NYT: "Edwards...like a used car salesman..."

[Rose Siding]

No shame at all...Second paragraph in a lead story:

From the Statehouse in Des Moines to an ornate ballroom in Chicago to a modest front porch in New Orleans to a gathering of Hispanics here, Mr. Edwards has been talking up Senator Kerry this week like a used-car salesman urging his customers to look past the dents. While vice-presidential candidates have traditionally been assigned to tear down the opposition, Mr. Edwards, in a kind of role reversal, has been deployed to build Mr. Kerry up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/politics/campaign/18edwards.html

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. I see that the Ghost of Howell Raines, "reigns" on.

:grr:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. I would say the incumbent ticket has way more "dents" than can be

imagined on the challengers...

[physioex]

3. No, it was owned by an elderly lady...

Who only drove it to church on sundays... :smoke:

[AVID]

4. Watched "Slasher" last night

used car salesman from hell

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. Just being cute a smarmy

The NYT ought to be a little more careful after buying in to the chimp WMD line hook line a sinker.

[Redleg]

6. From the fucking so-called "liberal media."

EOM

[PROGRESSIVE1]

7. It's times like these that we need our own 'Washington Times'.

[VolcanoJen]

8. The link isn't working for me.

I get a "Page Not Found" message from the New York Times.

:shrug:

[Rose Siding]

9. fixed

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/politics/campaign/18edwards.html

[VolcanoJen]

10. So, I guess the "Ambulance Chaser" talking point wasn't catching on?

This week, it's "Used Car Salesman," I see...

:eyes:

Bring it on...

[madrchsod]

11. i could get a job there

if that`s all it takes to write an article..write a cheezzy line and you can work for the times-got to grap the reader-no matter if it makes any sense or is demeaning to the person in your story..but i only got an incomplete in jr college newspaper production ,the writer must have passed....

[DieboldMustDie]

12. Did Sun Myung Moon buy the New York Times too?

:grr:

[et in Arcadia ego...]

13. pssst...hey NYT, what's up with this...

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/automobiles/

Youse guys like dose used car salesmen huh?

:shrug:

[fofer]

14. OK. . .

. . .I'm in the middle of a journalism grad degree, and one of the first things I learned in one of my very first classes was NEVER to write something like that! Journalists working a beat are supposed to report just the facts, ma'am, and leave opinion, conjecture, and asinine similes like this one out of it. Technically, you're not even supposed to describe the way someone said something because that implies judgment, which you as a reporter are not supposed to be making. Adding crap in the name of a more "readable" story really makes me angry, especially when Kerry and Edwards are involved/ Grrrr.

[Rose Siding]

16. I never took the class

but had a hunch that would be one of the first things taught.

If I'd read it about a *repub* I would have id'd the author as anti-repub. It's just plain, unvarnished bias.

It's an AMAZING, ASTOUNDING, UNBELIEVABLE tribute to the human spirit that the polls show the field as level as they do.

[fofer]

17. Absolutely

Stories like this one are especially dangerous, in my opinion, b/c they're almost editorials but are masquerading as news. There may even be some writers who don't even realize what they're doing, either---just trying to make the story more "interesting" and injecting a nice helping of bias while they're at it. You'd think the NYT editors could nip this stuff in the bud, being that they're in charge of the paper of record and all. But flash is trumping substance everywhere in media these days, or almost everywhere anyway. Sigh.

But I agree with you about the polls and the electorate. I'm so happy people don't seem to be swallowing all this idiocy whole. Gives me hope. I don't want to get overly optimistic because I'm superstitious, but I think Kerry may do even better than the polls predict. Not much thanks to the mainstream press, of course. :-)

[PROGRESSIVE1]

19. I wish we had our own Washington Times.

[fujiyama]

24. It's insidious

and very subtle, but the propaganda is there.

It's in all news sources now, not just Fox News. Read AP feeds. They too have a subtle bias, which is easilly identifiable after a while. I used to have some respect for NYTimes and AP news articles and feeds, but now they are all suspect.

[maggrwaggr]

20. welcome to the real world circa 2004

the spaceship has landed, you're not in Kansas anymore.

Apparently the textbooks you're reading are from that alternate universe in which you useed to live

[fofer]

26. Well, that was unnecessarily mean.

I'm not saying I don't realize how things are done these days, I was just pointing out the ideal, which of course most of the press doesn't bother to strive for anymore. No need to be nasty.

And I've never been to Kansas, BTW. :-)

[Swamp Rat]

15. I'll take a used car salesman over the spawn of Satan any day.

:evilgrin:

[AP]

18. "Out is the Two Americas speech"??? Whazza? He's still giving it.

