OK, I admit it. When the New York Times gets in trouble, I enjoy it

[Tigermike 3,053]

Wednesday January 3, 2007

File This Under "Climaco Case"

by Christopher Chantrill

January 3, 2007

OK, I admit it. When the New York Times gets in trouble, I enjoy it. The Germans, in their thoroughness, have a word for it: Schadenfreude. Or as some wag wrote: It isn’t enough for me to be happy. The rest of the world must be miserable.

I’m talking about the Climaco case, of course. Carmen Climaco makes her appearance in the coda of a long article in the Times Magazine about the criminalizing of abortion in El Salvador, “Pro-Life Nation”

by Jack Hitt.

It’s a story that is bound to appeal to the upscale women readers of the New York Times Magazine. You see, if you get an abortion in El Salvador you could go to jail.

It’s all done in the best narrative style of the new journalism. We follow the story of “D.C.,” a “a tall and strikingly beautiful woman” after she had a botched abortion. There’s the examination in the clinic, the investigation, and finally, the court date.

[T]he judge began the proceeding, and he said I would go free, that what they were going to do was look for the person who had done this to me and that I had no reason to go to jail. I was so happy, so very happy.

What? No jail? That would never do. The NYT subscribers expect value for money.

So, in the sweep of a pen, we get the case of a real woman who went to jail for getting an abortion. It’s the story

of a 20-year-old mother named Carmen Climaco, whose abortion of a fetus estimated at 18 weeks had been recast by the prosecutor as aggravated homicide.

Now she’s in jail for 30 years.

Perfect! Outrage! And Bush is to blame!

Not so fast. As the Times Public Editor, Byron Calame,, put it:

It turns out, however, that trial testimony convinced a court in 2002 that Ms. Climaco’s pregnancy had resulted in a full-term live birth, and that she had strangled the “recently born.”

You see, the autopsy determined that the baby’s “lungs floated when submerged in water,” a test done, presumably, to determine if the lungs had been inflated.

No doubt you’d have to look long and hard for an 18-week-old fetus that could sport that kind of lung.

The story shows why media bias is such a problem. It’s not just the bias. It’s the professionalism, the credibility, that gets lost in the haste to advance a political or cultural agenda.

If Jack Hitt had been an unbiased reporter he could have checked up on the Climaco story with one of his pro-life sources. “What’s this deal about this kid sent up for 30 years for a botched abortion,” he could have said.

You can imagine how quickly any pro-life activist would have tried to disprove that one.

But Hitt didn’t do that. And the multiple layers of editing at the New York Times didn’t either.

Now it turns up that the Times may be axing the Public Editor position.

What a surprise!

http://www.roadtothemiddleclass.com/index.php

[AURaptor 1,126]

It's easy to stir up public outrage and accusations when the story you're telling the public contains, at most, 1/2 the truth. But whats different about this story and what the Lib media does every day ?

I'm just sayin'.