Right-Wingers Repent, But Not The Times

By: Joe Conason
New York Observer

(Note: Joe Conason is co-author of "The Hunting of the President".)

While finance and technology are rapidly reshaping our media, undermining printed words and exalting digital screens, the nation’s major newspapers continue to exercise enormous political influence. Declining fortunes haven’t diminished the impact of their news reports and editorial opinions, which still shape the ideas and themes behind every night’s television coverage.

The great power of the dailies isn’t always used wisely, especially because “liberal” newspapers have so often proved easy prey for right-wing manipulation, as they were during the Clinton era and most of the Bush era.

Unfortunately, we can expect such manipulations to be repeated—as The New York Times illustrated on page 1 of its Feb. 19 edition, with an article headlined “As Clinton Runs, Some Old Foes Stay on Sideline.”

According to that report, the snarling perpetrators of what Hillary Clinton so famously called “this vast right-wing conspiracy” have been housebroken.

Christopher Ruddy, a journalist who now edits the extremely conservative Newsmax.com Web site, and who earned a certain reputation by insinuating that the Clintons were somehow responsible for the death of their friend and counsel, Vince Foster, told the paper that both he and his patron, Richard Mellon Scaife, have since “had a rethinking” about Hillary and Bill.

(The rest is here.)