ badges”! Oh, you poor naive reporters, ACTUALLY believing what they told you in journalism school, that if you had a press pass, you could always get a good table a the The Four Seasons:))

try going back and demanding an they traet you like a lawyer):):):)

this wishy washy wimp should have stayed in the safety of her “home” – she is not cut out for the rough and tumble. Also she is in a foreign country (see comment) above and is breaking a local law. She is also “giving aid and comfort” to our enemies. So too bad, little girl, stay away from things you are too gullible and silly to understand. Like, you’re out of your element, go back to marching w. the libs.

Carlotta Gall is among the most extraordinary, nonpartisan and courageous foreign correspondents in the business — one of the best hires that The New York Times has made. She’s been around long enough to know what permissions to seek, and what cautions to observe. If she was being enterprising — well, that’s what diligent reporters do. I scarcely think that someone of Carlotta’s caliber would be acting anything but professional. Beating up a woman in her own hotel room, let alone a world-renowned journalist whose integrity has never been in doubt? Men have been jailed for less.

Thank you sirs, may she have another?

Why am I not surprised that it happened to a NYT reporter? Good job CIA, tipping-off Pakistan about a reporter that represents a traitorous news journal of the United States, bent-on undermining our efforts to fight terrorism.
It’s bad enough the far left goons in our country continue to stab our troops in the back at every turn, with mouth pieces like Kerry degrading our troops, and the owners/editors of the New York Times carelessly reporting, both should be arrested for treason.
Criticizing our foreign policy is one thing, but assisting terrorists with leaked government reports, and attempts by NYT reporters to interview the enemy, in-order to assist liberals with the next election, is careless reporting and dangerous to our great nation.

I’ve no clue why Bush thinks he can establish democracies in any part of the muslim world.
The better option is to bring the troops home, pour all of that money into homeland security, and use lightning raids to continually and relentlessly hit our enemies and withdrawal.

First of all:
Freedom of the Press is the first defence of tyranny in the us. no one said anything about the press winning wars. If people like her weren’t there than we’d have no idea what was happening.
Next. The new york times really doesn’t have that much of a partisan line. the best thing people can come up with is that bank tracking thing which was an illegal operation and a massive breach of privacy. Give me one other thing that the new york times has done. And their is no knowledge other than secret police testimoney that the reporter was meeting with the taliban.
Third the story told how pakistan our ally wasn’t so goody two shoes itself. Kind of like how saudi arabia is sort of a sunni iran.

Sounds like these ISI guys were just doing the same old stuffSaddam’s boys were doing – waiddaminnit, wasn’t that supposed to be against our American values? I’m almost certain that was one of the 5,000 reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq…

American conservatives today are the dumbest group of people in the entire industrialized world. Just read their comments. Unable to think on their own, unable to understand the role of the media, us Vs them mentality, willing to believe in propaganda, etc etc. One person above even wants to congratulate the Pakistani agency responsible for assaulting the reporter. Do you want to congratulate the Pakistani intelligence agency for having a role in creating Taliban also? Taliban in turn helped al-qaida to operate freely within Afghanistan resulting in 9-11. This is probably too complex for an American conservative to understand.
Just go back to watching Faux or listening to Limpbaugh.

Since the ISI was (as Gall surely knows) instrumental in the creation and maintenance of the Taliban, why should she be surprised that that the ISI would do their best to protect their own? I wouldn’t think that NY Times credentials would seem all that impressive to the agents, unless they were looking for proof positive that they had the people they wanted.

My old credit card had the US flag blazoned on it and I had to change it because of the looks and treatment i got while on foreign soil and thats money! When your in Pakistan do as the Pakistanis would do….

I’m appaled at the callaous remarks against this journalist by some “conservatives” posting comments here. The woman was working to provide factual information. These unsympathetic people I suppose would be happy with the official news coming from the Pakistani dictatorship and it looks that they long for such a government in the USA. Pitty!

Reading these comments puts my irritation with the NYT in perspective. The Times drives me nuts because it willfully bought so much of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Scooter Libby b.s. in the run-up to Iraq–like most of the mainstream media–and for years thereafter.
Unlike the public, the NYT and the media (and some posters here) still can’t face straight on that the President they actively helped saddle us with in 2000 has been a destructive failure. He was NEVER up for the job.
Faced with an attack like 9/11, we had a continuum of strategic options — from smart and effective, to ignorant and ineffective. Bushco kept making –and continues to make–bad choices.
War correspondents are a different breed. I’m glad Gall and her Pakistani photographer survived their ordeal–ad will go on to report again. The Taliban doesn’t need the NYT to get their message out–they’ve got their own channels. But WE NEED to know what they’re up and as a reality check on what we’re getting feed by various segments of Pakistani intelligence. Remember, trust but verify?

