'NYT' Hits Bush For Al-Qaeda Claims -- After Public Editor Blamed Paper

By E&P Staff

NEW YORK A major article for Friday's New York Times carried the online headline, "Bush Distorts Qaeda Links." Reporters Michael Gordon (from Iraq) and Jim Rutenberg (in Washington) lay bare the president's recent, and unproven, charges that al-Qaeda is now dominating the insurgency in Iraq, adding that "his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership."

But just last Sunday, Clark Hoyt, the paper's new public editor, had criticized the paper for doing much the same, in increasingly pointing to al-Qaeda influence and failing to point out the distinction between the newly-formed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia group and Osama bin Laden's operation.

Gordon had written many of those faulty (in Hoyt's view) stories.

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