NY Times Hammered Over Blumenthal Video
When the New York Times ran its Richard Blumenthal story yesterday, it included a 2008 video of him speaking in which he claims to have served “in Vietnam.” Today, a longer version of the same video has emerged that shows Blumenthal saying at the beginning of the speech that he “served during the Vietnam era,” reports AP. The Times has been taking heat today from Media Matters and others for not airing the full video, but the newspaper says it’s a moot point. “The video doesn’t change our story,” says the paper in a statement—that story being that Blumenthal repeatedly misled about his military service. But, objects Greg Sargent at Plum Line, “the 2008 speech is by far the single most damning piece of evidence.” The longer version “raises at least the possibility that he didn’t intend to mislead later on.” Either way, why the shorter version? “It seems obvious that when dealing with a story this explosive, you would want to err on the side of more context, rather than less.
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Remember, the NYT still hasn’t come entirely clean about those ACORN pimp videos.
The NYT response in the present case is awfully weaselly for a paper that says it just wants a politician to be honest about his military service.
“Mr. Blumenthal needs to be candid with his constituents about whether he went to Vietnam or not …” I guess the paper wouldn’t be satisfied unless Blumenthal repeatedly made a public disclaimer that his military service did not include duty in Vietnam, which would be bizarre as no one goes around constantly stating what they did not do.
For the record, though I was a journalist for many years, I did not cover 9/11 from Ground Zero in New York, nor did I attend any presidential inauguration, nor did I cover the O.J. Simpson trial. Glad I got that off my chest. Now please go easy on me, Times.
OTOH, I just watched the video at the NYT site, and in it Blumenthal does clearly say “when I served in Vietnam.” That was a stupid thing for him to say. Probably just shorthand for “when I served in the Vietnam War era,” but still not smart. A politician should be smarter in his choice of words.