After reading the bulk of comments on this thread I can only conclude that the right has given up defending the incompetence of the current administration and turned its attention to its favorite whipping boys/girls, reporters who have had the temerity to do something other than publish government press releases.
Not surprising, of course. The same chorus emerges whenever the dreams of the right come crashing down around their ears and whatever “mission accomplished” of the moment turns out to be a public relations disaster.

Wow, it looks like the crazy right wing got here first. My condolences to any rational, thinking persons who may be reading these hateful and inane comments. I appreciate the thankless job that our reporters do going to hell-holes like Bush’s ally Pakistan to hunt down the truth and I certianly take no pleasure in seeing a woman punched in the face by police state fascists as most of you Right wingers seem to. May you never get your way here in America.

The lack of human compassion in many of the rants posted here is astounding. Much of the world is distancing itself from the U.S. because so many of it’s people speak about human life and human rights in a manner indistinguishable from the Islamic extremists. I fear that within my children’s lifetime this standoff between radically conservative Islamists and radically conservative Americans will come dangerously close to ending our civilization. Kindof makes you wonder what they’re seeking to “conserve” here.

I’m frankly astonished at the comments suggesting that reporters have “no business” being in war zones or dangerous environments.
These brave and sometimes foolish people take risks to ensure that we have information that isn’t pre-packaged and pre-digested by the knaves in various governments. This is essential in order to formulate an informed opinion. It seems to me that, these posters don’t much care for being informed, and prefer, instead, to emote rather than opine.
I guess they’re the 30 percenters.

Some of the commentary on here makes me sick. The point of this story is not the behavior of the reporter, nor even the journalistic merit of the ‘sources’ she was to meet with. Think of it this way: Pakistan has been lauded by our President and his cronies as one of our ‘staunchest allies’ in the so-called ‘War on Terror.’ This is a strong statement of approval of the way that Pakistan runs its affairs, to say nothing of the military and financial assistance which that nation is getting from the U.S. There are two major causes for concern here. The first is how Pakistan treats the concept of freedom of the press. Certainly it’s their own country, and certainly the reporter and the NYT should be aware of local conditions. On the other hand, if those local conditions are normal, then that is the form of society which we the United States are busily supporting – one where a member of the media can be assaulted in the course of her job, or for not presenting ‘papers.’ Think of it this way – if a right wing publication reporter was to meet with someone in, say, Colorado, and U.S. Government agents were to knock on their door and behave this way under a Democratic administration, how would that come off?
Point two: She was perhaps to meet with a Taliban ‘shadow government’ in Quetta. What that source was going to say is almost irrelevant, and you’ve missed the point. If she were to succeed, the NYT would have demonstrated to you that the avowed enemies of those US Troops that you claim to wish to protect so dearly, the Taliban, were being offered sanctuary within the borders of this nation our President and his crew have been praising so much. What they said might be irrelevant; the fact that they were there would not be. And, perhaps, they would be cocky enough to tell her precisely *how* they came to exist inside Pakisaan as an organized entity.
So you’d rather vilify a Western reporter because she and her publication do not share your political views than have this potentially valuable information concerning what, to this liberal, sounds like a betrayal of my troops by an allied power? Who, now, is the ‘traitor’?
Go back and swallow the Karl Rove kool-aid some more.

Wow, I would have never guessed there were so many ignorant fools who hate the First Amendment so much and don’t realize they hate the concept of America at the same time. Self-righteous indignation against free speech advocates is frustrating to no end.

The NYTimes has a track record of treson? Of course no one called the Times treasonous when Judy Miller, lapdog to the W administration, wrote repeatedly about weapons of mass destruction, which were nowhere to be found. If ever this was a war and administration that required scrutiny for their lies, these are the ones.The reporter says the journalists were accused of trying to meet with the Taliban, NOT that they did. And the Pakistani government apologized for the incident, obviously indicating the Pakistani agents were in the wrong. Yet so many of the previous posters seem anxious to believe the worst about these reporters. Guess the posters want to believe all the government pablum, rather than the truth.

