The Gray Lady Takes Advantage of the Christmas Dead Zone

As Clay Waters notes at Newsbusters, “NY Times Buried David Barstow’s Reluctant Pentagon Vindication on Christmas Day:”

An April 20, 2008 New York Times story by David Barstow, “MESSAGE MACHINE: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” won a Pulitzer Prize for the explosive claim that the Pentagon had cultivated “military analysts” in a “trojan horse” campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay.

On December 1 of this year, the Washington Times reported that an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general, spurred by Barstow’s reporting, found no wrongdoing, and quoted a spokesman for former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying the New York Times should return its Pulitzer. But the New York Times itself did not report the Pentagon’s vindication until Christmas Day, on page A20.

If that sounds like a familiar M.O., recall what John Nolte wrote the day after Christmas at Big Journalism about the Times’ colleagues in ideology at the other end of the Northeast Corridor. The Washington Post also benefited  from what John dubbed the “Christmas Dead Zone” to easily bury news:

By finally bothering to look into the kind of scandal the MSM would’ve used to bedevil George W. Bush at every turn, the Washington Post is now on record devoting 2600 words to the story.

However, what the Washington Post quite deliberately did was to drop the story on – of all days — Christmas Day, into the Media Dead Zone between between Christmas and New Year’s.

What the Washington Post deliberately did was make sure this story won’t become a part of The Narrative, a narrative that would (and should) damage Their Precious One.

Jo Moore could not be reached for comment.

(H/T: SDA)