He gave it in O.C. today.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

21. And Cheney is debonair

Edwards' positive statements about Kerry, without mentioning any faults is characterized as the sales pitch of a used car salesman. While McCain's incredible positive statement about Cheney being "debonair" goes unchallenged. Could there ever be a word more inappropriate to describe Cheney than "debonair"? If Edwards' is selling used cars, then McCain is definitely selling snake oil.

According to the dictionary, debonair means:

"...Characterized by courteousness, affability, or gentleness; of good appearance and manners; graceful; complaisant..."

[maggrwaggr]

22. here's how to contact them. We have to call them on their shit

New York Times:

To Write The Publisher or President:

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/infoservdirectory.html#o

Letters to the Editor:

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/infoservdirectory.html#a

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

E-mail to [e-mail]

To write to the editorial page editor, send to [e-mail]

NEWS DEPARTMENT
To send comments and suggestions (about news coverage only) or to report errors that call for correction, e-mail

[e-mail] or leave a message at 1-888-NYT-NEWS.

The Editors

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

The Newsroom

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

PUBLIC EDITOR
To reach Daniel Okrent, who represents the readers, e-mail [e-mail] or call [phone].

TO WRITE THE PUBLISHER OR PRESIDENT
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher:
[e-mail] .

Janet L. Robinson, President & General Manager:
[e-mail] .

[Rose Siding]

25. I wrote this

The July 17 article, "No. 2 Is Making His Contribution by Talking Up the No. 1", the Stolberg writes:

"From the Statehouse in Des Moines to an ornate ballroom in Chicago to a modest front porch in New Orleans to a gathering of Hispanics here, Mr. Edwards has been talking up Senator Kerry this week like a used-car salesman urging his customers to look past the dents."

Would you agree that when a writer employs similies with strong negative connotations, the reader might be tempted to associate the subject with the negitivity of the similie?

Stolberg here, has absconded with your publication's journalistic neutrality like a thief in the dark and stormy night robbing her victims of something dear.

;)

[gollygee]

27. I wrote too

I really think we need to call the press on this kind of stuff when it happens. You know the other side does - and I think that as much as anything is what's slanting the media. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and the right-wing is often the squeaky wheel. We've got to make a little noise when we spot bias.

Anyway, here's what I wrote:

----------------

Wow. Does the GOP pay you for stuff like this?? A used-car salesman and a dented car? Come on.


RE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/politics/campaign/18edwards.html


From the Statehouse in Des Moines to an ornate ballroom in Chicago to a modest front porch in New Orleans to a gathering of Hispanics here, Mr. Edwards has been talking up Senator Kerry this week like a used-car salesman urging his customers to look past the dents. While vice-presidential candidates have traditionally been assigned to tear down the opposition, Mr. Edwards, in a kind of role reversal, has been deployed to build Mr. Kerry up.

[alarcojon]

29. Done

Here's mine.

I am very disappointed at the bias shown against the Kerry/Edwards ticket in the column "No. 2 Is Making His Contribution by Talking Up the No. 1" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the July 18 Times.

The phrase "Mr. Edwards has been talking up Senator Kerry this week like a used-car salesman urging his customers to look past the dents" serves no journalistic purpose and indeed serves only to promote an anti-Democrat agenda while masquerading as an "objective" news item. If the reporter does not have the sense to desist from editorializing like this in her story, I would have hoped her editors would have done something about it.

I hope you will do a better job of maintaining balance in the future. It matters more than ever in these highly politicized times.

[jdj]

23. "used car salemen" don't grad. from Yale or Andover prep.

They are working class. My Dad did it for a short while after he quit being a billboard painter. He had to quit from all the injuries. A worker tipped the scaffold accidentally once, he fell twenty feet and broke his collar bone. Then the next time, the stage was rotten, he and a worker fell through the stage, 40 feet to the ground. He was on the reverse side whiting it out, on the interstate, lots of trees so no one could see them. He had to crawl to his truck, drive to a construction site down the road,and get them to call an ambulance, took them an hour to get them out of his truck, because he had a broken back. His employee was permanently injured, and turned around and sued my Dad for compensation. My Dad had no compensation, because he was self-employed and had signed a release before going up on the billboard, so he had to go back to work sooner than the doctors said, to support us (my mom and 4 kids). Injuries still hurt him to this day, and it's been twenty years.

He didn't mind selling cars, but quit because most people trying to buy the cars couldn't get financing, so no way to make money. Now he's on disability for congestive heart failure. BUT he turned 60 this May, which is a huge milestone, cause all his Dad and all his Dad's brothers died in their 50's from heart attacks.

There's your "used car saleman" NYTimes. Oh, and my father freaking VOLUNTEERED to go to Vietnam, unlike our upper class pig of a president, but was 4F.

[Straight Shooter]

28. I'll buy a used car from John Edwards any day, because he's trustworthy

And no doubt the car will be safer than those canvas humvees that bush is "selling" to the troops in Iraq.