The reporter is delusional if she beleives other peoples living in their own lands will show her compassion because she thinks she has “rights” they ought to observe.
She is on the perimeter of a war zone covering a war on terrorism. The popular there thinking may well be “no one owes her anything”.
She would do well to learn to think a little more clearly.

A couple of other things:
First – to the commentator that wondered (I’m paraphrasing here) “How else will we get the information to win the war except from journalists?”
Answer: Satellites, listening devices, Predator UAV’s, eye-ball observations by soldiers, payoffs to local snitches, etc. Last time I looked, NYT was not on the distribution list for usable tactical or strategic intelligence.
Second – for the commentator who asked “How do you expect to learn what’s happening on the ground without journalists being there to do it?”
Response – hey, why not ask OUR guys…you know, the TROOPS? I would think THEY would know what’s going on since they are the ones being shot at and rounding up bad guys they squeeze for intelligence.
Oh, silly me, that would be BAD for the NYT to do. After all, that would be “the government line” and, Lord knows, we can’t believe THAT. Who knows how they got their information? Might have been torture, you know.
(God, spare me. You can have the NYT, however.)

The ABC news story never states that the men in plainclothes who knocked on the door and demanded entry AT THAT POINT identified themselves a agents of the government. The timeline is murky. We do not know from the posted account at what point the purported agents told the reporter that they were government agents. And how they indicated that was the case. Was it before or after they broke down the door? Or before or after they tried to seize her notes? Unknown.
How you view the reporter’s reaction depends in part on when she was informed she was dealing with government agents. And how authoritative or credible that assertion may or may not have seemed. They were in plainclothes, after all. Did they produce i.d. — credible i.d.? We are lacking a lot of facts. (Of course, that doesn’t seem to keep people from jumping to a lot of conclusions here. I would guess they are not journalists, imagine if some of the assertions posted here had to pass through an editor or through academic peer review.)
How would you react in a foreign country if men in plainclothes pounded on and then broke down the door to your hotel room? Would you immediately know they were on government business and submit to all their demands? Or fight back, fearing they were terrorists or common criminals? I think most of us know how we would react if it immediately was clear they were government agents. But if we didn’t know that, who knows.
In the confusion of such an incident, people sometimes make misjudgments. You’ve all read stories in the news here in the US about people who are afraid to open their doors when detectives show up or are killed by police they believe to be intruders in these situations, most recently a 90-something year old woman was killed, as I recall. Why don’t we wait to see what the facts are before we form conclusions one way or another? Or is that too much to ask.

More journalist have been killed doing their jobs in the last few years then ever before.
That job is to inform the American public.
It’s no suprise that these conservative blockheads don’t want to know what’s going on.
Their still replaying the fantasy of succes in Iraq over and over…
Cowardly chickenhawks all.

I have to wonder if some of the conservatives posting here have even passed high school. for example, have they never heard of the fourth estate? is it that they discount its value or are they just ignorant of it?

I cannot decide whether to be amused or frightened by the level of ignorance shown here.
Modern Afghanistan is the creation of Pakistan to serve as a buffer state. The Taliban were crafted by Pakistani schools.
It is important for America to know the current state of the relationship of Pakistan and their client Talabani. To prevent such reporting is the true reason that the secret police interfere with Western press. We need to know how much Pakistan is supporting the resurgence of Taliban fighting in Afghanistan.

I hardly think the NYT is the fourth estate. The guardians of democracy,they are not. Dowd, Rich, Keller and the lot of them are so screwed up by their hatred for President Bush they can’t see straight.

I’m seeing a lot of right-wing knee-jerk posting here.
Carlotta Gall reported for a long time on the first Chechen war. (mid 1990s, in case Rush was too busy hating on Clinton to talk about it. ) She reported from the middle of a very brutal conflict at a time when it was very easy to get kidnapped or killed without anyone ever knowing. I would bet you she’s got a bigger pair of stones than most of the posters, a better understanding of the geo-politics than most of us and a clear-eyed understanding of the risks she was taking.

I am saddened by these neocons blaming the reporter and NYT for getting facts for American public. The reporter and NYT is accused of helping the enemy. What about this administration that lied about Iraq and got us in this mess while Osama is free? The real trators are Bush and Cheney who took their eye from Afghanistan and took us to Iraq with almost 3000 soldiers dead and 20000 wounded real bad. The real heros are our soldiers who have no choice but fight in an illegal war and our brave reporters who are trying to find the truth. These neocons would niether fight nor are brave enough to go in a war zone and find the truth. These are armchair “patriots”

DoubleTalk Lesson #1:
Instead of “Colluding with the enemy”, we will now refer to it as “Freedom of the Press”
DoubleTalk Lesson #2:
Instead of saying “Treason”, please refer to it as “Patriotism”
DoubleTalk Lesson #3:
Instead of “terrorists”, they MUST be referred to as “Freedom Fighters” (capitalization for emphasis is required…)
Please remember these important lessons for all future posts. Thank you comrades.

Patrice,
What do you regard as reliable journalistc sources? I’m assuming that you look now and in the past have looked for something more than a rewriting of government press releases.
What do you see as the role of the press in a democracy? How did you view the role of the press 10 or 12 years ago? The NYT was one of the most aggressive newspapers in investigating and reporting allegations about Whitewater, starting as early as 1992. Do you think that was inappropriate?
Back in the early 1990s, did you then criticize the NYT for its coverage of Whitewater, when it refused to accept WH assertions that there was no story there? Did you read or dismiss the lengthy investigative pieces the NYT published during the Clinton administration? Did you want the NYT to dig into stories (such as the Travel Office or filegate stories) the way it did and not to accept the Clintons’ word that there was nothing to investigate?
Or did you then believe that people should turn mostly to government press officers for news about what was going on? If you didn’t believe that then, do you believe it now? If the underlying reasons and methodologies for investigative reporting basically are the same as they once were, what has changed your view of the NYT?
What news outlets do you trust now for objective and balance presentation of facts, pleasant or not (not opinion)? Are they all the same ones you turned to during the Clinton years?
Have you ever watched Joe Scarborough on tv? Give him a try if you haven’t, he’s a former Republican Congressman but is not predictable in his views. He has the courage both to support the President but also to critize or oppose his policies when he believes he is on the wrong path (some of the Iraq policies, the deficit, expansion of the size of government, etc.). An independent thinker, if you will. His show is a good example of American freedom of speech.

It is astonishing to read the comments here from the right wingers. If you think the NYTimes is liberal, you simply demonstrate how ignorant you are of the rest of the western democratic world.
I never knew the level of vitriol and idiocy among the right until I started reading blog comments. It’s too bad countries can’t have divorces because at this moment in time, it seems liberals and conservatives have irreconcilable differences, and I, for one, am sick of being called a traitor because I disagree with boy George. (oh, and I and others were right…but that means we’re traitors because war is never wrong, apparently.)
I would happily permanently separate from the right wingers in this country because, as is, no one is happy. I don’t want my sons to die for a lie. I don’t want to pay my tax dollars to kill in an unnecessary war. I don’t want to be a part of a nation that doesn’t understand the value of diplomacy in order to achieve national security goals. I don’t want my country to torture innocents “just in case.”
If you think a reporter is a traitor for seeking information…well, it is stunning to know that so many of you think that way.
But the most absurd claim is that liberals or reporters support the taliban.
that so many here are happy that she was slapped around just reveals, again, that you have nothing to offer this nation except hatred.

What astonishes me the most about right-wing nut jobs, is their failure to see a real puppeteer – Bush & Co (senior and a moron Jr), Chaney, Rumsfeld and Rove. This is the most corrupt administration in American history who is squattering money to oil and military-industrial complex. Middle class is ceasing to exist, jobs are getting outsourced, government is being run corporations, manufacturing and R&D getting shifted to countries like China and India, science in dire straits due to restrictions imposed by this administration and still, they trumped their most idiotic, moronic, imbecile, block-head and blind messages like “war on terror”, “colluding with enemy”, “patriotism”, blah, blah, blah… You want to see who is colluding with enemy ? Ask Bush, he is the one who is bed with Saudi Arabia. You want to see who is not being patriotic ? Ask Cheney, ask him why jobs are getting shipped overseas and why oil company execs have ever fattening purses. Ask about trade deficit with China, ask about economy where growth is not entailing job growth, ask about our civil liberties, ask about lies about WMDs, ask about how much of the US economy Arabs own, ask about corporate lobbies that rule our foreign policy, ask about ever degrading education sector!!! Reporters are sacrificing their lives to cover the grounds so people can make their own minds, instead of one-sided, right-wing O’Reilly-the-falafel-and-vibrator rant. Wake up morons, your bus is leaving…

You want to talk about ignorant, just have a conversation with the average liberal. If you bring up the Middle East this is the way the conversation will go:
“Bush and Cheney went to IRAQ to steal the oil for their friends. Haliburton and Enron are paying off Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rove on the side so that they can continue their imperialistic takeover of the world. In doing so, they are listening in on my conversations to get more information about me to conquer the world.”
Then they will go into a diatribe about how Bush is an idiot and Cheney is evil.. stuff the Mainstream Media beats the information drum about all of the time.
We are living in an ignorant John Stewart kind of liberal fantasy land.

David, you must be too young to have read the New York Times during the Clinton administration. Even Wikipedia states that “Because of the allegations made in the New York Times article, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the failed Whitewater deal.” It was the NYT’s initial stories which helped trigger the probe which Ken Starr later took over from the first prosecutor, Robert Fiske.
On its opinion pages, the NYT during the Clinton administration carried some scathing columns by William Safire. Safire actually called Hillary Clington a “congenital liar” in a famous column he published in the NYT. I remember it and the commotion it created very well.
It does not help President Bush now for anyone to be so careless with the facts about what happened in the past. He of all people needs defenders who can argue carefully based on known facts, not myths and speculation.

“Spare me the ‘know your enemy’ stuff. The NYT has a track record of treason and pathetic journalistic standards.
The Pakistani agency responsible for this should be commended ”
John G, Congratulations on supporting the terrorists. The Pakistani agency responsible for this is the ISI. The ones who helped create the Taliban. They’re the ones that former CIA Bin Ladin hunter, Gary Schroen, says know where Bin Ladin is today. My initial guess is that this reporter was getting info that was going to embarass the ISI, probably something along the lines of the resurgence of the Taliban is due to the fact they are being helped by the ISI. The ignorance shown on this thread is astounding.

For the self identified exdiplomatfrompakistan: a message board is not a good place to get a sense of the how the American public as a whole views issues. For one thing, you are looking at a self selecting sample. Very often, it is people who are angry about something, or who feel a need to vent their feelings, or who feel they have lost out somewhere in their lives and want to lash out, who look to message boards. There is a lot of victimology displayed on message boards by people on the right and the left. Many Americans approach the issues discussed here differently, that is, with much less emotion and more careful thought.
There are many, many people, on the right and the left, Republican and Democrat alike, whose voices never are heard in the virtual world of the worldwide web. Many of them, regardless of party or ideology, uphold American ideals, respect dissent, want the U.S. to do well in all its endeavors (although they sometimes disagree on how to achieve those goals) and still get along well with family members, friends, and colleagues who hold divergent views.
There are plenty of rational, thoughtful people who live in the United States. You just don’t hear many of their voices on the Internet, although some come through on some message boards from time to time. It has been my experience that most Americans are not authoritarians nor are they haters. They love their country, display patriotism in varying ways, appreciate freedom of speech (boy, are we lucky to live in the U.S.) and understand the dangers of shouting down their fellow countrymen.

Smear, sneer and name calling as tactics are not limited to any single party or ideology. Rather, those tactics are more likely to be used by ideologues (as defined in the dictionary as “an often blindly partisan advocate.”)
From what I’ve observed, among the general populace, there are people at all points of the political spectrum who see issues starkly in black and white. Often they believe that what they advocate is the only right path for the country as a whole (whether in foreign policy, domestic policy, social issues, and so forth). Because the positions they stake out mean so much to them, they cannot fathom anyone thinking otherwise. Anyone who disagrees becomes an enemy, not merely an opponent.
But there are plenty of people who don’t think that way. They may have staked out a position but when pressed, they acknowledge that those who hold differing views may make some valid points. Or, they even may have conflicting opinions on issues. Many people whom I know, Democrat and Republican alike, feel torn as to what is the best path in U.S. foreign affairs or express frustration that there are no good options in some areas, such as the Iraq war.
Also, it is hard to separate name calling as a political tactic from what a person actually believes. Political discourse has become so harsh and its language so calculated, it sometimes is difficult to tell whether politicians and pundits genuinely believe what they say. Or whether they recognize the validity of what some critics point out but, unable to acknowledge that, use smear tactics to distract opponents or to stir up their base. But to attribute smear tactics and name calling only to neo-cons seems way too simplistic.

Jerry Rubin, you said:
The editor of the NY Times is on record having said he get’s some sort of twisted satisfaction when American troops are killed overseas in wars like we’ve had in Vietnam and Iraq, compared to his hateful viewpoint, this blog is a mild and measured reaction to his his liberal bile.
Could you pls back that up with a link or three? I’m no fan of the corporate mouthpiece that helped Bush lie us into this quagmire but your statement is outrageous slander if you have no proof that he said such a vile thing.